The Devil's Excrement

I could not believe my eyes when I saw this piece of news in today’s El Universal:.
The Minister of the Interior and Justice announced today with a very straight
face, that “all of those officers that have been involved in
abuses and disrespect of human rights will be pensioned off”.

Remarkable, no? Eighteen thousand oil workers than went on strike two
and half years ago, using a right guaranteed by the 2000 Constitution,
were denied pensions, severance pay, their voluntary pension funds were
confiscated and their medical benefits were withdrawn. But criminal
police
officers who committed abuses and disrespect of Human Rights of
Venezuelan citizens, a violation of the same Constitution, will be
graciously and generously pensioned off. The immoral revolution strikes
again!

One of the things that amazed me the most upon my return, was to learn
that in my
absence our illustrious Attorney General had advanced a new cynical
theory for the assassination of Prosecutor Danilo Anderson, saying that
it was simply a
“practice run” at trying to kill Chavez. Once the assassins realized
that they could not kill Chavez, they decided to go after Anderson.

As usual, no proof was offered for this harebrained theory, it was
simply established as a fact. Now, imagine this amazing conspiracy to kill
President Chavez. The guys try and try and after realizing they could
not kill the #1 guy in the country they go after # 1465. Can these guys
be so stupid?

Where did I get the 1465? I made it up, but if you say the Cabinet has
24 members, the Supreme Court 32, the National Assembly 164, there are
some three hundred Generals, some 200 Mayors, 22 Governors, 400 judges
and 1200 Prosecutors, it just does not seem as if Anderson would have
been at the top of anyone’s list.

But the worst part is that the same Attorney General who promised seven
months ago a prompt solution to the murder of Anderson now affirms with
a very straight face that there was no economic motive for the
assassination. Of course, he does not explain all of the property that
Anderson had on his lowly salary as a Prosecutor, how he ate at well
known restaurants daily and where did the half a million bucks in
local currency found in his apartment come from. He also did not
explain how the two people murdered by the police the day after the
Anderson murder fit into the picture of Anderson being the second
choice after Chavez.

But Rodriguez imagination goes even further, he claims the whole point was to destabilize the country! By killing Anderson?

Sadly, it does not matter in the end. This is the same cynical Attorney
General that has done little for the rule of law in Venezuela in the
last five years. Mr. Rodriguez may go down in Venezuelan history as the
first Vice-President ever, but he will also go down as one of the most
perverse, cynical and unscrupulous figures of this fake revolution.
While he ignored the US$ 1.5 million given illegally to Chavez’
campaign by Spain’s BBVA, he goes after Sumate for receiving US$ 31,000
from the National Endowment for Democracy, financed by the same US
Congress that has financed many trips to the US by Venezuelan Deputies
from his party. But in the end Sumate is just one symptom of how sick
the system is. The reality is that NOT ONE person has been prosecuted
during Mr. Rodriguez’ tenure for the disapearance of hundreds of common
Venezuelans in the last seven years. Not ONE person from the Government
has been convicted for corruption. Not ONE person has been convicted
for ANY of the hundreds of murders during the many political marches by
the opposition. (Joao de Goveia was convicted of killing people in
Plaza Altamira in December 2002, but it has never been explained how
one single person managed to kill three and injure 27 with a single
Glock pistol)

Such is the legacy of Mr. Rodriguez, devoted to the persecution of his
political enemies, while protecting his cronies. Manipulating the
judicial system rather than defending the law as mandated by the
Constitution. A true sad figure which one day will have to pay for his
crimes of action and omission, as well as his cynical and stupid
accusations in the face of the murder of even his closest
collaborators.

Today’s Tal Cual Editorial explains to us what Daniel explained so well to us last
November about the results in the regional elections and once again in
his most recent post about how the officialdom takes advantage of its
control over the electoral authorities to simply violate the principle of proportional representation. So, you heard it there first from a blogger, but it is always
useful to review what Petkoff has to say about how the law is being used to cheat in Venezuelan elections.

The trick is in the law by Teodoro
Petkoff in Tal Cual

An old saying assures us that he who makes the rules establishes how
to cheat. The “trick” in the Venezuelan electoral system is precisely in the
law. The concern for advantageous control by the “officialdom” has left out of
focus the grave problem of the electoral system consecrated in the Suffrage
law, modified later by the Electoral Statues, under the rule of chavismo. Thus,
for the election of collegiate bodies (municipal councils and the legislature),
with this law and this statute, the largest political force-even if it is a
minority, as long as it is the largest minority-always obtains a much larger
number of positions than the proportion of votes it received.

In other words, the current system practically nullifies the principle
of proportional representation and insures that the largest minority has an
over representation in the elected positions. A party with 40% of the votes can
obtain more than 60% of the positions up for grabs.

Let us explain ourselves. In the Suffrage law, approved in 1998, before Chavez,
the mixed German system was established, which states that half the positions
would be elected directly (50%) and the other half by slates-which would allow
that at least half of those elected would represent the proportion of votes
obtained. The positions elected directly by name would be subtracted from those
obtained by slate, with which, at the end of the day, would yield a result
which would be quite proportional to the actual votes. The modification introduced
later, increased the number of positions elected directly to 60% of the total,
without subtracting those elected from the slates and it left open the
possibility of using the trick of the “twins”. That is, the same party splits
its candidates into two parties: with one name it nominates candidates to be
elected directly and with the other name it nominates the slate candidates.
Thus, for example, Chavez’ MVR, with its own name, postulates candidates by
slate and with the name UVE, its “twin”, it nominates those to be elected
directly. Given that they are the number one political force, they can obtain,
in theory, all of the nominal positions (60%9 of the total, by winning in all
of the electoral circuits and, besides these, the proportion corresponding to
the elected positions by slate, from which the positions elected directly are no
longer subtracted.

The Germans, who invented the mixed system, introduced the corrections so that it
would be impossible use the “twins”. The Mexicans made the same correction (the
PRI became well known for the trick of the twins) recently to block the PRI
from taking advantage of the ability to “make twins”

Of course, the trick works if the Electoral Board, the CNE does not declare the
identity of the “twin” parties, but the electoral organization has nothing in
the law that forces it to do it and in some cases, as long as the law is not
modified, the same political sector can act through clearly distinct political
parties, in order to sidestep any objections. Thus, for example, in the elections
for regional legislative councils, Chavez’ MVR “twinned” itself with Podemos,
which was obviously a different party. However, now Chavez’ MVR has its own
twin wild card party, UVE, created by it in order to do without its electoral partners and
legalized in a very sloppy way by the CNE. An impartial CNE would have
prohibited such a coarse trick.

The
Suffrage law needs to be modified so as to reestablish proportional representation
and insure with it truly democratic elections, from which truly collegiate
bodies may arise, which are truly representative of national opinion.

As
recently as May 25^th., a Deputy from Chavez’ MVR stated
categorically that the proof that things were back to normal in PDVSA was that the company was going to submit its
financials to the SEC on June 30^th., only twelve months late. The next day the President of PDVSA and Minister
of Oil said he had hired a former Superintendent of Banks to insure the
financials would be handed in to the SEC on time. Well, June 30^th.
went by and the financials were not only not handed in to the SEC, but
reportedly the Government informed the SEC that it will not do it. Apparently
ever!

PDVSA has
become simply unauditable according to today’s El Nacional. The auditors, a
local subsidiary of KPMG was simply unable to complete its work and has yet to
receive any response to the many requests for information. Things are not only
not normal, they are simply absurd, the company’s numbers are unknown and this
simply confirms the many lies we have been hearing about the company’s
production. Moreover, it is perhaps an ironic end to Chavez taking over PDVSA
that his main complaint was always that the company was not transparent, that
the technocrats did not tell the “people” what or why they were doing with the
most important asset the country had.

The
inability of the auditors to complete their job shows the mess the company is
in. Whether there is corruption or not within PDVSA can not even be determined,
since the whole financial structure and supervision of the company is simply
non-existent. Among other pearls, the audit determined that of Cuba’s debt of
US$ 584 million, $478 million was past due, only 30 of the 49 buyers of crude
have confirmed their balances are correct, there are $266 million inn accounts
receivable, $163 millions in unknown receivables, accounts overdue amount to
US$ 874 million, debt with fired employees is unknown, no shareholders meeting
has been held since 2002 and on and on…

The
end
result is that we “the people” have no clue as to how the company is
being run.
The “promises” of completed financials is well overdue and simply the
company
can not borrow funds in the international markets. What a way to
mortgage the
future of all Venezuelans! PDVSA belongs to the Chavistas, not to the
people
and in essence what is being done is to kill the golden goose.
Unaccountability is the name of the game for the Chavistas, but they
don’t even care.

It is easy
to find all of this irrelevant when oil prices are reaching all time highs. But
much like the 2000 stock market bubble burst, so will the rise in oil prices. Economic
cycles are here to stay, the US has been doing well for a while, so has China,
oil inventories are near all time high, but speculators seem to have taken over
the oil markets. It is just a matter of time for us to see $35 per barrel
again, “this time it is different” is always said just before the end of
bubbles. You heard it here first, lower oil prices will be here before the end
of the year. At that time, PDVSA will need funding, but it will simply not be
able to get it. What a sad end for the revolution, they simply did not know what
to do with the flag they waved for so long. History will never forgive those
that turned PDVSA into a black hole and have turned it into a useless carcass.

Upon arrival at the airport last night, two things reminded me of the strange ways in which problems are sometimes solved in Venezuela:

–The Government has recently built a new arrivals hall at the international airport. The new hall is right above the old one, which now sits there empty, dark and unused. The new hall is very luxurious; the new baggage carrousels work well and the whole thing is very well organized, for now. The same was the case of the old one when it was first opened up in 1980. The problem was there was little maintenance since then, just enough to keep things running. The solution was typical of Venezuelan Governments, past and present: throw a lot of money at a problem building a new hall from scratch, rather than fix what was there. The old conveyor belts could have been fixed and the old hall fixed up. The arrivals hall at Kennedy airport is still the same one that I used to arrive at when I was an undergraduate. And that, my friends was a LONG time ago

–As you exit customs your luggage has to go through an x-ray machine. This applies to everyone. There was a line of maybe 20-25 people waiting to do this. I was maybe in the middle, when four guys with luggage carts went straight to the head of the line “aided” by some customs officers and ignoring the line. I could not stay quiet and started shouting that there was a line for everyone and these people were bypassing it and please they should go to end of the line. The Venezuelan solution to the problem: Easy, get rid of the complainer! A customs lady approached me and led me to a second machine way at the other end of the Hall that had nobody in line, while the four guys went ahead of the first line anyway.

After truly disconnecting from the world for three weeks I am back and I can not say ready to blog on Venezuela yet, my mind is still somewhere else. My vacation was a blast, has a fantastic time including the coincidence of a lifetime in finding that the first week of my vacation was shared with my thesis advisor, one of my favorite people in the world. This made the vacation three times better.

Thanks to Jorge for his work and contributions as well as the other contributors to this pages during my absence. A blog is a very personal thing and is hard to fill for others and is a responsibility I dumped on Jorge without mercy. Thanks again! The software acted up in my absence and is still doing it; I have no clue as to what the problem is. This excellent post on race differences in Venezuela by Jorge, for example, shows up in the Venezuela section, but fails to appear in the home page for reasons that completely mystify me.

As to events in my absence it seems to be more of the same. The Government refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for its errors. From 1958 to 1998 when Chavez assumed power, Presidents were in charge for five years and then their administrations became the “Gobierno Anterior” (Previous Government) which was blamed for everything. Well, Chavez has been in power for seven, thus, he has become the “Gobierno Anterior”, but his Government continues to blame things on previous Governments, such as the horrendous murder of the three engineering students by hooded policemen raiding a barrio. Besides murdering the students the cops tried to hide evidence, remove the corpses and in general cover up what they had done. But it is all the fault of the previous Government because this was “usual practice” by previous Governments. In fact, the murder rate in barrios is up three fold since Chavez took over and the death of acquaintances is so common that just days before the murder of the three students a fellow local blogger reported the death of a coworker killed simply so that they could steal his briefcase.

And in the meantime, a new Penal code was approved, Sumate continues to be persecuted in this country which some still claim is a democracy and reporters are held by pro-Chavez’ hoodlums in a clear intimidation attempt. And none of these things used to happen during any of the previous Governments which were not very good, but certainly were more democratic than this one. If not, look at all of the tricks being pulled by the Electoral Board.

So my friends I am back, but except for being a bit more relaxed, things have changed little over here and I have little hope that they will in the near future. But I will continue recording the acts of this outlaw Government. It is the least I can do. 

The judge reached a decision: SUMATE directive will go to trial (see also here),
but they will not be in jail during the trial. According to Alejandro
Plaz, the judge accepted all the evidence presented by the goverment
and rejected almost all the evidence presented by SUMATE. In
particular, some of the recommendations made by the Supreme Court in
their November decision were not taken into account. Maria Corina
Machado said that this is a form of intimidation to prevent SUMATE from
keeping their campaign of education to have clean elections in
Venezuela.

I agree with her. The goverment will do whatever it can to intimidate SUMATE, which is currently the only effective opposition movement in Venezuela.

SUMATE, BTW is just asking what in any democratic country is taken for granted. It can be enumerated in five points:

1.- A reliable electoral registry
2.- Overall audits
3.- Secret vote
4.- Manual counting
5.- Effective observers

So, if you are in Venezuela, show that you care about your five fingers.

Jorge Arena.

[Before leaving, Miguel prepared this excellent post. Enjoy]
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While the phrase “To sow the oil” is quite famous in Venezuela,
it was not until this week that I first read Arturo Uslar Pietri’s famous 1936 original
article in which he first used that phrase. You can find that article here in Spanish.
I thought it was worth translating to make it available in English too. I will
translate a second article from 1961 by Uslar himself about the subject, when
time allows it. While some of the terminology is certainly old fashioned, it is
impressive how the basic concepts outlined in the article remain true even in
the globailized world of today. To me this article shows the intellect and
clarity of thinking of one of Venezuela’s
most famous writers. While the first oil discovery in Venezuela
was in 1914, it was not until the mid 1920’s that oil was discovered in amounts
large enough for it to become our Devils’ Excrement.

To sow the oil by
Arturo Uslar Pietri in Ahora

When one considers with some care the economic and financial
panorama of Venezuela, the notion of the large role that the destructive
economy plays in the production of our wealth gives us some anguish, that is,
that one which consumes without concern about how to reconstructy the existing
amounts of matter and energy. In other words, the destructive economy is that
one which sacrifices the future in favor of the present, the one which taking
things into the realm of fable writers, it is more like the cicada than like
the ants.

In effect, in a budget of effectively rental income of 180
million, the mining sector figures in with 58 million or almost one third of
the total income, without making estimates of the many other numerous indirect
and important contributions that can be equally attributed to the mining
sector. Public Venezuelan wealth lies currently, in more than one third, on the
destructive utilization of the oil fields underground, whose life is limited
not only for natural reasons, but the productivity of which depends on its
entirety of factors and wills which have nothing to do with the national
economy. This great proportion of wealth of destructive origin will grow
without any doubt the day that mining taxes are made more just and
remunerative, even to get close to the suicidal dream of some naive people that
see as the ideal of the Venezuelan finances, to be able to pay the totality of
the budget with only the mining income, which could be translated more simply
this way: to manage to make Venezuela an unproductive and idle country, an
immense parasite of oil, swimming in the momentary and corrupting moment and
devoted towards an imminent and inevitable catastrophe.

But it not only does the destructive character of our
economy reached this grave proportion, but it goes even further reaching a
tragic magnitude. The wealth of the ground among us does not only not increase,
but it tends to disappear, because agricultural production decays in quantity
and quality in an alarming manner. Our scant fruits for export have seen their
place in the international markets snatched by more active and capable
competitors. Our cattle industry degenerates and gets poorer with epizooties,
ticks and the lack of adequate crossbreeding. Lands get sterilized without
fertilization, people grow crops using antiquated methods, enormous forests are
destroyed without replacement, to be converted in firewood and vegetable coal. From
a recently published book we take this exemplary data: “In the Cuyuni region
more or less three thousand men are working who knock down, on average, nine
thousand trees a day, which totals 270 thosuand in seven months, including the
areas of the north, this totals one million and eight hundred and ninety
thousand. Multiplying this last sum by the number of years that the beefwood
tree was worked on, we would obtain an exorbitant amount of trees knocked down
and you will get an idea of how far gone the beefwood tree is”. These phrases
are a brutal epitaph for the beefwood tree, which, under different procedures, could
have been one of the biggest sources of wealth for Venezuela.

The lesson of this threatening scenario is simple: it is
urgent to solidly create in Venezuela
a reproductive and progressive economy. It is urgent to take advantage of the
transient wealth of the current destructive economy to create the healthy and
ample and coordinated bases of that future progressive economy, that will be
our true declaration of independence. It is necessary to get out the most
income from the mines to totally invest it in aid, facilities and stimulus to
agriculture, breeding and national industries. That, instead of oil being a
curse that will turn us into useless and parasite people, it would be the lucky circumstance
that will allow us, with its sudden wealth, to accelerate and strengthen the
productive evolution of the Venezuelan people under exceptional conditions.

The part that in our current budget is dedicated to this
true promotion and creation of wealth is still small and perhaps is no more
than a seventh of the total amount of expenses. It is necessary that these
outflows destined to create and guarantee the initial development of a
progressive economy reach at least up to the level of the mining income.

The only wise and saving economic policy that we should
practice is to transform the mining income in agricultural credit, stimulate
scientific and modern agriculture, importing stallions and pastures, repopulate
the forests, build the dams and canals necessary to regularize irrigation and
the defective water regime, mechanize and industrialize the rural areas, create
coops for certain crops and small owners for others.

This would be a true act of national construction, truly
making use of the national wealth and this must be the goal of all conscious
Venezuelans.

If we had to propose an insignia for our economic policy we
would launch the following, which seems to us summarizes in dramatic fashion
the need to invest the wealth produced by the destructive system of the mines,
and create reproductive agricultural and progressive wealth: to sow the oil.

Arturo Uslar Pietri. June 14^th. 1936

When I was young, I was fascinated by the
story of “Pedro y  el Lobo” (Peter’s Crying Wolf). I
found it was a terrible story, and yet, with the passing of time, I
have been
able to learn from it and to wisely put in practice the lesson
portrayed in the
story.Unfortunately, the Venezuelan President does not seem to have
learned
that lesson at all. Since he got into power, Chavez has systematically
stated that he is about to be killed, that there are people outside and
inside Venezuela plotting to take his life. He has even introduced a
very elegant term
to indicate the event of his assassination. He has called it a
“Magnicidio”.

My first
thought is on the term itself and why it is used.

I must admit with a bit of shame
that I did not quite know the meaning of the word “Magnicidio” until Chavez started using it. It was only then that I took the time to check the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy to
get the precise meaning of the term. Here is what I found:

According
to this definition “magnicidio” means the “violent death given
to a very important person due to his/her position or
power”.The term is vague, to say the
least. How does one define “a very
important person due to his position or power”? Secondly, I was puzzled
that the term
had not been widely used before in the Venezuelan Press to designate
the
assassination of someone important. I do not recall having read or
heard that term for the original news of the assassinations of John
(1963) and Robert (1968) Kennedy, Martin Luther King
(1968) ,Anwar El Sadat (1981), Indira Ghandi (1984), Olof Palme (1986),
Rajiv
Ghandi (1991), Yitzhak Rabin (1995) or Anna Lindh (2003), to mention
just a
few. I searched the archives of Venezuelan newspapers to know for sure
if the
killings of
those political figures were just tagged as “assassinations” by the
Venezuelan Press or if the word “magnicidio” was employed at the time.

Unfortunately, the on-line
archives do not go that further back. I was only able to get the original on-line news of the Anna
Lindh assassination. As you can see, there is no mentioning
of the word “Magnicidio” referring to her assassination. Of course, Chavistas may
argue that Anna Lindh was just the Swedish Foreign minister and had been only President of the
European Unionand candidate to succeed the Swedish Prime Minister…maybe she was not
important enough, not compared to Chavez, of
course…

So, if you have access to the original Venezuelan newspapers on the assassinations of any of
the above mentioned leaders, please let me know. I would really like to know the
exact term that was used when the news of those assassinations were printed.

My guess is that it was the
Chavistas themselves that dusted and tagged the old term and that the Venezuelan Press followed, falling
into their trap. According to the Chavistas, Chavez should not be considered
like your everyday leader. They have carefully been crafting an image of
Chavez that is closer to that of a Religious figure than a modern politician (see
“The Eternal Chavez”, that refers to
this
article of William Izarra, who is one of the
leading ideologists of the Chavista movement). Thus,
it is
not surprising that an assassination of Chavez should be more than a
normal political assassination. Then, the tagged terminology of
“Magnicidio”, carefully repeated over and over in Alo Presidente and
the other
official media outlets, has become a current term, specifically used to
designate the
assassination of a supreme leader: Chavez.

My second
thought refers to the number of times an eventual Magnicidio have been in the
news.

I was about to initiate a
research on that point when I found this
article by Elizabeth Fuentes. Luckily she had already carried
out the facts digging work. According to her article, the chronology and accounting
of the magnicidio story can be summarized as
follows:

1998. – The magnicidio was denounced eight
times.

1999. – There were six instances of
magnicidio callings.

2000. – The possibility of a magnicidio was
announced eight times again.

2001. – Five times was a magnicidio plot
denounced.

2002. – Only one case is
reported.

2003. – At least two cases were
announced.

2004. – This year too, at least two cases of
magnicidio were reported.

Ms. Fuentes stops her research
in 2004, but there have been already several reports of Magnicidio in 2005. I did a quick search on
El Universal archives
afew days ago and, starting on
January
1^st 2005, there had been 145
articles about a Chavez magnicidio! The latest, are the suspension of
the June 24 Independence parade due
to a supposed
complot to kill the president (see also here)
and the
amazing declarations of Fiscal Isaias Rodriguez indicating that Danilo
Anderson’s murder was nothing
more than a “trial” for the magnicidio (see here
and my comments here).

The question is why? Why does
Chavez need to constantly get out the news about yet another plot for his
assassination?

My feeling is, as usual, that
this is a strategy to divert the attention of the Venezuelan people. The government uses the
Magnicidio the same way it was believed that previous governments used some urban
legends like the UFO arrivals and the extra-terrestrials announcing of the opening
of the
AvilaMountain.
At that time, some people thought that those fantastic news were
circulated on purpose to divert
public opinion from political scandals or harsh economic conditions. In
previous governments those urban legends were heard once in a while,
whereas in the current government, the
Chavez magnicidio stories are constantly brought up like breaking news
by government
officials.

Of course, regardless of the
magic realism that Venezuelans are used to live, there has never been, in the history of
Venezuela,
such a circus-like political climate. Simply put it, Chavez is a
terrible
ruler, and he runs an extremely inefficient government, but he is a
great entertainer and he has a lot of money. He has the two ingredients used
by the Roman Emperors to remain
popular:

“Panem et
circenses”.

My last thought is on Chavez handling of the
news.

Regardless of whether the
Magnicidio attempts are real or not, Chavez handling of the news on that issue has been extremely irresponsible. A real leader, a true statesman puts the security of the state and of the people he is
governing before anything else. A leader is someone that would prevent a panic situation, or a situation that can
lead to bloodshed or civil war.

Well, Chavez has done exactly the opposite. He
has systematically warned people in a very public way that he might be
killed soon.Moreover, he has incited the Venezuelan people to get out in the
streets in the event of his death. His behavior has
been so irresponsible that a few weeks ago Chavez
was
not seen in public for a whole weekend, which is very unusual. The
rumors started and there was already a group of angry Venezuelans
outside the Presidential Palace asking to see the President (see here).

This, of course, is the same
good old Chavez’s shameful and irresponsible strategy of putting Venezuelans against Venezuelans
(see
here). It seems that he is even determined that his legacy of hatred and
division persists after he is gone.

I pray that nothing happens to
him; I do not even want to imagine the terrible situation if it were
otherwise.

Jorge Arena.