The Devil's Excrement

Yesterday,
Chavez’ MVR party and all of the parties that still support the Government got
together to defend the current electoral system and ask the Electoral Board to maintain
the conditions imposed by the previous.

The
spokesman at the meeting was the official spokesman for the “National Tactical
Command” of Chavez’ MVR, William Lara, who also happens to be the Minister of
Information and Communication in this autocracy run by the unity of Government
and party in the best Stalinist tradition. Except that here there is not even
the pretense of there being a differentiation.

In any
case, William Lara, this mediocre former high school physics teacher turned modern-day-Goebbels yesterday in
his press conference, conveniently transmitted by the Government TV
channel, unlike opposition press conferences, came out and said two things that demonstrate
how this Government has no morals or criteria when it comes to speaking in public.

The first
statement he made for which I take offense was his passionate defense of the fingerprint
capturing system used in the last three elections. According to this modern day
Orwellian Minister of Information, the presence of these machines prevents
people form voting more than once and makes voting faster.

Well, I
hope I am not prosecuted for calling the Minister unethical and a liar, but so
far, there is no evidence that the system prevents people from voting more than
twice or helping people vole faster. In fact, the opposite appears to be the
case in the case of the speed of the process. In the recall referendum, it was
the fingerprint machines that slowed down the process due to the massive turn
out, forcing polls to stay open until almost midnight.

Moreover,
there is not a single study made in Venezuela that shows that multiple voting
by a single person has ever been a statistically significant problem, In fact,
what has been shown is that those that control the voting are the only ones
that may allow this to happen as the use of indelible ink in all Venezuelan voting
processes guarantees that unless it is allowed by those supervising the
process, multiple voting can be stopped.

Additionally,
the CNE has never revealed or shown how the fingerprint system performed in the
two elections in which it was used, the recall referendum or the October 2004
regional elections. The CNE has always refused to give out technical data as to
the speed of the system, its performance and whether it was even capable of
stopping people form voting twice.

In
contrast, the problems with the fingerprint machines are well known, but were
not mentioned by William “Goebbels” Lara: The ability of the Government to intimidate
voters into believing that their vote can be identified and the ability of
those in control of the voting process to know how many people voted and where,
allowing them to keep polls open later than the law establishes, as was done in
the same two elections. Venezuelan Electoral Law is very clear on the matter: Polls
are only to remain open until 4PM is there is nobody in line or until the lines
are exhausted. None of this was done in these two electoral processes and the
suspicion has always been that the fingerprint machines were telling the
Government, the only one that had access to the real time data that it would be
to their benefit to keep them open. But Lara and his cohorts could care less about teh rights of the people they claim to cherish and love.

But if I
found the defense of the fingerprint capturing machines insulting and
amateurish, his denial of the existence of the Maisanta
database, which I now call the Chascon database, was truly offensive. There
are scenes of Hugo Chavez on TV asking Tascon how the process is going. There
are scenes of Hugo Chavez on Alo Presidente telling people that they can check
everyone on Tascon’s webpage and there is a video of Chavez telling Tascon himself,
who was present, and his Cabinet not to use the Chascon database anymore.

Moreover, the
CDs were distributed to thousand of Chavista activists and members of the Comando
Maisanta itself proudly acknowledged its existence. Even more harebrained was
his explanation on how they compiled their list. He claimed they had the
registry without addresses which they cross-referenced with the beneficiaries
of the “Misiones” and those that signed with them and that is how they obtained
the addresses to get the data. Well Mr. William “Pinocchio” Lara, my childhood address,
the first one that I used to register to vote too many years ago, is in the
Chascon database and I can assure I do not participate in Misiones, have not
vote for Chavez, against opposition Deputies and the like, and even if I did, I
would use my current address and not that one which happens to appear only in
the Electoral registry.

Thus, another
day in the revolution: lying, abuse of power and unethical behavior. These guys
have certainly learned a lot from the chief autocrat. What a bunch of BS
artists!

This entry was posted on May 17, 2006 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Venezuela.