The Devil's Excrement

In
the next couple of days I will figure out how to put the ad in this page, but
this blog together with vcrisis has been
nominated for the 2005
Weblog Awards in the Best Latino, Caribbean, or South American Blog category. Daniel won last year, he will not be eligible this year, making
life easier for Alek and me this time around. Thanks to whoever nominated us
and hopefully you will feel it is worthwhile to go and and vote in this
particular election, where there is no CNE involvement 🙂

It is
quite hard to win an argument with the Chavistas. After the recall vote they
would always resort to the argument that the international observers had given
their approval to the process and thus all charges of cheating and treachery
were simply sour grapes on the part of the opposition. This time around, not
only was it discovered that the voting machines did something they were not
supposed to do, raising questions about the secrecy of the votes in the recall vote, but both the OAS
and the EU,
question even the legality of the process and the reaction is typical: While
the Head of the National Assembly called
the observers drunks, the President of the CNE graciously called them
liars, while the Foreign Minister questioned why
the bombs the day before the election were not mentioned in the reports,
forgetting that every single bomb in the last seven years has been blamed on the
opposition, but not one case has been proven, despite the fact that most of the
explosives found are typically military and as far as we know the opposition is
as far removed form the military as anyone can be.

In fact,
the Head of the Electoral Board continued acting in the same partial way that
the observers accused him of today,
as Mr. Rodriguez
saw his job in possible jeopardy by the recommendation of both observer
groups, saying he would not twist his arm, not understanding that he
was suppsoed to be fair and balanced to both sides and not the one
sided bias he always exhibited. In fact the EU suggest the new CNE
should have “professionals of prestige and
independence, that may enjoy the trust of all sectors”, a dramatically
strong critique of
Mr. Rodríguez and his cohorts.

I would
leave some details of the statements and comments by the EU and OAS to others here
and here, so as not to extend
myself too much, but one thing is clear: The usual diplomatic observers noted
quite a number of irregularities and illegalities in the process, questioning
its validity even if they later used the word transparency and tried to praise
the CNE in its accommodations to the opposition complaints. The fact is, that
each and every one of the “concessions” of the CNE were requested by the opposition
from the beginning, via the technical recommendations of Sumate. But even in
the end, and as ratified by the observers, for example, the agreements and the
law that says that polling stations close at 4 PM if no voters were present
were violated in flagrant fashion by the CNE. And this was only one of many
illegalities committed in the process that in any country with the rule of law would
imply that the Courts would force the Electoral Board to repeat the elections
under better conditions.

The EU observers
noted, among many different things the following:

-Wide
sectors of Venezuelan society simply do not trust the CNE

-The legal
framework is inconsistent and even contradictory

-The
Government created a mechanism of fear in the Maisanta database

-The
Government used public transportation to mobilize voters

-Government
officials campaigned in violation of the law

-The
possibility of compromising the secrecy of the vote was found, the EU thins its
remote, but it used to be impossible two weeks ago.

-It
questioned the legality of the Electoral Board and the contradictions in naming
it

-It questions
the violation the spirit of the Constitution with the use of the morochas or
twins.

-It
accuses media on both sides of being partisan, but it acknowledges that state
media does not give access to all citizens, while private media gave more access
to pro-Government views!

-Voter
assistance questions the secrecy of the vote during the voting process

-There was
illegal campaign by Government forces near voting centers

-Some
people were coerced into signing and stamping their fingerprint as “proof” that
they had voted and for whom.

-Voting hours
were extended illegally!

-The
Electoral Registry should be independently audited (Another forgotten promise)

The OAS is
equally drastic, while shorter, as detailed by Daniel and PMBcomments.

What is
clear to me is that both groups of observers without explicitly saying it were questioning
the legality of the vote that took place on Sunday, from illegal abuse of
power, to extended hours, to a questionable CNE board; the observers basically
said this process doe not fit the expected standards for an electoral process.

So
far
Chavez, has not attacked the observers, but even if he questioned
abstention,
he seemed to gloating once again about his damaged popularity and once
again
promised the failed mirage of his 10 million voters. If he fails to
note what
happened on Sunday, he may not even get 10% of that. The opposition did
not score
a victory at the illegal elections on Sunday, but Chavismo certainly
suffered a
defeat and the reports by the observers underscore that this happened
despite the numerous violations of the law by the Government and the
use of massive state resources.

Watch for reports from the OAS and EU observers today. Will they say
what they think? Will the Chavez Government turn against them tomorrow?
Will they become puppies of imperialism after today? Stay tuned…

“You say you want a revolution
Well you know
we all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright”

The Beatles (1968), Venezuelans (2005)

I
find it truly remarkable that people can even interpret that
yesterday’s results can in any way be thought of as a victory for
Chavismo. Not even the Chavistas are thinking that way and you can
accuse them of being inefficient and incompetent in many ways, but
Chavez and his cohorts have shown to be very good at political strategy
and they are not interpreting this as a victory. Seldom had I seen such
sad faces, as the victory of Chavista Deputies was announced or as
they were being sworn in as Deputies of the National Assembly.

And indeed let us look at what Chavismo said, did and promised for this election:

— Chavez and his supporters had
put up posters and said that they were going to get 10 million votes.
Misguided? Of course it was, this was supposed to be the promise for
next year, but to get there you had to get to a number in between and
that did not happen, their numbers went down, once again. Thsi graph of
abstention since Chavez first won the Presidency has to be worrisome
and scary to anyone in power, claiming to be popular, staging a
revolution and planning to stay for the next 16 years:

—Before the opposition withdrew, Chavez’s MVR and the Government
spent some two trillion Bs. in advertising, mobilization and the like.
Moreover, each and everyone of the Mayors and Governors of Chavismo was
asked to spend as much as possible in getting the vote out. The order
was that they had to get up to at least 40% of the voters to show up.
The Maisanta software not used since the recall vote was revived,
updated and distributed, this time with a password so that it could not
be distributed as freely as the previous version.

—
After the opposition pulled out, every single centralized and
decentralized Government organization and institution was ordered to
have their workers told to go and vote under the very clear threat of
losing their jobs. This was even explicitly said by a Chavista Deputy before the polls closed.

Depending on the institution the threats and pressures took a variety of forms:

1)
Some institutions were very direct. Each Department head was ordered to
hold meetings where workers were asked to vote and, in some cases, told
explicitly to vote for Chavez’ MVR. This happened a lot at institutions
run by former military.

2)
In other institutions, people were told to go and vote via e-mail or
phone in very direct fashion, they were not told how to vote.

3)
The smarter and less radical (and principled?) bosses, like those in
the Ministry of Foreign Relations, simply called or met with workers to
comply with the orders from above, but simply told them that they had
to be careful because they did not know what the Government may or not
do to those that did not go and vote.

Now, just in case you don’t get the magnitude of this, there are 2.05 million Government workers in Venezuela,
not counting Government companies and foundations. Most of this workers
are minimum salary workers who depend on the Government for their
survival under what is locally called having an “arepa muzzle”

Keep in mind that less than 3.5 million people actually went to vote yesterday and that most of these public workers had to go and vote. Subtract 2 million from 3.5 million and you get the picture.

—Sumate
says that their polls show that only 17.7% of the people actually voted
and that remarkably, 30% of the “voters” yesterday cast their vote
after 4 PM, when polls were kept open illegally despite the
facts that there were no visible lines anywhere as the international
observes clearly saw and are likely to report tomorrow.

—Somewhere between 10 and 15% of the votes cast were void.

—And what will the observers say tomorrow?

What
this says is that most Venezuelans decided like in the Beatles song “to
count themselves out” of a process that has done little for them for
the last seven years. That they are fed up with this destructive
revolution. Subtract only half of each of these amounts as being true
and you get maybe some 12-13% of “true” voters, or less than 2 million voters, the
hardcore vote that showed to cast their vote for Chavez and his
revolution

For
Chavismo the message was clear: The popularity of the Government is
sharply down and if something is not done in the next 363 days, anyone
grabbing the imagination of only 25% of the population, may easily
defeat Chavez in the Presidential election. And the Chavistas are worried not only
about the opposition, but also about the enemy within, whether his name is Jose or Diosdado.

And you call this a victory? Well…

“You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know know it’s gonna be alright”

Can the pictures above generate almost half as many voters as this (from recall vote)?

Jorge Rodriguez says abstention was 75%. This is a disaster for
Chavismo. I would like to see how many void votes there are, from the
numbers he is mentioning it sounds like 25% were void or null votes, so
it appears those that feared reprisal voted null, so this is really bad
for the Government. Still votes look high to me from what I saw today in the
poor areas of Caracas.

At the end Jorge Rodriguez said literally: “It is forbidden for the
National Electoral Juntas to issue results which contradict this one”

What is the exact meaning of this sentence?

By the way, whatever happened to the 10 million votes? Where are the 6
million plus missing? In the opposition or waiting for an alternative
to Chavez?

So, for the Minister of the Interior,
any number above 17% would make the new Assembly legitimate? This is a
hysterical argument, not because it is funny, but because the Minister
had to have been in that state when he said it. I guess the ship has a
hole in it and they know it, there is no legitimacy to this silly
revolution.In fact, his logic is so obtuse, that he talks about
recognizing an Assembly which Chavez and MVR never recognized, that
elected in 1998. Using all of the power of the state, cheating and
threats, they apparently may get to 17% voting/ What a joke!

And speaking of hoodlums, how about the Head of the Nicaraguan Electoral Board, here in Venezuela as an international observer,
whose CV reveals no ethical qualification or a minimum set of
standards. Kudos to Gustavo for this piece, which shows what a crooked
revolution this has become. They bring their own to observe them and
put them on TV to say what a clean electoral process this was.

Globovision was just showing a voting center in Lara State(I think) and
they allowed me to do a very quick exit poll of attendance there. As
the lady on the TV screen searched for a name, you could easily see how
many voters in each page had a fingerprint stamp. She passed five
pages, four had one fingerprint, one had two for a total of 6 votes out
of a possible 50 or 88% abstention with a sampling error of 7% at that
voting center.