The Devil's Excrement

Caracas Chronicles wrote the brief post above, predicting the opposition got more votes than the Government, but Quico forgot to check his bandwidth and there was overload. It was not hacked. His site is not accessible right now, but I had it opened , so here is an image of his site and Juan’s until it gets restored, for those curious about it.

It is almost 12:39 PM , most polls have been closed for over six and a
half hours and the servile electoral board has yet to announce the
results.

This is a disgrace and an insult to all Venezuelans. With 90% plus of
all tabulated, Venezuela’s $300 million dollar voting system, once
called “the best voting system in the world” has yet to give us a
single result.

Are we to believe that all 165 races are too close to call?

This is absurd, this represents almost $200 per voter, without taking
into account expenses for each election. The Government could buy
everyone an Xbox and we could all vote at once and know the results in
minutes. Or cell phones for that matter.

This is what underdevelopment is all about. We are told nothing, the
system is hailed and we all put up with it.

It’ shameful, it’s a disgrace, it is an insult.

But we put up with it.

By the lack of the draw, I was selected to be part of the group of people manning the voting tables at next Sunday’s Parliamentary elections at the place where I vote. This implied spending the afternoon yesterday as an electoral trainee. No training, no credential, no credential, you can’t participate, which is obligatory. Go figure.

So, at 3 PM sharply I showed up at the public school where the training was to take place. I was sent by a National Guardsman to sit on the wooden steps of the baseball field at the high school to wait for the instructor. There were about 60 or 70 people sitting there with me asking “And now, what?” when at last around 3:25 PM (not bad for Venezuela “time”) the instructor and his helpers showed up.

We were all herded into a hot classroom, about ten to twelve rows deep and the instructor began telling us all the things we would have to do on Sunday beginning at 5 AM.

He was not bad, except that he had clearly memorized all the material and by now was clearly bored to death by it. The supporting material was absolutely awful as you can see above, where the instructor is explaining the seven steps to the installation of a voting table. Yes, each of those seven pie slices contains diagrams of little people, indicating the function of each of the members of the voting table. I was sitting on the second row and could not read the small letters.

I only saw two or three nerdy people like me taking notes of everything, the rest of the people either were bored to death or had no idea what the guy was talking about. A lot of time was spent on rules and technicalities such as what happens when a blind or crippled person comes to vote. Could not understand why it is that senior citizens have priority to vote first, but some of them are selected to spend 16-17 hours manning the voting stations. The guy also discussed the ever present Venezuelan issue: When and how to decide to close down voting. Seems fairly straightforward, but never is.

After a couple of hours of hours of training, the session was over and we all had to stand around and wait for half an hour for our credentials to be typed, so we can get into the voting places.

The atmosphere was very cordial, everyone seemed happy to have been selected as long as they gave you an interesting job. Many people did not want to do the boring jobs like organizing people in lines and the like. But since the training is random, those that are alternates or reserves will not know until tomorrow at 8 AM whether they may do a more interesting job.

So, Sunday I will take my cell phone and will try to give you updates when I get some time, but in general I will know very little of what is going on outside my voting center.

The recent tragic plane crash of the Conviasa airplane in Puerto Ordaz is no surprise. In fact, many do not remember that this is not the first crash of this airline created by Chavez in 2004.

By now, there was another accident that has now forced the Government to ground all flights of the airline until “October”, but what is clear is that there had been plenty of warnings that could have avoided this tragedy.

The airline business is one of the most difficult ones to run both from the point of view of management and that of financing. In the end, Chavez made the same mistakes in Conviasa he made elsewhere, naming a string of buddy military officers with little managerial or airline experience.

There was no reason for the Venezuelan Government to enter a business which requires levels of efficiency never seen in Venezuela’s Government. There was no reason to subsidize Conviasa so that it could take people to Margarita Island, Syria and Teheran. Venezuela has too many problems to use scarce funds in an area that the private sector can fill. There are enough fools in the private sector that love airplanes to fill that role.

The problem is that innocent Venezuelans have died because of this. Reportedly it was the crews of the airplanes that forced the Government to shut down the airline. Even the authorities of Trinidad and Tobago have forbidden the airline from flying to that country.

Many years ago I wrote an article in a local newspaper saying the Government had no place in the airline business in Venezuela, I never got so much hate mail in my life! This confirms all of my thoughts at the time.

The problem is that, as usual, there will be total impunity in this case. The Government will not investigate who was responsible for this tragedy and much like so many other ones, it is the people of Venezuela who have to pay for this.

As if inflation was not high enough to make ends meet, public workers in Caracas are being forced to buy these “raffle” tickets to support Chavez’ campaign. Each ticket costs Bs. 20 and you have no choice, you are sent a certain number of tickets according to your hierarchy and you have to pay for it, no chance of refusing. This one was given to me by a friend who holds a lower position, but her boss had to buy 35 of them.

The front part of the ticket, shows the price, the prizes like a pc, camera, motrocycle and it says “The people to the Assembly”. Under the “scratch-off” surface it says “This is the way I finance my PSUV”

On the right, it says: “Chavez’ Key” and it tells people how to vote, saying “to vote for the candidates of the people is very easy” and then describes how to vote in Circuits 1-6 of the Capital District.

So, two million public workers at a minimum of Bs. 20 per worker would be Bs. 400 million, not a bad racket for a Government already using all of the resources of the State for its own party.

While I did not vote for the Venezuelan Constitution approved in 2000, it is our only Constitution and it establishes the framework for how our country works. Unfortunately, Hugo Chavez, who once would show the blue book at every chance, now ignores its contents day after day and the blue book is not even worth the paper it is written on: It gets trampled on daily.

This week, it got trampled a few times. The first time quite directly, when the Head of the CNE, the Electoral Board, Tibisay Lucena, announced that Government officials were not banned from campaigning, despite Article 145 of the Constitution which states that:

“Government officials are at the service of the State and not of any partiality”

which was expanded explicitly by the regulations issued this May by the same Electoral Board, forbidding Government officials from participating in political and campaign activities.

But Hugo Chavez has become the LAW in Venezuela, above the little blue book, so he needed to campaign and the four Chavista ladies at the CNE complied with his whims. No questions asked.

The second violation, is not a direct violation of the Constitution, but of the Constitution of the State of Guarico, which is similar to that of many States of Venezuela in that who succeeds the absolute absence of a Governor depends on when the absence takes place. In the case of William Lara, whose death will not be the subject of a post, his absence occurs within the first two years of his term. Then, the Secretary General of the State will become Governor and an election will take place within 30 days.

Well, last night, there was a “political decision” by Chavez’ PSUV party that the temporary Governor will be the President of the Legislative Assembly, Gustavo Mendez, because the Secretary General “declined” the position.

Well, the Secretary General may “decline”, but to do so he has to resign and the only possible way for Mr. Mendez to occupy the position would be for him to resign his own and become Secretary General. That is what laws are for and why they exist.

This is becoming the rule in Venezuela, neither the Government nor the Supreme Court follow the Constitution approved by Chavismo with a 96% majority of the Constituent assembly of 1999.

Of course, the biggest proof of this is my previous post, the Venezuelan Constitution says that (Art. 10) the Electoral Power has to guarantee the principle of proportional representation and with the gerrymandering and redistricting a 50/50 split in the votes would lead to Chavismo obtaining 60% of the  Deputies in the Assembly. The Supreme Court rejected any requests to have this changed.

Maybe they don’t understand what proportional means. More likely, they have no clue about the meaning of what a Constitution is and should be.

(Note: On William Lara’s death, I will only say that I am concerned about the lack of discussion of why it happened. Traffic deaths have increased dramatically over the last few years due to speeding, lack of enforcement and bad roads. Nobody seems to be responsible for any of these issues)

HA!