The Devil's Excrement

And the Tyromaniac has this cute story (which he saw in Blogueandito)about how the Venezuelan polarization and confrontation has now made it it into the X-Men Marvel comics, including confrontational scenes like this one:

and our own Venezuelan heroine Sofia Mantenga, alias Wind Dancer, whose mother was killed in a demonstration:

Oh yes, I almost forgot to reiterate what Government officials always say: There is absolute freedom of speech in Venezuela, Napoleon Bravo, Ibeyise Pacheco, Marianella Salazar, Patricia Poleo, Gustavo Azocar, Marta Colomina, Globovision, Venevision, Televen, RCTV etc, etc.. have never been charged, persecuted, banned, investigated or otherwise interfered with, by the Venezuelan Government or its judicial system.

Sure, I just imagined it!

I am sure my colleagues will write about the report on the December elections by the European Union, Quico has already done so. In fact, there is not much difference between what is being said now and what was said by the EU in December. The difference? In December the autocrat was outraged at the conclusions, called them an intromission into the country’s affairs and said the observers were: Liars, cosnpirators and rightwing. This time around there has been nothing of the sort on the part of the autocrat. He has said absolutely nothing.

But more surprising is the take by the Minsiter of Information on the report which says the report states that there is no reason not to trust the Venezuelan automated system, which is not quite what it says, but obviates all of the rest, inlcuding the questioning of the Electoral Registry, the fact that the information on the votes was stored in the memory of the machines, that the fingerprint machines should not be used and that the CNE has to be changed. How can anyone think this was a positive evaluation of the Electoiral Board? This si simply revolutionary idiocy.

But even more remarkable is how the coreepondent of the EFE press agency Emilio Arrojo has essentially become a branch of the Minsitry of Information (MINCI), as he wrote basically a verbatim version of the MINCI. In fact, I read the EFE version in unionradio before I even saw the MINCI one. Unfortunately in the EFE website if you search for Venezuela you get a database error and I can’t find the link. This is not the first time that Arrojo has shown his partiality to the revolution, always writing pro-Government reports that do not convey a true view of what is happening in Venezuela.

But what is amazing is hwo the Government gives it the typical spin, twsiting the report to favor it and forgetting the undiplomatic criticism of December which so upset the Ambassadors from most of the EU in December.The question now is: Will the be invited back for the December elections? If the CNE is not changed, will they accept if they are invited?

We shall see…

Where are the Chavistas to defend this putrid revolution when you need them?

Today we learn that the nice revolution rather than build the sugar plant for the Sabaneta agricultural workers coop with the more than US$ 277 million allocated to this “flagship” project of the revolution, did other things like build the  building below for Chavez MVR electoral campaign, well known as Comando Maisanta, the same name given to the now infamous and perverse software, both named after Chavez’ great grandfather the un-hero (more of a murderer and a traitor) Maisanta. Curiously, the Committee of the National Assembly somehow bypassed this small detail, not even including it in its final report:

The Mayor that diverted the funds was actually separated from his position by General Gomez Parra, who has been charged by the Prosecutor’s office for corruption, but, surprise, surprise, was reinstated by the then President of the Sugar Plant project Antonio Albarran, who later became Minister of Agriculture, was dismissed by Chavez, charged with corruption by the National Assembly Committee last Thursday, only to be magically exonerated on Monday by the General Prosecutor, which was ratified, get this, the next day by the Head of the same Committee of the National Assembly Pedro Carreño. Only in the revolution do they change a story in four days and get away with it!

Thus, in the revolution, there is no separation between Government and Chavez’ party and when this is pointed out to the President, he did nothing about it! As noted in today’s paper, the accused, Gral. Gomez Parra wrote to Chavze about all this only 14 months ago and the President simply ignored it. Anywhere else this would be grounds for impeachment. Moreover, the same information was also handed out to the then Minister of Defense Garcia Carneiro, who somehow, also forgot about it and did nothing!

But there is more, these nice soldiers of the corrupt revolution also did things like: A Captain bought a home for, who else, himself, and not happy with it, used a small amount of money (US$ 6,000) to help build another house for his family and Sergeant outright stole some Bs. 150 million (US$ 79,000)

What a putrid revolution!

Michel reminds me via email that today is a special day. It is the birthday of the amazing Gonzalez family from Zulia state,with 2002 of them being born on the same day, March 15th. 1974 according to Venezuela’s pure and perfect Electoral Registry. I imagine there will be quite a party as 1887 of them are registered to vote in Zulia state and can easily get toghether.

Happy birthday to you all!

Retired General Muller Rojas, who was reincorporated into the Armed Forces recently, made the following statement yesterday:

“From now on the revolution will be called a primitive revolution”

Well, I don’t know where he has been the last seven years (other than at the Venezuelan Embassy in Chile), but it has been clear to me from the beginning how primitive all of the ideas of this revolution are..

–Prosecutor
General Isaias Rodriguez said in his testimony in the National Assembly at the
end of February that he had a witness that would certify the charge made by the
super witness in the Anderson case, ratifying the involvement by Patricia
Poleo. Well, is
yesterday’s El Nacional Rodriguez “revealed” that this person exists only
in rumor. Reporter: Have you been able to talk with that person that knows as
much or more that Geovanny Vasquez? Rodriguez: It is a person of Colombian
nationality. The name and last name has not been given to me (!), they gave me
his telephone and a keyword with which he would use to tell us whether he would
in touch with us, where and when. We have tried to make the contact, but have
been unable to get it.

Thus, this
“uberwitness” has not even been contacted, interviewed or found, but they
already know what he is going to say, they believe him and he is better witness
than the liar they already have (Which gave them the useless keyword). Some
Prosecutor!

–Before
the December elections, the Head of the CNE would always tell us not worry
about the audits not being live, because in “only” five weeks he would present
the results of the audit to the nation. The opposition always argued that it could
be done that same day. Today, three months and a few days after the elections, he presented the
promised results that were supposed to give us confidence in the system.

I guess,
it is not easy to fudge so many races at once!

–Yesterday
I was saying that there were many unanswered questions in the corruption case
of the sugar plant. One of them was why Chavez removed Minister of Agriculture
Albarran for his involvement in the case, but he never said it was because the Minister
was corrupt. This inconsistency has been magically fixed by the Prosecutor
General who, despite the conclusion by the Comptrolling Committee of the
National Assembly that Albarrran was guilty, in only two days has reached the
opposite conclusion and stated
with a very straight face “Albarrran does not appear to be penally compromised”.

Thus,
Chavez’ perfect record of no corruption within his Cabinet has been preserved
by the Prosecutor’s intervention!

–The Secretary General of Chavez’
MVR party, soon to be Minsiter of Information (?), 
rejects the possibility of the CNE handing over the electoral registry including street
addresses for an audit, because this would “violate the Constitutional rights of the voters”.

He must be
autistic, where was he (and those same Constitutional rights!) when his party and supporters got exactly that same
information from the same CNE and compiled it into the so called Tascon/Chavez
fascist list, later evolving it into the perverse Maisanta software?

I have
written many times about the distortions that have been created in the
Venezuelan economy that will eventually lead to a blow up, as artificialities
can only last so long in any economic system. I have also argued that some of these
distortions like exchange controls and the large amount of official deposits exist
because of corruption; there is no justification for them. Of course, you may
argue that I am not an economist, but in fact, what is most bothersome is that neither
are those running the economy. The Minister of Finance is a mathematician,
Nelson Merentes, who knows very little about economics and was a very mediocre
mathematician too. But in reality he does not set economic policy, that is left
to Jorge Giordani, the Minister of Planning. Giordani has a Bachelor’s degree
in Electrical Engineering and a Masters and a PhD in Planning, with specialization
in Urban Planning.

Giordani
has always had strange economic ideas. He spent his life studying the
possibility of moving most of the Venezuelan population to the Orinoco river basin, arguing that that is where the water
is and the river could move whatever industrial production there was in his
hypothetical cities. He obviously never lived there and “enjoyed” the
horrendous heat in those areas while theorizing from his air conditioned office
at UCV’s Cendes Institute. In a 1994 paper, which is unfortunately not on the Internet,
Gioradni and some friends argued that the only way Venezuelan Science and
Technology could become relevant, would be to isolate the economy of the
country from the outside world for a few decades. In that paper he actually
praised the North Korean economy for its stability (??).

When
Chavez first became President, they allowed the Minister of Finance from
Caldera’s Government (A sociologist!) to stay on, in order to calm down
markets. But as soon as it was politically correct, Giordani replaced her with
a real economist and close buddy from Central
University, the first economist to hold
the position in almost a decade in Venezuela! At the time, I praised
the nomination even if the economist, Jose Rojas, was an academic economist who
specialized in something like solving complex statistical differential
equations. At least he was a professional of the field and would be careful
about inconsistent policies which have always been the karma of Venezuelan
Government’s as they all eventually lead to blow ups.

Unfortunately,
it was Giordani who had Chavez’ ear and thus, economic policy was set more by
Giordani than Rojas. Giordani centered policy on holding the currency constant,
which is allright in my book, except that rather than issuing debt abroad at
low interest rates, he refused to go to the international markets and thus
increased the stock of local debt at 20+% interest, while devaluation was less
than 10% per year. When oil prices dropped in 2001, he was forced to use the
Macroeconomic stabilization fund for current spending and once the money ran
out, a maxi devaluation had to be implemented in February 2002. That
devaluation has been the main cause of GDP destruction during Chavez’ seven
year’s in office.

Rojas and
Giordani disagreed strongly on economic policy, which led to his departure in
2002, when he was sent to the IDB as Venezuela’s representative. Giordani
disagreed with him but still trusted him, so that in 2004 Rojas was brought
back to Venezuela as VP of Finance at PDVSA, where he was eventually fired when
he had strong disagreements with Chavez’ father in law, General Prieto.

Well, this
week I came across a report on the Venezuelan economy written by none other
than Jose Rojas himself, who now apparently has an office as an economic
consultant. Given the fact that he is indeed an economist, that he was part of
the Government and as far as I know, is still a Chavez supporter, I think it is
worth reviewing some of Rojas’ conclusions, most of which are quite similar
(and scary!) to things said here and elsewhere, but this is a Chavista speaking
now from the outside of the Government:

–“The
Venezuelan Central Bank is the subject of external political tensions and to
the economic decisions that affect the stability, independence and compromise the
effectiveness of monetary policy at a time that more control is needed….it (the
BCV) does not have the instrument of exchange policy that would allow it to
regulate the monetary mass through the monetary destruction via the exchange
and strengthen reserves”

–“The
exchange controls, the preponderance of public funds in the public financial
system, the discretionarily in the use of public funds, the dissapearance of
the Treasury unit from the Ministry of Finance, the establishment of compartments
for banks’ portfolios and the progressive statization of the economy and
productive activities is such that there exist an incommensurate increase in monetary
liquidity with the risk of generating a financial crisis”

–“There
is a decision to maintain the exchange controls, fix a maximum for
international reserves, use international reserves and create extra-budget mechanisms
for expenditures such as Fonden, that allow for the execution of a parallel budget”

–“Paid deposits
are increasing at the same rate as liquidity, which has a “snowball” effect
which creates the need for more operations of liquidity absorption (by the
Central Bank) which in turns generates more liquidity”

–“There
is a subsystem formed by PDVSA and the group of Government institutions that administer
“funds” and execute payment orders issued directly by the President over the
trusts that are part of CVP in Bandes. To this subsystem we add CADIVI (the
exchange control office) that substitutes the Central Bank in the definition of
monetary policy”

–“PDVSA maintains
dollars that are not exchanged via the Central Bank and that it exchanges via
public financial institutions that do not perform exchange operations via the
Central Bank but use bolivars that come from oil dollars previously exchanged. These
enter the economy with any counterpart in the monetary base”

–“The
Finance Ministry buys bonds in dollars with excess reserves. The Bolivars
corresponding to these reserves are not destroyed and stay in circulation…the
bonds are sold to at the official exchange rate to financial institutions which
exchange them for dollars and then sell them into the parallel market, issuing
new bolivars (I disagree with this, there
are no new Bolivars issued)…the Bolivars exchanged for the bonds go to the Treasury
and are spent as “new” income. (This I
agree with)”

–“This
leads to anarchy in the institutions that issue money, direct financing of the
Executive branch, progressive deterioration
of the value of the currency which could lead to a financial crisis in the
absence of a real counterpart that backs the health of the economy”

And then
comes one of the scariest conclusions:

“The only
way to go from a market economy to a centralized economy would be through the
destruction of the financial system….”

Nice, no?
And this is the analysis of a Chavista!

–In a case of good news bad news, Linda Loaiza finally got some justice,
where her tormenter, torturer and rapist received a jail sentence of six years
in prison. For once the Prosecutor’s
office did their job at least partially. However, it is quite difficult to
understand the sentence. How can Luis Carrera have kept her in the apartment,
disfigured her and have been found guilty of disfiguring her, but innocent of
raping her or of attempted murder? Did the judge really think Carrera kept her captive
just to disfigure her face and her body without taking advantage of it? In
fact, the Prosecutor’s office presented the whole accusation as a package; there
was evidence that she was repeatedly raped. The Prosecutor’s office will appeal
the decision, but it has been too long a journey for Loaiza and unfortunately,
she has only received partial Justice.

–In another case of good news, bad news, The National Assembly found 19
people were involved in the corruption case
of the Sugar Plant in Barinas
State. According to the conclusions a total of Bs.
1.3 billion (US$ 604,000) was ripped off in this case and yesterdaysome of them,
including Chavez’ fiend, General Gomez Parra, were detained. This is good, however there are
as many unanswered questions today as the day when the investigation began:

1) Are we to supposed to believe that US$ 277 million was spent on the plant
and all that has been completed is the cleaning of the land and some piloting as shown in a picture earlier?

2) Why didn’t Chavez say he was getting rid of Minister Albarran because he was
involved in the case and why has he been so silent on this case? If Chavez applied himslef to fighting corruption the way he does for other non-issues he could easily scare a lot of people and reduce corruption, but he rarely says anything about it.

3) Why was the case stopped and who ordered it stopped when the Government,
including the comptroller and Chavez himself, first learned about the case a
year and half ago?

4) Why were two bank employees jailed first a few days
ago and why are people in Chavez’ hometown rioting over those detentions?

My personal belief is that once this case exploded, the Government decided
to make a showcase out of it to be able to say that they are fighting
corruption. Let’s see if these guys do go to jail eventually.