The Devil's Excrement

As expected the amendment proposed by Chavez, which is completely illegal was approved. I was sorry that I was right, but after being sure of a No win for seven out of the eight weeks the proposal was on the table, the numbers became simply uphill in the last seven to ten days. Pollster Datanalisis can claim now to be the only pollster to get it right in the last five elections, Datos, Hinterlaces and Consultores 21 simply blew it. They were all predicting a No victory.

My turning point came about ten days ago when I saw a presentation with a poll saying it was a tie technically between Si and No, but that Chavez with 10% points more in approval rating than he had right before the 2007 referendum.

That, together with the massive abuse of power in overwhelming all media and the people with the SI campaign and knowing that Chavez would scare or drive his supporters to vote told me we were going to lose. The whole thing was manipulated too much. It was not a level playing field.

But as I said, Chavez wasted two precious months, the economy has deteriorated further and I get the feeling that we will see a new Minister of Finance in the next few days, which implies that there will be no proposals for over a month. Because what’s coming requires a team of Major League Economists and Chavez has a bunch of amateurs looking to make a local buck for their pockets. And you can be sure they will screw it up big time. Look for inflation to reach 60% easy in 2009 and GDP to collapse. Not a pretty sight.

The opposition did not do well. Yes, they had no money versus and adversary full of it, but it seems as if it were not for the energy and organization of the students, we would have done worse. Kudos to the students. It was quite a sight to see them today going door to door with white shirts with a white hand in front and “Mobilization” on their backs, calling on people to go and vote. The opposition parties have never done anything like that.

And this is also the fault of all of those Venezuelans that had the supernatural belief that somehow there would be a miracle. That in some way, God or Allah or a Genie will protect them from Chavez like it did in 2007. Why bother to organize, participate or get involved if the miracle was coming?

So, in the end, maybe the irrelevant result is exactly what the opposition and democratic Venezuelans needed: A wake up call to get involved, work together, get organized and participate or everything will be lost, your hopes, your country and your freedom. Because Chavismo pushed the envelope to incredibly new levels, spending your money, bypassing your laws and liying its way to victory while you stayed home until today. And all with absolutely no scruples.

And even the Parliamentary elections of 2010 seem so far away. because there will be so much pain and suffering before then, that it is even hard to envision what the Venezuelan political landscape may look like by then. We are going to see too much pain and suffering before then and you can be sure many will split from the autocrat. Money will become scarce for everyone.

Chavez should be worried about completing his current term, because if oil price stay near where they are, even achieving that may be quite a feat. You can’t lie about shortages, about recession, about inflation and about incompetence. And least of all, you can’t leverage that into getting reelected after twelve wasteful years in power.

8:47 PM Well, the best plans don’t work, my new blog is not working, I can’t access the editor, hope it comes back. In any cae the Government is breaking the law by having Ministers appear on the official TV station saying the SI won. Nobody stops them, we are in a lawless country. My good sources say the NO won by 5%, but don’t believe anything until the CNE announces it.

7:20 Cabinet members appear on TV celebrating the victory, Globovision cuts them off, but Government TV station broadcasts it.

6:00 PM. Rumors have begun and as expected the Si supporters say the Si won by six points and the No by four points. Despite the fact that it is illegal for exit polls or results to be broadcast, Minister of Finance Ali Rodriguez said on TV the trend towards the Si vote was irreversible. Had he been opposition, he would have been jailed by now, but since he is pro-Chavez it is ok for him to say whatever he wants. Reportedly, the student computer center where the students gather the results was raided by the intelligence police.

On the left, I tried to take a picture of this guy voting with the wooden cross behind him, but when I was about to take it the guard said I could not, I did anyway, but the guy had moved. I vote in a Catholic school, thus the cross. You can interpret it either way, the cross will protect the vote or we will be crucified.

The second picture is from a voting center in the highly populated area of Los Dos Caminos, a middle to lower middle class area.

The third picture on is a voting center off the Redoma de Petare in the extreme East of Caracas. In the fourth one, a voting center in Montecristo a lower middle class area. (I clearly have problems arranging the pictures and the text in this new software)

I will report later today as needed, I think it is going to be a long night with polls closing at 6 PM.

I voted this morning without much of a wait, took my mother and waited for her and then voted and took her home.

As I was going in a girl in front of me had a University sweater from Simon Bolivar University, yellow in color, said USB in the back and front and had the slogan of the University. The National Guardsman told her she could not go in wearing it because it was propaganda. She complained that it was only her university’s logo and a higher ranking guardsman came out and told her she had to take it off to go in. She had a t-shirt under it and took it off. What was funny was that by the end of her vote she was carrying around her waist and you could see the logos any way. I guess being a university student has become a no no, you are subversive, opposition, oligarch and enemy of the State.

The second problem I saw firsthand is that the voting machines are not programmed properly. When you press on your choice, a check mark appears. But, for example, my mother kept her finger on her choice (guess?) and the check would appear and disappear. When she first removed her finger, the check was not there and she had to press again. This caused problems and those that pressed “VOTE” without the check present their vote was void and there was no going back. However, major Chavista political figures that had this happened to them, like Tarek William Saab and Aristobulo Isturiz, were allowed to vote twice in another sign of Government advantage.

In my polling table there were 520 voters, of which 182 had voted by noon, which is a sign of high abstention. In that table, 5 people (1%) had already voted void because of this problem and were not allowed to vote twice.

I went around the city and saw no lines anywhere, the procedure is simple, but only in 2007 have there been no lines like this.

So, Teodoro Petkoff writes an Editorial in Tal Cual asking General Gonzalez Gonzalez, who is in charge of the military operation surrounding the upcoming referendum vote, to please insure that everyone is treated the same way and we get a vitriolic press conference, not only insulting Petkoff, but proving Petkoff’s point that the Venezuelan Armed Forces are indeed part of Chavez’ PSUV party and not at the service of country.

Someone certainly seems nervous about the upcoming vote and it clearly is not the Tal Cual Director…

Because Petkoff’s request are not only reasonable and were made in a very polite tone, but are based on behavior seen in election after election on the part of the armed forces: Military personnel interfering with decisions with the laws ascribes to civilians.

Here are some of the main points Petkoff noted:

“It corresponds to you, General Gonzalez, to stop soldiers and officials from acting in any way contrary the duties that the Constitution and the laws impose on them to guarantee that all Venezuelans feel that the men in uniform that are present at the electoral centers are there to preserve public order and not to involve themselves in any way in what are electoral activities”

And then Petkoff cites examples which are well known to all (I was stopped, machine gun in hand by a soldier from entering a voting center in the 2004 referendum to witness the vote count as established by law):

“There have been officials who have pretended (and in some cases managed to) review the credentials of witnesses (coincidentally, it is always those of the opposition witnesses) and decide to allow access or not to the voting place. There have been officials who have forced electoral polls in which there were no voters in line to remain open beyond the legal time for closing them”

“Even worse, there have been cases in which polls that had been closed because there were no voters, have been forcibly opened by some military officials so that pro-Chavez voters transported in Government vehicles could vote after closing time…We hope you put an end to this”

“We as Venezuelans would like you to be the guarantor of the behavior of ALL of the officials under your command…We are not asking you to give us any preference but that the Armed Forces guarantee equality under the law”

These are all reasonable requests, said respectfully and all of the cases Petkoff cites have been documented and even proven by live TV over the last few votes. Thus, you can’t help but wonder why these guys are so nervous and edgy that the Vie-President of Venezuela holds a press conference with General Gonzalez Gonzalez (a mistake in itself, the General is independent of the Government) and blast Petkoff with insults:

said the General:

“We have seen through this newspaper, this pamphlet how they once again they have pretended to attack (??) the Armed Forces, pretended once again to manipulate them and going beyond this, to manipulate the strategic operational commander”

“They have pretended to attack through this junky paper, pseudo newspaper, which I read very little because when we review it we see lies, manipulations and a whole bunch of things, it is a communication vehicle which is at the service of treason and those without a homeland, who don’t love this country and do not dream of structuring it as it is defined in our Constitution, those are the ones that read that newspaper and use to hurt institutions as honorable and respectable as the Armed Forces…let history, this revolution and this process advance”

and the Vice-President asserted once again that the motto of the Armed Forces is “Homeland, Socialism or Death”, which is also something a democratic majority of Venezuelans objected to in 2007 with their votes.

Well, while Petkoff was simply asking for equality for all, the General immediately places him as a traitor (as well as anyone that reads his paper) and as far as I know, neither socialism, nor the “process” nor the revolution are in any way part of the Venezuelan Constitution. Despite the General’s partiality, a majority of Venezuelans, those he considers traitors and without a homeland, actually rejected that any part of that Chavista BS be part of the Venezuelan Constitution in the referendum in 2007. Which by the way, is being violated by holding the vote again on a question already considered, hiding behind an obtuse question the true meaning of the referendum.

Who is the real traitor to the Constitution and the laws of Venezuela, General Gonzalez Gonzalez? You that steps on it or those of us who defend it (Or try to!)

It is the General who is a traitor for not respecting the democratic wishes of the people, whatever they were or may be in the future. It is the General who shows his partiality by appearing at a press conference in the Vice-Presidents office, insulting the intelligence of all Venezuelans who have seen the behavior Petkoff is asking him to stop in the upcoming vote.

But the real question is whether the General is nervous because he knows that things are not looking up for his partiality or because the behavior denounced by Petkoff in his editorial today, are part of the bag of tricks he and Chavez and his cronies are preparing, should the electorate decide to vote on the side of treason. Because his conduct today was certainly not that of a man planning to follow the law and be impartial in an electoral process in which he will be in charge of the logistics but not the actual process of voting.

Which like so many things going on today makes me worry. The Government keeps parading its polls showing the indefinite reelection is ahead, but serious polls show the opposite (yes, reduced, but from a 20% lead o a 10-12% lead), while the fake pollsters of the revolution can’t even agree on the numbers.

So, beware, if the General nerves are on the edge, so should yours, because the revolution has no scruples, but we traitors do.

And this will be the rather obtuse question that Venezuelans will vote in the upcoming referendum:

Do you approve of the widening of the political rights of Venezuelans in the terms contemplated in the amendment to articles 230, 160, 174, 192 and 162 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, processed by the National Assembly, which allows people to run for all positions of popular election in such a way that their election will be the exclusive expression of the vote of the people?

which is a loose translation of:

¿Aprueba usted la ampliación de los derechos políticos de las venezolanas y los venezolanos en los términos contemplados en la enmienda de los artículos 230, 160, 174, 192 y 162 de la Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, tramitada por la Asamblea Nacional, al permitirse la postulación para todos los cargos de elección popular de modo que su elección sea expresión exclusiva del voto del pueblo?

Enjoy while I am away, although not enjoyable

William Andrews, William J. Bratton

Crime and Politics in Caracas

Thank Hugo Chávez for the Venezuelan capital’s soaring murder rate.

A recent report in The Economist noted that Caracas, Venezuela, is now one of the world’s most violent cities, with an official murder rate of 130 homicides for every 100,000 residents. The Venezuelan think tank Incosec suggests that the real rate is even higher—a staggering 166 per 100,000, or triple the rate in 1999, when President Hugo Chávez took office. It didn’t have to be this way. From 2000 to early 2002, as members of the Bratton Group and in cooperation with the Manhattan Institute, we worked to improve public safety in Caracas. We were beginning to achieve promising results until Chávez undermined the project. Crime is now rampant, the mayor we worked with has gone into exile, the police chief sits in jail, and Chávez has barred a promising young reformer from running for mayor this fall.

We remember our days in Caracas as an exciting time. A new constitution had just granted the city autonomous status from the federal government, with the new Metropolitan Police to operate under mayoral control. Alfredo Peña, the new mayor, brought us in to help organize the force in accordance with the innovative policing ideas that had cut crime dramatically in the United States in the 1990s. Caracas hired new police officers and more than doubled starting salaries, trying to recruit better-educated cops and make corruption less tempting. The new police chief, Ivan Simonovis, was a veteran of the national investigative police, a relentless foe of police corruption, and a tireless crime fighter.

Our work sought to create a first-class police reform model in Catia, the impoverished, million-person barrio that reaches up hundreds of feet into the mountains west of the central city. We worked to break down the vast Catia police division into 12 community-based precincts, where we put some of the most promising and ambitious commanders. We trained a special cadre of local detectives who would investigate crime in the previously ignored barrio. Using New York City’s Compstat as a model, we established strategy meetings to hold commanders accountable and to track and reduce crime. In 18 months, the murder rate in Catia declined by one-third, and citizens’ perception of the police began to improve. Polls taken by independent groups measured the change. But we could also see it on the ground, as residents began showing up to help repair local police stations and form neighborhood watch groups.

We were getting ready to establish a second model in the city’s other great barrio, Petare, when politics reared its head. Chávez, apparently jealous of Mayor Peña’s success, held back critical funding that the national government owed Caracas for law enforcement. Graffiti appeared, suggesting that the Bratton Group was composed of CIA agents and telling us to go home. Pro-Chávez radicals in the Metropolitan Police sought to divide the force along political lines. Tensions came to a head in April 2002, when Chávez was briefly forced out of office, Caracas street protests turned violent, and 17 people died. By October, pro-Chávez cops had seized control of police headquarters, and the following month, Chávez sent in the military to take command of the force. Mayor Peña was driven from office and fled to Miami. Chief Simonovis was arrested in November 2004 on dubious charges; he remains in a Caracas jail to this day, his trial still dragging on. Needless to say, our consulting work ended.

Today, crime is the Number One public policy concern in Venezuela and the major issue in the upcoming local elections in November. Leopoldo López, the 37-year-old Harvard-edu­cated, reform-minded mayor of Caracas’s Chacao district, had planned to run for mayor of the entire city, largely on a public-safety platform. Though we never worked for López, we met him and were impressed by his intelligence, energy, and insight. He understood that crime disproportionately affected the poor, and he went to great lengths to improve the Chacao police. He is immensely popular among all socioeconomic groups, having won a reelection bid in 2004 with 80 percent of the vote. As he has loomed as a rival to Chávez, there have been several attempts to assassinate him, including one attack in which his bodyguard died in his arms. And Chávez has blacklisted him on trumped-up corruption charges, along with 260 other opposition candidates, and barred him from participating in the elections.

What crime-afflicted cities like Caracas need are competent local leaders, ready to reform and redirect police efforts. This is what López could offer—and what Peña and Simonovis offered before him. Unfortunately, like all authoritarians, Chávez views independent, competent leaders as threats to his power. If the suffering people of Caracas have to pay the price, well, that’s politics, Chávez-style.

William Andrews works as a police and security consultant with the Bratton Group. William Bratton is the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

As Petrobras becomes the top Latin American oil company, we can’t accept
new blacklists that bar the best from working for Venezuela

Reading
about Petrobras this weekend, I could not help but be envious about the
different routes the two state oil companies Petrobras and our PDVSA have
taken in the last few years. Petrobras, the one time oil importer has
managed in 30 years to make Brazil not only self-sufficient in oil, but a
company for which Brazilians can feel proud about. The article I was
reading in Barron’s (by subscription, but you can read it here:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/drilling-deep-flying-high/story.aspx?g
uid={6D03B92C-4F04-431F-936B-F03D73F5877C}) paints the company as
self-sufficient and competent and sitting on top of what may be the biggest
oil find in 30 years, the Tupi field. The article praises Petrobras and its
people saying:

“They’ve been deepwater drillers for 40 years and
have the people and have the processes in place,” she adds. “They’ve got
top-line people. Are they credible? Absolutely.”
This contrasts with our
own PDVSA who not only lacks the people required to do the job, but has in
fact sent them over to the competition, principally Canada where they are
shining and demonstrating how good they were.

Meanwhile in
Venezuela, production goes down and recently PDVSA signed a contract with
Schlumberger as it realized how it has lost technological capacity to
sustain operations.
Those that were part of PDVSA, 22,000 strong, were
not only fired, but to this day remain blacklisted whether they work in oil
or they make food, their ID numbers are checked at every step so that not
only is it that they can’t sign a contract with PDVSA, they can not even
have access to PDVSA buildings to sell, as one example I know, prepared
food to PDVSA workers.
And as Carlos Blanco says so well today,(
http://opinion.eluniversal.com/2008/06/29/opi_34919_art_tiempo-de-palabra_92
3103.shtml) our tolerance of earlier blacklists allows new ones to surface.
PDVSA fired 22,000 for participating in the 2002-2003 strike, but in the
end got rid of any one suspect of not being “rojo-rojito”. The 22,000 were
not only fired illegally, but their personal savings and voluntary pension
plans have been confiscated and there is not a Court in the country that
will hear their case.  The illegality remains in place backed by
Chavez, his Prosecutors, the Courts, the Comptroller and the People’s
Ombudsman.

And while we hear the stories of success, we don’t hear
the many cases which as Blanco calls them today in his article: “Detrás de
cada excluido hay un drama humano de inmensas proporciones; pero, desde el
punto de vista social hay otro drama que es el de una nación que se priva
de la participación de mucha de su gente mejor preparada” (Behind every
excluded person there is a human drama of inense proportions but, from the
social point of view there is another drama of a Nation that blocks itself
from the participation of many people who are better prepared)

And
the drama is worse the lower level the person fired from PDVSA. The
engineers and technical people, the managers found jobs, left the country
or started their own businesses, but the secretaries and messengers, the
field workers with careers in PDVSA, have suffered the most. Lives
destroyed by the whims of Hugo Chavez and the approval of his sorry
cohorts.
And thus, it is Brazil with a quarter of Venezuela’s reserves,
which has become the great Latin American oil company. as PDVSA has had
even trouble trying to certify that it has the reserves that it has been
known for years it has. But in the simple mindedness and ignorance of the
President at PDVSA that certification ahs become the only purpose, never
mind that he has no clue if we can ever get it out of the ground. Certainly
not under his leadership.

Which proves once again how powerful the
concept of The Devil’s Excrement is. Brazil had to build its oil company
under negative circumstances, lacking even the most basic source for its
business. But it not only exploited ethanol in the lean years, but has now
developed all of the country’s oil needs. And in contrast to Venezuela,
Brazil has actually increased gasoline prices in the last few years, not as
much as they have to but enough to make the subsidy irrelevant in contrast
with the irresponsible policies of our Government.

And we keep
chugging along, using up as much as 800,000 barrels of gasoline a day, used
to run subsidized automobiles for the wealthy classes of Venezuela. A
subsidy close to US$ 14 billion a year which represents a perverse subsidy
given away by a Government so that autocrat Hugo Chavez can remain in his
position, literally screwing his constituency without them knowing about
it.

And some of those that ignored the PDVSA firings and subsequent
blacklist are now victims of the new list disqualifying their candidates.
And if we don’t do anything, there will be new lists, new abuses, new
exclusions and new discrimination in a Government that does not pretend to
include every one. And the excluded are needed to make a better Venezuela.
We need every competent person. We need inclusion. We need everyone,
independent of its political beliefs, as long as he/she is there to do a
job and not to turn the job into a political project.

And at the
pace we are going it seems Chavez may have to exclude every single
Venezuelan before we actually do something about it. And so many have been
excluded because they were not loyal, that few competent and independent
thinkers are left yo help a Government that hates “experts”.

Without
the, we will never get Venezuela out of where it is. People have to wake up
and realize they can be next.

Random Bits from the revolution

Passionate about money: Remember
when the Minister of Justice dismissed the murder of RCTV’s anchorman
Javier Garcia as a “crime of passion” that should not affect society? Well,
as usual the Minister was talking without knowing anything about the case.
Yes, the murderer was caught, but the only passion so far in the case was
that of the murdered for money as the police said the motive was robbery.
Another triumph for the stupidity and incompetence of Minister Rodriguez
Chacin! In any reasonable country he would have resigned six cases
ago.

Supreme Switch: Venezuela must be the only country where the
Supreme Court issues a decision, the decision is published on the Court’s
webpage and sawn into the Court’s records (A strange custom in itself!),
only to be modified when the Government calls the Court and tells it to
change it. This happened this week with the decision by none other than the
former President of the Venezuelan Electoral Board (remember the one that
could barely speak?) on what is considered taxable and when it will be
applicable. The original sentence said it was only regular salaries, which
is the case in the new one, but the old one said it would apply from the
original decision by the Supreme Court, while the new one says starting
next year. The difference is important, as it would imply a credit to all
those that paid taxes this year. This creates a loophole in that companies
may give workers special non-regular bonuses as a way of giving them
non-taxable income and thus a salary increase. Of course, the original
decision was filled with revolutionary intent, which can backfire when
reality hits. 

Failed Plan: Two weeks ago General
Manager/Chief Justice/Commander in Chief/President Chavez had the brilliant
idea of stopping crime by placing two National Guardsman with FAL rifles on
every public transportation bus in the country. As everything in Venezuela,
this was simply improvised on his live reality show Alo Presidente, but
clearly the President had no clue that this would require more National
Guardsmen that the country had, without taking into account the danger of
untrained, armed soldiers on every bus. Some eager beavers took the
President’s words as an order and for one day many buses in Caracas carried
the two guards until someone realized what a stupid idea it was (I am sure
they never told Chavez). On top of that crime did not go down that day in
Caracas. The idea was dropped and the new “program” lasted only twenty
fours hours. Don’t complain, that is longer than many other programs
started by Hugo Chavez.

The new Law of Intelligence and Counterintelligence of which President
Chavez claimed to be so proud of today, represents a first nugget of the
type of stuff that we will be seeing in the next few weeks under the
Enabling Bill, which allows Chavez to legislate by decree.

I will not dwell on the details, this will be done soon, but on the fact
that the new law violates due process, the Chavista Constitution of ’99 and
removes the right to defense. It was created to create fear in people and
its objective is simply repressive.

Now someone will go to the Supreme Court, which will strike an article or
two, but will leave the rest unchanged.

You have been warned, as I travel for work related reasons..