The Devil's Excrement

My poor Venezuela. And I don’t mean in the sense of wealth. Venezuela is a poor country anyway, don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. But I mean it in the sense of ethics and morals, which seem to have been lost or misplaced by all. The Government allows corruption and graft to permeate the whole system, nobody is watching what is going on and the Government takes and allows others to take in a huge dance of the blind, where everybody knows what is going on, but nobody says anything. The country is being raped and pillaged in the name of the revolution, by the revolution as well as the friends and enemies of the revolution. It is a sorry spectacle, but it goes on everyday. Day after day and nothing happens. There is nobody to complain to. Nobody is listening, watching or saying anything.

The cynical behavior by Government officials continued today. It has now become “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” in the cover-up for the huge corruption that took place last Saturday, when billions of bolivars where shamelessly used to bus, feed, dress and entertain some 300,000 people to attend Chavez’ celebration of the anniversary of his bloody 1992 coup attempt. As if yesterday’s statements by William Lara were not sufficient, he actually held a press conference yesterday to deny the undeniable, today both the Comptroller, Clodosvaldo Russian and the President of the National Assembly Nicolas Maduro joined the chorus of the three skeletons that see, hear and speak nothing of the blatant corruption that took place last Saturday and seems to be taking place daily in this revolution where missing funds and strange transactions have become the rule, rather than the exception.

Perhaps Russian was the worst. Here is the man that has as his mandate the supervision of how Government funds are spent and that they are used for whatever they were earmarked. Venezuela, believe it or not, has one of the most modern anti-corruption laws in the world, that punishes not only the corrupt, but also the inefficient and the negligent. But it appears not to exist in Russian’s mind when he stated: “the accusations are part of the political debate…and it is the Electoral Board that has to look into the accusations”. Hello! That is not correct, Mr. Russina you are simply playing dumb, the main accusations are that Government money was used massively for a political event of a political party, which obviously you blindly support. Corruption and graft are not electoral issues that are a separate matter, also violated; the point is that money was ILLEGALLY spent on a political rally under your watchful and corrupt eyes. You saw it, but you don’t dare talk about it, you might lose your job. What is clear once again is that you are as corrupt as the revolution and you allow daily corruption to go on and on, the bleeding of the country simply continues under your watch.

The President of the National Assembly, Nicolas Maduro, joined the ever silent chorus, saying that there is no need to restrain Chavez because “the law is clear in what he can and he can not do” in terms of campaigning. and “the President amply follows the law”. Once again, it must be that Mr. Maduro does not even know what the law says. The events last Thursday and last Saturday had an electoral tone, were electoral events, where the autocrat even talked about his campaign, the structure of his campaign command and how things would be organized, only someone deaf and dumb could not have noticed the repeated violations of many laws. But Maduro did not, because he has no concept of ethics and morals and what it means to be Government and follow the law and be in charge of enforcing it. Once again, illegality is the rule on the part of those that are supposed to be entrusted with the responsibility of enforcing them.

But the whole thing reached a farcical and almost comical level, when none other than the Minister of Justice basically said “Let’s share the graft”. Minsiter Chacon claimed that he had offered opposition leader Antonio Ledezma with providing him some buses for the opposition march, but “probably he could not fill two buses if he accepted”. Thus, Chacon is willing to share the wealth, this must be a new program “Mision let’s all be corrupt?”. This from the same party that rewrote the Constitution to include a ban in campaign financing of political parties. How times change. That actually happened only five years ago!

Only the Prosecutor General said he was going to investigate the charges and we all know what will happen to that anyway, as nobody sucks up to Chavez like him. Meanwhile, they were trying to hide the evidence as reported by Descifrado, in which Government institutions are said to be scrambling to change the invoices from the supplies for the march. In the words of one of those contacted :”the public institution that hired me to get them food and beverages, signs, trucks and material are trying to figure out in whose name I should issue the invoice, I think payment is going to be delayed quite a while.” As Descifrado says: “If there is no proof, there was no cost”

Thus, Venezuela has become a free for all of corruption, since nobody seems to be watching. Only two weeks ago Chavez said that he “wanted to shoot those involved” in a corruption scandal with a sugar plant, denounced by a pro-Chavez Editor of Ultimas Noticias. Well, as the details become known, the story is more twisted and convoluted that it originally appeared. The sugar concern is run by civilians, who have reached the “conclusion” that those responsible are former and active military. You see the funds were giving to the previous board of civilians of the plant, who “happened” to hire companies owned by active and former military as well as the 62^nd. Engineering unit of the armed forces to build the complex in another great example of “civilian-military unity”. But nothing was ever built, or almost nothing. And the money is gone, vanished.

Civilians supposedly denounced the shenanigans, so the military, including the Minister of Defense ordered an audit. Nothing was heard since then, until Ultimas Noticias made the accusation of the disappearance of the funds and Chavez staged another show of outrage on live TV for his captive audience.

As usual in these cases, the National Assembly ordered and investigation and appointed a Deputy who happens to be former military, just to close the circle. No, wait; there is always more in the pretty revolution: Last week the same National Assembly that is investigating the irregularities approved an additional allocation of some 216 billion Bolivars (some US$ 100 million)! I guess given the previous irregularities, they felt confident that they could throw some piece of small change after what is already bad money. But maybe, just maybe, someone in the Assembly will now benefit from this suspicious largesse. Nobody is watching anyway, so why worry?

Thus, slowly Venezuela becomes a society of accomplices, both Government and opposition, sharing the bounty in the name of the revolution. Ethics and morals seem to have reached a new low. The private sector is silent to protect their own, who are getting richer. The Government is silent to protect their own, who are becoming rich and getting richer. Opposition politicians barely mention the subject, could it be to protect their future funding sources? Only Petkoff among politicians and Garcia Mendoza, among the private sector, talk openly about graft and corruption, which everyone can see. Meanwhile, the rich and the bolibourgeois get richer, while the poor get poorer, all in the name of politics and the revolution.

Chavista
leaders are so unethical and cynical, that faced with the charges that the
financing by the Government of Saturday’s march was a felony penalized by the
anti-corruption Bill, instead of staying quiet in the knowledge that the
corrupt system of justice that they have stacked with their own will never find
them guilty, they have the audacity to actually hold
a press conference and with a straight face say:

“Everyone came and participated in spontaneous and voluntary fashion, we
did not pay anyone a penny…This did not cost the Venezuelan state a penny. Each
person assumed his own costs”

Well, Mr. Lara maybe you can explain something to us. First can you tell us:
Who paid for everyone to be wearing the red t-shirts? I imagine that you will
have us believe that people that can barely make ends meet, “voluntarily
and spontaneously” purchased each one a shirt to please Hugo Chavez? Well,
I find it that incredibly difficult to believe. But Mr. Lara, let me show you
what scientists would call a couple of “data points” that I have been
able to gather on my own.

Let’s start with the paper below, which happens to be a quote to the
“Instituto Venezolano de los Seguros Sociales”, that institution that
has gone broke in modern Venezuelan history. The quote is made by a
suspiciously sounding “Cooperativa La Mayorquina” a coop for social
tourism, whatever that may mean. The quote totals Bs. 19 million (US$ 8,800 at
the official exchange rate) to provide:”water, Gatorade, fruits, juice, a
sound truck and transport” for (see below): “1000 people. Event
related to February 4th. which will take place in the Cota Mil in the capital
city”

Ummm, I wonder what event this refers to. Coincidentally the Chavista march
took place along Cota Mil on that date and was an event “related” to
February 4th. Coincidence?

So Mr. Lara, a Government institution pays for a political rally in support of
Hugo Chavez and his coup. What do you call that? Corruption? Misuse of Funds?
Or a donation? I call it graft, but what do I know

But see, just on my own on my spare time I can also find more evidence. Remember the pictures of the 85 buses I made a collage out of ? I imagine that you want us to believe that the same people who can barely make ends meet paid their way. But see, glancing through the pictures I quickly found the two below. The one on the left happens to say “Bolivarian Government” and the one on the right says upfront “Official Use”. Well, shucks, this is illegal in Venezuela. What are we going to do about it? Chavez just said that 2006 is the year to stop corruption, but I guess like so many other lies he has said, he really did not mean it. Neither did you in your cynical show today. Shame on you and your dishonest cronies.

Nobody knows about poverty in Venezuela more than Luis Pedro España N. from Universidad Catolica de Venezuela in Caracas. He now writes regularly in El Nacional, this was last Saturday’s article on the meaning of direct aid versus improving the infrastructure of poverty.

The
infrastructure of Poverty by Luis Pedro España N.

Participating
in a meeting about socio-economic perspectives in this 2006, an executive
commented to me when we were leaving that he could not believe that poverty was
going to be reduced this year. At the beginning, ingeniously, I reiterated what
I had said a while back. That it was a matter of poverty as measured from the
point of view of income. The economic growth expected for this year, together
with the favorable impact of the educational aid of the misiones on the popular
sectors (even if badly identified, with worse educational assistance and lots
of leaks) was going to signify an improvement in the income of the families. That
evidently, we were reaching the limit in reducing poverty for those that have
the ability to generate income (or capture the oil income) and that the
decreasing return of these policies would end up losing their impact to reduce
poverty indices, even income. With this I was trying to say that evidently it
was little or nothing that was being done on the side of the own capability of
the families, that is, on the side of the generation of their own well-being,
sustained and sufficient.

Thus, I
almost repeated in two minutes what I had thought was most important of what I
had said in the previous 45.

Even when my counterpart’s face looked like he was
understanding me, he did not appear satisfied with my summary, he replied,
improving his skeptical questioning of his doubts and reminded me of the
beggars, street kids, garbage, the street vendors, the precarious housing,
crime rates, victims of tragedies, the urban chaos where poverty resides,
precarious services, thus, all of those images that we see so much that they
seem normal.

It evidently was the classical case of subjective perceptions that clash
against the “objective data” which, because of its oversimplification,
sometimes hide reality from us. I realized what he wanted to tell me, I got rid
of statistical technicalities (those that the Government likes when they favor
it) and I said goodbye to the participant to the seminar promising and article
about “the infrastructure of poverty”

The barrio, the popular areas, although heterogeneous, even when they are not
exclusive and exhaustive hosts of poverty, are certainly the residence of urban
poverty, that one which even if it is not as cruel and of subsistence as the
rural one, is the largest one in a country like Venezuela. The calamity of life
in the popular barrios makes it such that family income, even if it may be
high, can not make up for the terrible quality of life that the precarious
condition of transportation, the terrible services, the difficulty to have
access to articles of consumption, the problem with crime and the impossibility
of recreation for kids and the young.

But even with the income strengthened in the last two years
and perhaps three with the current one, the infrastructure of poverty not only
has remained unaltered, but it has worsened in a substantive manner.

Risk is a social reality in the face of nature. The latter reveals itself in
terrible fashion every time it rains. Examples abound dramatically so as to
lose space by naming them.

On the other hand, the social risk of poverty can be synthesized
in the two most sensitive problems felt by Venezuelans: employment and personal
safety.

The deterioration of employment, due to the absence of formal jobs,
the unproductiveness of the tasks performed by Venezuelans which explain their
low salaries, are the result of the lack of opportunity for the generation of
wealth together, with the shortage that member of the labor force have in terms
of dexterities, capabilities and knowledge that can be converted into assets to
access good jobs.

In recent years, these years of the oil boom, we are acting on the
income. By the effect of percolation and the simple distribution of income, the
average income of families is improving, but the causes of poverty, the
infrastructure over which it lies, remains unchanged.

Only 17 young people graduate from high school out of every
100 that enter first grade, 40% of kids of pre-school age continue to fail to
enter school, our school averages in verbal ability are not over ten
points and in numerical ability 6 (both
out of 20), 17 infants continue to die each years for each 1,000 live births,
up to 20% of the population will not reach the age of 60, the number of
homicides has stayed at the alarming number of 10,000 per year, almost one out
of every four houses lacks basic services and our cities show more and more an
urban deterioration characterized by the lack of environmental sanitation,
public transpiration and road access according to their growth.

All of the above illustrates what the the circumstantial
numbers of income hide. We are under a “certain illusion of progress”,
supported once again by a level of income which does not correspond to the level
of productivity of the Nation, which is not based on social development. Summing
up the infrastructure of poverty remains intact, it is a pity that it is only
the physical infrastructure that is falling apart.

Oscar Garcia Mendoza is President of Banco Venezolano de Credito, as you can see his article in yesterday’s El Universal, agrees with everything I have said here about the banking system, its present and its future:

Long
live Chavez by Oscar Garcia Mendoza

After seven years of his
Government, there are very few Venezuelans that are thankful of Chavez’
Government. The country has received more than US$ 375 billion in oil income
and the reality is chaos in the infrastructure, increase in malnutrition and
poverty, administrative disaster and one can’t stop counting.

Some have benefited. Among
those, the banking sector has been quite privileged.

In these seven years the
earnings of the sector have been the highest in its history. It has grown
substantially and in its majority it backs the Government.

What has happened? The
banking sector from the beginning of the regime has acted as a facilitating mechanism
for the cash flow of the Government and has allowed it to take unproductive
current spending to the levels desired by the administration. It has been the
mechanism to conduct the flows of the Government. On the one side it receives
funds from state companies and ministries and on the other it acquires public
debt instruments which are exempt from income tax, realizing great benefits
from this.

In recent days, the Superintendent
of banks was complaining that banks barely pay taxes, the reason is there for
everyone to see: if a great part of its earnings arise from exempt bonds they
have to pay or little or nothing.

On January 31, an article
in the Financial Times related how the Ministry of Finance was making opaque
sales, without an auction, of Argentinean bonds to local banks, which it
mentions by name. Those banks, says the article, acquire those bonds in
bolivars at the controlled exchange rate and immediately sell them generating a
profit that miraculously evaporates. Up to now those involved have not denied
the news.

Banks enjoy on top of that
accounting privileges: revaluations, portfolios outside the balance sheet. And
it is rumored that given the huge monetary liquidity the Basel indices will be
lowered so that banks can capture more deposits, without the bankers having to
capitalize.

The feast may last as long
as oil income can support it or maybe less, because the level of spending is so
exorbitant that they will have to rely more and more to inorganic issuing and
to inflation, in fact the highest in Latin-American for years.

The time will come in
which “out of friendship” it will no longer be possible to sustain the earnings
and the illusion of solvency and at that moment the losers will be the
depositors, as it always happens. With the regime collapsed some, from afar,
will continue to gratefully proclaim: “Long live Chavez”

A year ago, the Government banned airplanes from using the Caracas military airport “La Carlota”, decreeing that only helicopters could take off and land from that day on. The ostensible reason was that this represented a danger to the population of the city and, after all, it was only used by a “priviliged few”. The ban held until the viaduct collapsed and I had heard rumors that planes were landing there once in a while. Yesterday while taking part in the march I took the picture below. Unfortunately, one can not see the letters on the plane to check who it belongs to, but I am sure that it belongs to the Government and this is just the new oligarchy and their friends, taking advantage of their priviliges. I am sure that in their minds, some are more deserving of priviliges than others. Unless it is a well-designed UFO. Viva la Revolucion!

There were two marches today, one by “officialdom” which went from east to west of Caracas via the north part of the city and a second one by the opposition, which also went from east to west but via the south of the city. The diagram below shows both marches.

The opposition was commemorating that black day 14 years ago on February 4th. 1992,, when Hugo Chavez and his cronies staged a bloody and unsuccesful coup that changed the history of the country for the worst. I am still not sure what it was that Chavez and his MVR were celebrating, it seems hypocritical to celebrate his coup given how hypercritical Chavez and other Government officials are of the supposedly daily coups the oppositon is attempting. But Government officials kept saying their march was a “reaffirmation” of democracy, which is simply contradictory, democracy’s day in Venezuela was January 23d. when in 1958, truly democratic forces ousted General Marcos Perez Jimenes and Venezuela became a democracy for 40 years. We now only have only vestiges of that democarcy as the last few years have proven. And Chavismo was celebrating the anniversary of that bloody coup,when 173 people died because of the power aspirations of our current autocrat and his friends, but they are all forgotten today. I could not help but cringe at ads like this which appeared in today’s paper and which shamelessly celebrated that fateful day:

The two marches were fortunately separated by quite a large space. However, they were also quite different in style and spirit. The Chavista march had lots of people, after all, all Government workers, two million plus of them were ordered to attend under threat of firing. The highway that took people from the West of the country to the starting point of their march ran right along the opposition march. While I was waiting for our march to start I took some pictures of the buses, most of them private, paid by the Government to bring people in to their march (Many of the people also get paid extra to attend). It is not easy to take these pictures because of the shutter delay of digital cameras. But in the first ten minutes, I managed to take some twenty pictures of buses that could be easily distinguished by the red flags, the brand new red t-shirts (ten million votes!)and the white writing outside the buses. Some were actually Government buses illegally being used for political purposes. (In the awful years of the IVth. Republic, somepeople wnet to jail or exile for using public vehicles for political use, but this is the “pretty” revolution)

As our march moved along I would take a picture of a bus everytime I was ready for it. But there were so many of them that it happened regularly, despite the fact that both marches were supposed to take place at the same time. By the end of our march I had taken pictures of 85 different buses paid by money needed for other purposes, but in what has become the norm in this Government, most of the money is used at will to promote Chavez and his silly revolution to no end. If I leisurely managed to take pictures of 85 different buses, on one highway, late in the day in terms of the march, iamgine how many hundreds of them were brought in to guarantee the “success” of Chavez’ event. This is about the only thing these guys can organize well.It is a one time event, not a sustained an organized effort.Below a collage with the 85 pictures I took.

In fact, everywhere you went in Caracas today, even as the Chavista march was going on, you would see red shirts all over the city, as the less hardcore takes advantage of the ride to do some sightseeing around Caracas, or as was the case right outside a Restaurant in Bello Campo where I saw some two dozen red-shirted Chavistas exiting after a well deserved meal. These people are what is typically called “Chavista light”, but when I saw them they were heavier from the food and light-headed from the drinking.

Our own march was quite unique. It was big, more so given the bad publicity and the fact that only one group led by Oscar Perez invited to it. You can see a picture of the march above left. On the right a very fiery lady from ABP (Alianza Bravo Pueblo) who was being interviewed by Globovision on the overpass as I went by. I have no idea who she is, but she was fiery, eloquent and articulate. She can have my vote for any position she wants, including President. More pictures here.

But our problem continues to be the same. None of the “leading” candidates were there. People went on their own, in disorganized fashion. But there were lots of them. Thus, we remain a heterogenous group in search of a leader, but nobody wants to assume that role. Where was Primero Justicia? William Ojeda? Petkoff? etc? I have no clue where they were and I have no clue what it is they are thinking. But time is running and they do not seem to be taken advantage of this leaderless opposition.

The march was a little more joyful than last time, but there was the same anger I described then. People are mad, wondering how long this can go on or will go on. Publicity is bad, there is no money for these events to the point that the same stage as in Jan. 23d. was used. But people show up in droves and that should send a message to someone, no?

(More pictures of buses for the Chavista march in Noticiero Digital)