Strange (and long!) decision by the administrative Hall of the Venezuelan Supreme Court admitting the case of RCTV but refusing to grant an injunction because they have not studied the details of the administrative procedure which Conatel followed in 2000. I thought it was precisely in such cases that an injunction was warranted: Courts grant injunctions to protect your rights while the details of the case are being studied. In a very circular and convoluted argument the Court says that nothing guarantees RCTV the right to have a concession thus until they look at the case, it is just tough, but you will be shutdown next Sunday.
Thus, the stage is set for the autocrat’s decision to become reality. It all seems so carefully staged. First the Constitutional Hall refuses to look at the case the week before the shutdown, saying that this is an administrative case and that they could not find anything in the case file saying their rights had been violated. I guess the members of that Hall don’t watch TV where Hugo Chavez has been announcing the closure without giving the right to RCTV of either defending itself or following the the path established in Venezuela’s legislation. I guess RCTV should have sent some videos along.
Unfortunately my intuition that nothing would stop Chavez from this blatant violations of the rights of RCTV and our rights to choose will be consummated on Sunday. I could care less for RCTV’s programming, but I do care less for VTV’s or the pablum we will be fed by this contraption that is being given the concession this Sunday. What I do know is that there will be fewer outlets for opposing views to the Government. I have seen dissenting voices being quieted down slowly over the last few years, we now get this giant act of suppression of dissent. It is now a matter of who is next, whether Globovision, the Internet or whatever the autocrat decides bothers him.
Whatever happened to Chavez calling private broadcasting station the Four Horseman of Apocalypse? How come only one horseman is being sent to the slaughterhouse? Easy, some of them have become very docile, so that they can keep making money. Others are protected by the fact that shutting more than one TV channel at once would be too obvious. But the “legal” case, if it exists against RCTV, would apply to all the stations, a point to often forgotten and obviated by the fanatics that claim the procedure is legal.
So the noose gets tighter all over. People are looking into moving their phone and Internet service away from CANTV and the Government’s prying eyes, getting more cable channels which the poor have little access to, just as protests are not carried by the rsurviving media. It will be word of mouth or maybe as in Petkoff’s Editorial, we will begin using smoke signals or maybe the old Dixie cups tied with strings. Fortunately technology is different these days. Hopefully somebody will take the time to write a guide and tell us how to protect our rights and privacy in the future from this Government, from browsing, to email to contacting each other it looks like we will need a lot of help in the future. Are there any takers? I would glad to translate any useful material and post it.
Thus, alea jacta est, in another remarkable step by Hugo Chavez, the man who some claim is a Democrat but discusses nothing and talks to nobody, a man who claims to support participative democracy, but has reduced the levels of participation, a man who true to his military origins is closer to Pinochet and Fujimori in both ideology and practice that anyone thought possible. However, the institutional and legal destruction in Venezuela has been much higher and the factors that led to the demise and self-destruction of those Dictators seems remote in our country. It is indeed a sad moment in our country’s history, one that I would have never thought I would see in my lifetime.
The Devil's Excrement 
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