The Devil's Excrement

How about this ad in Mercado Libre (The Latin American Ebay)!

For years, even before the Tascon list,
there were intermediaries that would “help you” get a passport for a
price. The price obviously went up after the Tascon list and this year
the Government announced with great fanfare that a new “high tech”
online system
would be in place to get your Venezuelan passport: You would download a
form online, submit it and then on a certain day you would show up, pay
fees, stamp your fingerprints and sign it and you would have your brand
new passport. Everything would be efficient and corruption would be
wiped out (Not very egalitarian either, in a country with low Internet
penetration).

Except that…

–The system did not work well for the first few days.
–Once
it started working, you had to get up early enough (3 AM, 4AM) to get
one of the limited forms available, if available at all, as Anamar told us.

Thus, getting the form was next to impossible and once again, no passport.

But
now, thanks to the benefits of free markets, corruption and modern
technology, you have this, an online auction for one of the limited
forms (With even a Buy it now feature!):

Yes! You can either participate in the auction
for a form to get a passport with an initial price of Bs. 85,000 or simply “Pay it now”! for ”only”
Bs. 100,000, you can and I quote:

“This
is your opportunity… leave it on our hands… we will get the form for
you legally (??) through the system… for only Bs. 85,000.

We are very responsible law professionals…(oxymoron?)

Consider
that the request forms are only available on Monday and Tuesday and are
subject to the availability or not of the online system .

You
will fill a form with your data that you will have to send me via
e-mail, data that we will use in the “preparation” of the form.

We
are not responsible for wrong data, that is why you fill it out,
similarly we only verify data such as Name, Last name, ID number, birth
date and sex, because the system already has them, if there were errors
we will let you know.

Make your offer if you are interested and ask all of the questions you want.

We accept five requests for each day (Monday and Tuesday), that is, 10 per week.

100% responsible (bold not mine!)

I
have gotten the appointment for public servants, their partners, to
complete sections graduating from high school and their teachers
without any problems, with experience since the online system began.”

(You
can pay with Visa, MasterCard or Mercadopago (like Paypal). The people offering the
service have provided a good service to 124 of 125 clients and are
amply recommended!)

Imagine that, the corruption of the
revolution allows free market practices to thrive. Does Closdobaldo
know about this? Does he care? Unfortunately, this takes away business
from the poorer “analog” intermediaries to professional (oligarchs by
definition) digital intermediaries, who have the contacts and the
Internet access. So much for helping the less well to do!

The pretty revolution never ceases to amaze us!

(Thanks to Milagros in Megaresistencia for the tip)

This entry was posted on December 13, 2005 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Venezuela.