The Devil's Excrement

There is only one word for the signals and statements coming out of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Government during the last few days: Clueless. After nine years in power, riding on his charisma and populism and the biggest oil windfall the country has ever enjoyed, Hugo Chavez and his collaborators continue to show how clueless they are as to how to run a country and seemed to have learned nothing during this time.

The first clueless statement this week was the brilliant statement by the new Vice President that the Government would set up a commission composed of some Ministers to study the country’s problems and how to solve them. Wow! They discovered the concept of Cabinet and it only took them nine years to do it. Brilliant! They can get together once a week and see what’s wrong with Venezuela and try to figure out how to solve it. Problem is, if it took them nine years to figure this one out, how long will it take them to make it work? No wonder Chavez wants his indefinite reelection, it will likely take infinite time at this learning pace to fix all the problems.

And just as we thought we had heard everything, the new prosecutor comes out and says that she will create a commission to fight corruption. Wait! Just a month ago, the Venezuelan National Assembly reappointed Clodosvaldo Russian as Comptroller, precisely the man who is supposed to fight corruption in a country where almost nobody has been prosecuted for corruption in the last nine years. Moreover Russian said upon the announcement that eh would come back to his position that eh was actual proud of the job he had done as corruption was down (??) and under control. This despite suitcases full of cash, a whole class of nouveau rich parading around the country and the world in fancy cars, yatchs and jet planes and dozens of examples of cases of graft with no investigation. Thus, if Clodosvaldo does not do his job, let’s create and alternative commission to see if they can do it. Clueless and priceless how the revolution can recognize how stupid, ineffective and clueless it is!

Then there is the new Minister of Finance, Rafael Isea, making the unnecessary and rather silly statement that he is sticking with the goal of 11% inflation and 6% growth for the year 2008 in Venezuela. Does this man even understand that to get to 11% inflation he needs twelve months of inflation below 0.9 % in a country where the rate has been above 3.3% the last two months? Or that if he wants to reduce inflation he has to cool down things so dramatically as to stump growth and that this is an either or question? Or maybe Mr. Isea, who was Vice-Minister of Finance for the last year, has not heard that interest rates have been driven up by the most recent decisions of the Ministry he now presides? Or has he heard what has been happening with prices ever since the so called Bolivar Fuerte came into effect twelve days ago? In fact, from the way things look I would not even dare suggest inflation will be below 11% for the first quarter of the year. In fact, it would take three months of 3.5% inflation for that, and we know that the last two came in at 4.5% and 3.3% respectively. Even Chavez recognized in his speech yesterday that his Government has “flunked” in controlling inflation. Of course, he blamed it on speculators, rather than on the economic policies of the Government he presides. Simply clueless.

And Chavez yesterday in his annual speech to the Nation asked: Why is crime still such a grave problem in the streets, towns and barrios? Well, given that in the last nine years he replaced all professional police administrators and replaced them with his military buddies and the fact that until last week Hugo Chavez never mentioned the crime problem in his thousands of hours of boring speeches. Is it any surprise that crime has ballooned? In fact, the homicide rate has tripled. It took more than 85,000 homicides in the last nine years before Chavez mentioned the problem. That is worse than Colombia’s “civil war” murder rate, but he seems to eb paying attention more to that problem rather than our own. Just think, if the average family has five members, there are five million families in Venezuela, which means one in fifty nine families has been touched by a homicide. But if you add parents and cousins, it quickly becomes one in ten in a country where extended families matter. And even worse, the distribution of murders is totally skewed towards the poor, precisely those that Chavez claims to care for and focus on. No wonder he is losing their support. Simply clueless.

And Chavez asked as if there was something sinister behind it: Why has milked disappeared from the shelves? Why is it so difficult for us to produce the goods we consume every day? Why do we consume so many products from other countries? This from the man that took over large farms that used to produce milk from their rightful owners, which forced others to simply sell their cattle before they suffered the same fate. Or that has kept prices controlled for five years, while authorizing billions of dollars of imports at the same exchange rate for the last three years, while inflation killed the ability to compete of local producers. The same man who suggested that small “conuco” the single family plot could produce more than industrialized farms, confiscating the latter and seeing production drop? To say nothing of the confrontational attitude with the private sector, which drove investment to a halt in the face of the absence of the rule of law. Simply clueless and he still does not seem to understand it.

And Chavez said in his speech yesterday that any transaction with the Government has become a nightmare, but all he has done in the last few years is nationalize companies which will soon adopt the attitude of Government workers that we have known for decades. Only yesterday there were lines two and three blocks long as the Government’s phone company billing system broke down. And it has been in the hands of the Government for less than seven months and the President asked that the company transfer all of ts 2008 profits to its coffers, insuring service will only get worse in the future. Absolutely clueless.

I could go on and on with all of the rhetorical questions Chavez asked yesterday about the failures of his Government that could be traced to his own cluelessness as to how to run the country. But it suffices to say that he provided little in terms of solutions or programs for 2008, other than the need to spend more money. Hugo Chavez only gave two concrete examples of what he wants for the future. One, he would “relaunch” his misiones, mostly abandoned and not as effective as he once thought. Two, he will try to sneak a “small” (and illegal) Constitutional reform question into a referendum to allow for his indefinite reelection. Which shows the scarcity of ideas other than his own personal and political ambitions.

Simply clueless…

As the New York Times had a long article on the details of the Maletagate case, the suitcase found with $800,000 in the hands of Venezuelan/US businessman Guido Antonini, it was clear that the case will not go away for either Venezuela or Argentina and that those involved in it are trying to pass the buck pointing fingers at each other, which is surely going to make a lot of people very nervous.

This week, the prosecutor in the case handed over videos and audios to the judge in Miami, while the Venezuelan defendants in the case declared themselves not guilty, but were denied bail by the judge. While the Venezuelan Government has tried to distance itself from the case, TV station Globovision revealed yesterday that the only person at large in the case, Antonio Jose Canchica Gomez, was not a member of the intelligence police DISIP as had been reported up to now, but was actually an active military officer in the Venezuelan Army, which will only make things more complicated for the Chavez administration and the other defendants. The other defendants are saying they have nothing to do with the Venezuelan Government,  as the US Government is charging them with being foreign agents in US soil, but were actually trying to help their friend Guido Antonini, who was actually taping them whenever they met. But Canchica being still in the military will make it harder for them to distance themselves from the Venezuelan Government after what they said on tape.

Meanwhile, the son of the PDVSA Vice President that was in the jet plane with Antonini, David Uzcategui, talked to an Argentinean newspaper and he clearly was trying to distance his father from the case and pass the buck to the Argentineans involved in it. Uzcategui said that he and Antonini were invited on the plane by Argentinean official Claudio Uberti, an adviser to that country’s Planing Ministry and the man in charge of toll roads in Argentina, who was forced to resign over the scandal. Uzcategui also said that the suitcase was not his. Thus, Uzcategui is trying to distance his father from the case, an unlikely story given his age, as he says Uberti and his secretary asked them as friends if they had anything to do that weekend and that his father did not like him flying in official airplanes.

But perhaps the most damming statement by Uzcategui, was that confirming the the testimony of Uberti’s secretary in Argentina that two days after Antonini was caught with the suitcase with the cash, he was at the Argentinean Presidential Palace, the Casa Rosada, invited by Argentinean officials to participate in a joint Venezuela-Argentina ceremony. Argentinean officials, including the current Chief of the Cabinet Alberto Fernandez, have denied that this was the case, but two witnesses have now said this was the case. Uzcategui also suggests he was not present only because he was late, but he fails to explain how he came to be invited that day. Argentinean authorities have requested that Interpol find Uzcategui to testify on the case and it is clear he wants to pass the buck to the Argentinean officials and distance his father from the case.

Meanwhile in Miami, the accused are now using different lawyers and strategies. All of the accused in custody have to be in jail until the trial begins and may get up to 10 years in prison for their role in the scandal. Thus, while declaring themselves not guilty, this may be just an opening position to negotiate leniency in exchange for more details about their role in the case and their huge fortunes, which is surely making a lot of people nervous in Venezuela. Meanwhile, the man with the suitcase, Guido Antonini, has not been charged with anything as he cooperates fully with the US authorities.

 The case is certainly not going away for a long time.

Chavez now wants to have countries in Europe and the Americas to remove the FARC and the ELN from their terrorist lists. At the same time, Chavez did not and has not called for an immediate release of all of the hostages of the FARC as a goodwill gesture and has never asked or negotiated for the release or help in the release of Venezuelans who are in the hands of the FARC.

Is there something wrong with this “humanitarian” picture?

But let’s see what released hostage Clara Rojas had to say today about her captivity and treatment. Recall she was the press secretary of the candidate for Vice President of Colombia, so she can truly say her political career was aborted, if not destroyed by this “humanitarian” group which Chavez wants to have recognized as a political force in Colombia. Said Rojas:

The former hostage said that to make the desist from the idae of escaping the guerrilas would show them animals in the camps that were in the jungle.

“They would scare us with tarantulas and snakes and would tells us stories of people that had been lost in the jungle, she said.

Rojas indicated that their attempt to esacpe was not the only one and that many hostages of the FARC also tried to escape.

After being recaptured, the guerrilla would punish their hostages with chains. They would put chains on us, first for fifteen days and later only at night, she pointed out. “

How nice and human, no? Maybe they should be in the tortures lists also.

What a bunch of BS from Hugo Chavez the cynic.

It was a somewhat paradoxical end to the hostage handover by the FARC. Paradoxical, because it was extremely emotional, while at times it seemed totally devoid of any feelings, as the two freed hostages met with the Red Cross helicopters and found themselves free after six years in the hands of the Colombian guerrilla group. There was as much emotion in the farewell to their captors as in the hugs to their relatives, most of whom displayed the joy and tears of a moment they thought at times would never come.

Thus, after much fanfare in the earlier operations, the first named operation “Transparency” aimed at liberating former Colombian Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt in November and later operation “Enmanuel” in December, a more quiet unnamed operation gave freedom to Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez, who will try to return to their lives after a six year gap, in which one gave birth in captivity, the other one lost a husband and both missed many family milestones and moments.

Burned twice by his FARC buddies, President Chavez wisely decided not to mobilize himself to the border ,even as news of the hostage exchange reached Caracas, deciding instead to wait for them in Caracas, which at times appeared somewhat unfair to the two women, welcomed with military honors in a city that must not mean much to them, even if their closest relatives were here.

It was a victory at last for Chavez, but mitigated by the earlier failures by the FARC to deliver any hostages, the absence of Enmanuel in the operation, as well as the fact that the delays showed the world the true inhumanity of the FARC, who up to the last minute played once again with the emotions and humanity of the hostages, their families, and the trust Chavez had placed in them as the Venezuelan President had tried to put them in a good light in front of the world.

It was indeed a happy ending, until you realize that there are still between 700 and 3,000 more hostages in the jungles of Colombia, perversely kept in captivity by the FARC, without sometimes even asking for ransom or ever revealing whether they are alive or dead, even as some hostages have been held in captivity for over seven years. In fact, the FARC handed over to the Venezuelan Minister of the Interior proof of life for another eight hostages, only revealed for the simple fact that that the two hostages released today were being held in captivity with them.

Which only shows the cruelty of the guerrilla group, willing to play with the lives of thousands of Colombians, the hostages are after all the lucky ones since they are alive and not dead like thousands murdered by the FARC, who only released a token group and retained for their own purposes Mrs. Betancourt.

So, it was a day of paradox, a sad joy at seeing the two freed hostages, while realizing the meanness and inhumanity that political differences can lead to in a purportedly rational world.

If it weren’t so tragic, I would write a parody of what the Chavez Government has become. But while the whole thing is so bizarre, it is difficult to find anything funny about what is going on in Venezuela with its Government.

First of all, last Sunday, in his Sunday variety shows, Hugo Chavez mentioned for the first time the crime problem. Yes, after exactly 86,452 homicides since Hugo Chavez took over, he mentioned a problem as important as that for the first time. Here is a guy that has found time to call Bush the devil, spent weeks and resources on rescuing Colombian hostages and has traveled all over the world “solving” the world’s problems, and he finally dared mentioned the problem that is the number one concern of all Venezuelans: Crime. I don’t want you to think that this is a problem that did not exist when Chavez took over. But, he is responsible for almost a 200% increase in homicides since he took over for two reasons: He did little about it and he put most police forces in the hands of his military buddies, who have no clue about fighting crime, other than with repression.

And while I am all for fighting crime, I can’t help but be concerned about the new man at the Ministry of Interior and Justice Rodriguez Chacin. This is a military officer that was involved in questionable military operations where innocent civilians died under suspicious circumstances. This is a man famous for being “tough”, thus I do hope his return to the Ministry is not because Chavez wants to him exhibit his toughness by repressing criminals. We shall see.

But things get even more tragic, when you hear the official TV station say today that Chavez will preside this week’s Cabinet at which “logically” his new Ministers will be there. Tragic, because while it may seem “logical” for that to be the case, what is illogical is that as far as everyone knows, this is actually the first Cabinet in over a year and a half at which Chavez will be present. That’s right, for at least the last year and a half, Hugo Chavez has been too busy with his international promotion to even go to the Cabinet, leaving it all in the hands of former Vice President Jorge Rodriguez, who may be a good political operator but certainly does not have the experience to run and coordinate a country.

And it showed, which is partially the reason why Chavez lost the referendum.

Except that nothing says that Chavez can do it either. In fact, he has shown in the past to be bored by the details and has left in the hands of others like Giordani, who had no clue as to what he was doing, and Rodriguez who had no managerial experience until he was put in charge of the CNE.

And the whole thing is so bizarre, that Chavez promotes the President of telecom company CANTV to Minister of Telecom, but ratifies her as President of CANTV. There are two problems with this, she had no experience to run a company as complex as CANTV, but all of a sudden she is put in charge of the largest telecom company in the country, as well as the telecom regulator, which hardly seems fair to the competition, no? The saddest part, is that telecom was the fastest growing sector of the economy last year, but I am sure this will not last long.

And to complete this tragedy in three acts, the new Minister of Finance decides to show either his ignorance or his stupidity, you choose, when he stated while being sworn in that the inflation target for 2008 will be 11% and the economy will grow by 6%. Well first of all he did not need to say either of them. Second, the two targets are incompatible, In order to achieve 6% growth, he will have to sustain high fiscal spending, which is certainly incompatible with that 11%. So, I will stick my neck out: Growth in 2008 will be 3%, there will be high Government spending once again and the CPI will be 28% for the year. Write it down, I assure you my error in both numbers will be less than those of the new Minister’s.

And that’s the tragedy, I am no expert. But when I hear former Minister Cabezas leave his post “satisfied” after screwing up inflation and allowing monetary liquidity to jump in 2007 and the parallel market to almost double, while imports were 44.6 billion US$ and I begin to think that while I have no clue, I have better clues than these illustrious incompetents.

Clearly, this tragedy in three acts is possible because Hugo Chavez is worried about his popularity numbers. But much like in earlier stages of his Government, expect him to get bored with these problems and frustrated, as things don’t work out in fixing them. By then, regional elections will be around the corner and politics will once again take precedence over solving the problems the average Venezuelan feels everyday.

And by then, Chavez will have been in power for ten years an we can talk again about another lost decade.

I have a lot of respect for Luis Pedro España who I considered to be the country’s foremost expert on poverty. He is extremely knowledgeable, articulate and he combines knowledge of social sciences with economics, a rare thing in this era of specialization. He also looks at a lots of statistics of what people are saying or doing in Venezuela and understands them thoroughly. I have translated some of his articles before, but today he was interviewed in El Nacional and has some insights that I thought should be shared with you. The highlights:

—The poverty of income, no matter how you calculate it, has dropped…but that does not work as a reference in a country where we can double oil income, but maintain school desertion rates, or the patterns of mortality and the lack of infrastructure.

—People can consume more because PDVSA has higher income. When the oil market gets a cold, we could die of pneumonia.

—Barrio Adentro has not changed the rate of infant mortality. Mision Vuelvan Caras has not reduced informal employment. Mision Ribas has not ended with school desertion. All of these problems attack the consequences of the problems but not their causes.

—The most emblematic thing about misiones is their political management, not their real efficacy. Almost 80% of the population knows the misiones, but only 3% have benefited from it. The Misiones have a very high propaganda value. That credibility of the misiones is dropping.

—Fundamental social problems are still intact and the worst part is that an excellent opportunity to place social policy on the forefront has been wasted. And the people are realizing it.

—People have been with Chavez but they are not unconditional. Because they make demands, they want water and the homes they were promised. I do believe there is a lot of disenchantment.

—It is very clear that the problems of the people have not been solved. The only place where the opposite is believed is in the statistics office soft the Government, But you go out in the streets and people believe that their crime problem, their housing problem, their unemployment problem, their health and their education problem have not been solved, And when you ask them why, they blame corruption And after that inefficiency.

—It is possible for Chavez to become very unpopular. And he was that for a time, even if few people remember it. I am talking about the end of 2001, when an economic crisis began which forced him to make adjustments in 2002. He was forced on February 14th. 2002 to devalue by 50% and cut public expenditures. That had a very strong effect on all of us, including the poor. The economic situation was very bad. But then came the coup and the strike and paradoxically, that helped Chavez. Today the people remember that the economic crisis was generated by the opposition and not because of the wrong policies of the Government.

—Chavez has had 118 different Ministers in his nine years in office. Of the twelve people appointed to teh Cabinet yesterday, three are woman and six out of the other nine are former military. Five of them had been Ministers previously.

—In the Caracas morgue bodies are all over the place, including on the floors. A body was actually missing for three days according to the relatives. The Head of the intelligence police blames it all on the increase on the population.

—You can actually buy things almost for free with your Internet quota at the official rate of exchange. Two days ago I needed to buy some software that cost $60 in Amazon, or Bs. F. 129. However, the software has a rebate of $20, which at the parallel  exchange rate corresponds to Bs. F.  112. Thus, I will get the software for exactly US$ 3.03 at the parallel rate of exchange once I get my rebate check.

—Five days after the monetary reconversion began, I have yet to know anyone that has seen one of the new coins. I get the feeling they are not even circulating in another triumph for the inefficiency of the revolution.

—After leading the National Assembly through a year with almost no new Bills approved and introducing 25 new articles to the proposed Constitutional change which likely doomed the proposal, Deputy Celia Flores was ratified today as President of the National Assembly for another year.

It is hard to understand exactly what game the FARC is playing with Chavez and exactly how the FARC wants to convince the world that they are the good guys in the high stakes game of the never happening return of the hostages in the hands of that guerrilla group. Since the beginning, Chavez has been saying once thing, the FARC has not delivered and has appeared to be withholding information from Chavez which eventually would embarrass the Venezuelan President. Thus, using the name of a once known website, the FARC seems to have farked (embarrassed) Chavez repeatedly, managing to embarrass him over and over without a clear purpose.

Today was no exception. After the FARC had offered to release three hostages, two women and the son of one of them born in captivity nothing happened which actually was quite puzzling at the time. Then we learned from the President of Colombia that the ki, named Enmanuel, was not in the hands of th FARC but had been turned over to the care of a Government social institution over two years ago.

Immediately the Venezuelan Governemnt questioned Uribe’s version, suggesting it had all been made up to make Chavez look bad. At the time Uribe said that his Government would make DNA tests, using Enmanuel’s grandmother’s DNA and the results woudl be made public in two or three days.

Today, the preliminary tests were out and they strongly suggested the kid found in Bogota was indeed the son of hostage Clara Gonzelez de Rojas. Immediately Veenzuelan Foreign Minister Maduro, using his characteristic and undiplomatic style of speak first and find the facts later, came out and criticized the Colombian Government for not allowing a Venezuelan expert to do tests on the case.

Of course, if the roles were reversed, the Venezuelan Government would call that an interference in Venezuelan affairs as the kid, the rebels and the hostages are all Colombian and Chavez is just meddling in all this in order to garner international attention.

But the Colombian Government paid little attention to this, instead coming out and saying they did not oppose the examination of the DNA by Venezuelan experts, as long as the General Prosecutor and appropriate social protection institutions approved it. Fortunately, Foreign Minister Maduro had no time to stick his foot in his mouth once again, as the FARC itself issued a press release soon after the statement by the Colombian Foreign Minister saying that the Colombian Government had actually kidnapped Enmanuel in order to “sabotage” the release of the hostages.

Obviously this raises too many questions about the good faith of the FARC in their promises to Hugo Chavez. First of all, if the FARC have over 3,000 hostages, how come they happened to choose a hostage that was not even in their hands? Why not release Ingrid Betancourt, for example, perhaps the most emblematic hostage in the hands of the FARC which would have made Hugo Chavez, and the FARC, look very good in front of international opinion? But once the FARC decided on those three hostages, why did they not come out clean and tell Chavez or his negotiators that the kid was not in their hands? And, once again, once Uribe came out and said they had a kid in their hands who appeared to be Enmanuel, why not communicate to Chavez that this was probably correct? Any of these acts would have at least saved the Venezuelan Government and Hugo Chavez some embarrassing moments in the last few days.

And Chavez once again got farked today, when the guerrilla group confirmed the identity of the kid was indeed Enmanuel, making Foreign Minister Maduro look bad and certainly out of he loop.

In fact, all of this has actually made President Uribe of Colombia look good. Uribe did not stage a failed show like Chavez. He gave in to all of the requests of the Chavez Government and the international observers for access to a possible exchange. While the FARC was saying that the exchange was not taking place because the Colombian military was carrying out operations in the area, it turns out they simply could not hand over the promised hostages, because one of them was not in their hands. As first stated by PMB in a private comment: What the FARC is going on here?

Which goes back to my earlier post on the subject: The FARC have their own political agenda and clearly it seems like it is not  perfectly aligned with that of Hugo Chavez. Maybe the FARC perceives Hugo as a competitor more than a colleague as both groups are fighting for political influence and control over Colombia under much different terms.

And for Chavez this has also been an unnecessary and time consuming distraction from his problems at home. While the media show over the release of the hostages plays well everywhere rom Peoria to Paris, it is likely to be of little significance to Venezuelans increasedly frustrated over the lack of response to their problems from higher inflation, to crime, to garbage collection. Meanwhile, they watch foreign politicians jetting around in fancy Venezuelan Government private planes, their President coordinating expensive military operations and most politicians away for Christmas vacation ignoring their problems.

And in the end, he does not even get his Oliver Stone documentary or his Nobel Peace prize nomination.

It’s tough to be farked like that…