The Devil's Excrement

And speaking of lying populists….

Tonight President Hugo Chavez threatened to re-nationalize Verizon owned telephone company CANTV because in the words of the President “CANTV has not paid them (the retired workers) what it should for their pensions…they are paying them a miser amount, despite a decision by the Supreme Court…”

Well, this is simply cheap populism…as usual. The Supreme Court did rule that CANTV had to change the pensions, but it ordered a Court to calculate how much the workers were owed. The Court in turn asked the Venezuelan Central Bank to make the calculation based on the union contracts signed by the union and CANTV since 1992. The Central Bank came up with a number for each of the workers covered by the Supreme Court, but was not clear as to exactly the Court meant, so it sent eight different scenarios to the Court for each worhker.

Meanwhile, the company offered each of the affected workers to pay them what the company thinks it should pay, based on the Supreme Court’s decision. Some workers have accepted the offer, which is not binding. Meanwhile, the Court itself has been sitting on the eight options sent by the Central Bank for over two months, without making a ruling. Typical revolutionary incompetence.

So, whose fault is it? The company for not paying or the Court’s for not deciding? My answer is: Chavez for being so irresponsible!

Words are cheap, and that is all the revolution has going for it, the empty words of a man that promises, offers, but seldom delivers, except in its populist rhethoric.

But this is Chavez’ style, whenever his Government fails to do what it has to do, he blames others. Just don’t blame him!

A couple of days ago I had said that the MVR Deputy to the National Assembly Belkis Solis was simply lying when she said that the name of the toothpaste distributed in the Mercal chain of markets had the name “Ten million smiles” only coincidentally, as well as lying when she said it was made by a coop and equally telling a made up story when she said the name was the result of a study that said that ten million people don’t brush their teeth in Venezuela. I found this also insulting given the levels of personal care that Venezuelans at all levels have always exhibited.

Well, I had information at the time that said this was all lies and that this toothpaste was not made by a coop but by a private company. Well, today I had confirmation about this, as well as the news appearing in Tal Cual (page 6). Indeed the tootpaste is made by Tropical Degil Industries, an Israeli company, which markets it under the name “Tropical” in Venezuela and has been sued all over the place for making their tubes look like Colgate. Maybe she thought it was made at a kibbutz?

Ironic that such a revolutionary product, distributed via the revolutionary chain of markets, happens to be made by a company from the country that Chavez in his “revolutionary” fervor recently decided to break realtionships with, no? It just goes to prove how money flows in the best capitalistic style in the “pretty” revolution.

So the Minister of Interior and Justice says outraged that Carlos Ortega and his mates paid the guards to allow them to escape. Yes Jesse, it is called graft, corruption and it is all over the place. You can just about buy anyone in the robolution and the prices are not even high! Didn’t you know that? Look around you. The cars, the houses, the apartments, the trips. It is all part of it. Corruption like never before. Millions of dollars, not even millions of bolivars.

Some think that this is the best guarantee that the revolution will not survive, the robolutionaries will defend their newly acquired property with their lives. They may be right, but what a sad end for the robolution.

CNE Board member Vicente Diaz yesterday : “Legally there is no reason to use them (the fingerprint machines)…if a voter refuses to use the fingerprint machine, he has the right to vote”

What if everyone threatens to refuse?

So, Carlos Ortega escaped from the military jail in Ramo Verde.

My questions:

1) Did he really? So much for the oxymoronic term “military security”
2) And if they kill him tomorrow, while escaping from the authorities, are we supposed to believe it?
3) However, there is already an audio tape circulating in the Internet with one of the escapees.
4) Baduell says the ports and airports are being watched. Will he look like a fool if they leave the country and show up elsewhere talking about their escape?
4) What does Jesse Chacon say about it? Didn’t Chavez ask him to resign, will he?

Of course, as usual, Chavez is travelling…That is his way to run this country…But of course, nobody is running it, this is simply disorganized chaos after seven plus years of Chavez. But it is not his fault, it is Bush’s or something like that.

Well, what
we have known since November of last year was finally publicly accepted by the
sorry General Prosecutor Isaias Rodriguez; His super witness Giovanni Vasquez
was mostly fake, he has nothing in his hands and all this has been has been a
huge miscarriage of justice in which people’s live have been trampled with, destroyed
and in some cases forced them into exile because our stupid General Prosecutor “looked
the witness in the eyes and believed he was telling the truth.

A
remarkable admission by this man who should have resigned long ago, as case
after case simply shows his incompetence and how he has manipulated justice and
delivered injustice, only to please the autocrat.

But let’s
recap a little to see the
General Prosecutor’s interview in today El Nacional entitled “The key witness deceived me”, in the proper perspective:

Last fall,
the General Prosecutor told us that he had a “super witness” that had been
present at two key meetings, one in Panama
and on in Maracaibo,
in which the murder of Prosecutor Danilo Anderson was plotted. This super
witness was a medical doctor, specialized in psychiatry, who not only had
attended those meetings, but had actually smuggled 12 kilos of C4 for the
explosives for the assassination. When asked how he could issue orders for
capturing four people on the case, General Prosecutor Isaias Rodriguez said “I
looked into his eyes and knew he was telling the truth”

Soon after
that, we learned
that there were some problems with the story. First of all, super witness
Giovanny Vasquez turned out not to be a medical Doctor, let alone a
psychiatrist He actually had a criminal record in Colombia for “the crime of identity
theft, swindle and the use of false documents. Thus, the man seemed to be a
charlatan, but nevertheless, Isaias went forward with the case on the basis of
his testimony.

Soon
afterwards, we learned
that Vasquez had both Venezuelan and Colombian passports, had actually voted in
the Venezuelan election and briefly escaped from the military intelligence
people that were guarding him. A few days later, Globovision showed evidence
that Vasquez had been in jail in Colombia
while the infamous meeting in Panama
had taken place. This was not admitted into evidence when reporter Patricia
Poleo showed that she was in Venezuela
when purportedly this meeting had taken place. The Prosecutor ordered her
capture and she fled the country. Finally, the Prosecutor’s Office a few days
later had a Court
order the media to forbid the publication of ANY information about the Anderson trial and specifically about the “private life” of
the super witness. This was clearly an act of censorship, simply because the
media was showing what a sloppy job the General Prosecutor’s office was doing.

Not much
later, the General Prosecutor in his testimony in
the National Assembly said that he had another witness…but…somehow…they had
never talked to him or something like that. Amazing, no?

Of course,
this was all blamed on the “conspiracy” of the media and the opposition.

And then
comes today’ headline “Giovanny Vasquez deceived me; he was in jail in Panama on the date of the meeting in Panama”.

Any person
with dignity should have resigned, immediately cancelled the detention orders
and ask for forgiveness. But not Isaias, you see, he is a mediocre Prosecutor,
who is simply loyal to Hugo Chavez and would lie, spin and mutilate for him. Just
for this, the Constitution should be changed, you see, Isaias Rodriguez was the
first man in the country’s history to hold the office of Vice-President. What a
shame!

But let’s
look at his interview today and some of the things he said:

“He
(Vasquez) told us a tale, enamored us, we believed in him, we followed him …he
was in jail on that date”

Reporter: “And
why should you believe in Giovanny Vasquez”

Isaias
Rodriguez (IR): “Why should I deny everything? Why not believe whatever is true
(in is tale) because there are lots of things that are true (??)”

Reporter: “Is
there another witness”

IR: “No, I
don’t have another witness.”

Reporter: “But
a couple of times you assured us you had others”

IR: “I had
them, but they did not testify”

Reporter: “And
did the meeting in Maracaibo
take place?

IR: “Yes”

Reporter: “And
the one in Miami”

IR: “I don’t
know. We don’t have any confirmation…

Thus, the
General Prosecutor has lost his only witness, but the people accused are still
in jail, in exile or in hiding.

Such is
the state of Justice in Venezuela,
with a Prosecutor who continues to accuse the opposition for Anderson’
assassination and has never looked within his Government, where people had more
to lose from Anderson’
accusations and indictments.

But the amateur
General Prosecutor continues in his position, making a mockery of Justice in Venezuela…

There
is an interview in today’s El Nacional with Chacao Mayor Leopoldo Lopez in
which he gives terrifying numbers on crime and violence in Venezuela. The
article is on the occasion of Lopez’ presentation of a plan he has been trying
to sell the Government to reduce crime in 180 days.

Among the
things Lopez says about the current conditions of crime and violence in Venezuela:

–For each
cop killed in Brazil, ten
criminals die, in Venezuela
the ratio is forty criminals per cop.

–Deaths
for “resisting the authorities” have increased 254% since 1999 in the country
and 759% in the Federal District.

–Military
investment is 80 times police investment. One Sukhoi airplane like those
purchased recently by the Government cost US$ 120 million, with that you could
properly equip all police forces in the country.

–Homicide
rates are measured by the number of corpses that go through the morgue, but
there is an additional category in public hospitals called “undetermined
violent deaths. In 2004, there were 9962 homicides reported by the morgues,
2150 for “resisting the authorities” and 4298 “undetermined violent deaths”. This
gives you 74 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, higher than Colombia’s 54,
but that country is in the midst of a civil war.

–90,027 people
have died violently since 1999 in Venezuela. This is more than the
number that have died in Afghanistan,
Chechnya and Iraq.

–Only 7%
of homicides reach the point of someone receiving a sentence for it

–Of
executions only 1.4% of the cases ends in a sentence

–The rate
of homicides in jails is 20.6 per 1,000 inmates. In Brazil,
Argentina, Mexico and Colombia combined; the rate is 0.6
per 1,000.

–There is
an estimated 6 million weapons in Venezuela floating around, of which
only 15,000 are registered.

–In the
judiciary system, there are, according to a document by the Supreme Court, 100
civil servants with a criminal record and 40 judges with a criminal record.

Horrifying
and terrorizing statistics of the reality of this poor nation. Is it time for
divisiveness or ideology, or is it time for doing something together?

And from Megaresistencia I
get these two pictures of the buses used to bring the not so
spontaneous crowd to accompany Chavez in registering his candidacy:

Who paid for it? Were they official buses? Will the CNE ask Chavez or MVR about it? Of course not…

So, yesterday, the Board of the Electoral Board (CNE) approved the use of the fingerprint capturing machines for the December elections. They defended what can not be defended using arguments that their own technical assesment has demonstrated is not correct. It turns out that Bruni’s calculation of how good the fingerprint machines was conservative and according to Board member Diaz in El Nacional “39% of the comparison between signatures failed”. Thus, US$ 105-plus million were spent on a system that is useless for what the CNE and the Government claim it does.Diaz threw even more confusion into the fary, when in the same article in El Nacional he said that “With the system only 26 attempts have been detected of people that attempted to vote twice in three elections”. Thus, the CNE has spent US$ 4.03 million per case detected, not necessarily very efficient and cost effective.(BTW, this is the third different number I hear with respect to how many people were actually caught voting twice with the system, I have heard 53, 29 and now 26)

Of course, what candidate Rosales now calls the “Chuky” of our elections, is now being justified on other grounds, which are just laughable given the fact that former CNE President Jorge Rodriguez never mentioned any of them during his tenure.

The fact is that they have now decided to use a system which:

-Is not mandated by law
-Will cost additional money to use one more time
-It has been shown to do very little of what is supposed to, thus it represents a waste of Governmnet resources , which is penalzied under the anit-corruption law.
-Instills fears in voters, thsu violating their rights.
-The detailed conditions or its used have not been decided upon. (Where it is online or not, whch makes little sense, who will have access to the data and the like)

As usual, makes you wonder where the People’s Ombudsman is. If a system instills fears in 40% of the population, it would seem he would have to say something about it. Additionally, the ineffetiveness of the system is a violation of the “Ley del Salvaguarda del Patrimonio Publico” and as such the Prosecutor and the Comptroller would have to investigate it.

I am sure the opposition will continue to bring pressure on the CNE not to use these machines. If its use is later cancelled, the only winner in all this will be Cogent and its shareholders, who have already made hundreds of millions of dollars already thanks to the generosity of the CNE and will make more money with the latest decision by the Chavista members of the Electoral Board..

Not only do Chavistas laugh at us all the time, but they really have
total disdain for people and must think Venezuelans are truly stupid. A few
weeks ago, I
showed the wonderful new toothpaste being sold at the Government’s chain of
stores Mercal, under the brand name “ten million smiles” in clear allusion to
Chavez’ campaign slogan “ten million votes”. In fact, they even have two hands as a symbol, just like Chavez’ campaign slogans.

Well, yesterday Deputy Belkis Solis, showed
up at the National Assembly with a box of tubes of this wonderful product,
claiming that it was all a just coincidence and that they were made by a co-op
called Cermanco (I have information that this is a lie too, but have yet to confirm
it) and that this co-op had a study made which said that 10 million Venezuelans
do not brush their teeth every day. Of course, she did not have a copy of the
study, but happily gave away the toothpaste tubes to the smiling Deputies.

The whole thing is so crass, that not even the pro-Chavez Director of
the Electoral Board German Yepez believed it and this was actually the example he
mentioned as a violation of the electoral rules on the part of the Government.
Of course, he first mentioned the fact that there was a banner at the Zulia Governorship
with Rosales’ slogan “Atrevete”. He failed to mention the
many ads appearing daily in the press with Chavez’ name or image or even
the fact that the “Ten million votes” logo has been on the wall of the National
Assembly for the last month or so.

Here is a another picture of the tubes of toothpaste: