The Devil's Excrement

Given the total disregard for formalities and the letter of the law of the Bolivarian Goverment, people are still puzzling over Chávez even bothering to name a temporary replacement for Vice-President Nicolas Maduro, during the Foreign Minister’s two day absence to be present at the Unasur meeting in Lima. Given that Chávez has never even bothered to name his own replacement, even when he has been in intensive care, why did he bothered with such a minutia in the whole scheme of things? And the choice of the Minister for Electricity Hector Navarro was even more surprising, given his minor role in the overall scheme of things, even if he has proven to be a loyal ally of the Venezuelan President.

To some, this is simply Chávez sending a message that he is still very much in charge. Some think it was even extravagant, given that it should have been Maduro who named his own successor and not the Venezuelan President.

Others suggest that this was actually an act of paranoia, guaranteeing that the Presidency would not fall into the wrong hands should something happen to Chávez while Maduro was away. In fact, some even think that this indicates or even proves that all is not well with the Venezuelan President, if he has to worry about such convoluted scenarios.

But the remarkable thing is that the act would never hold water legally in any scenario, however convoluted it may be. The decree was signed by Chávez in Caracas, on a day that it was well known that Chávez was already in Cuba, from where it is simply illegal for him to issue the decree. Thus, even if a worst case scenario occurred, it would have been difficult to show the legality of the whole thing.

By now, the whole question is moot, Maduro is already back and order has been restored into this possible bifurcation into chaos. But the head scratching continues over the rationale behind the act.

You all know the horror story that Judge Afuini’s life has become ever since she decided to apply the letter of the law to Eligio Cedeño and let him go because he had been jailed without a trial for longer than Venezuelan law says you should. She was jailed on direct orders from Chávez on national TV even before there were formal charges against her. Since then, her trial has been delayed over and over. Despite her health problems, she was denied home detention until the situation became untenable and the UN, European Union and the Interamerican Human Rights Commission have asked the Venezuelan Government for her release to no avail.

What was not known to the public, but the Government and the UN were informed of, was that Judge Afiuni was tortured and raped while initially incarcerated at INOF in Los Teques. This was only publicly revealed this week, as a book was published with Afiuni’s story. The story is no surprise, Venezuela’s penitentiary system has become a terror story of how human beings are treated with less respect than animals at the country’s jails. What is sad is that Afiuni also had to suffer this additional violation of her rights as a human being to satisfy Chavez’ whims and that despite her suffering, nobody in the Chavez Government showed any form of compassion towards her.

But it gets worse.while the Minister for Women says that it has to be investigated and “if true” her rights have to be guaranteed (about time!), the former Head of INOF who goes by the name of Isabel Gonzalez tries to turn it around against Afiuni and says (without any support) that she will sue Afuini, because it is all false and her accusations violate human dignity”. They also now deny that the accusation was presented to the UN, which her lawyer clearly says was done and today Maria Corina Machado publicly scolds Chavez, because he knew the reality of what had happened to Afiuni.

That is the story of Chavismo, a lack of scruples, a lack of compassion and an ability to turn around any charges on the accuser, the persecuted and the abused. A complete inability to assume responsibility for anything, while trampling with people’s rights openly. Come on! Are we to believe that at INOF no woman has been raped or abused before? But these incompetent Government officials come out and hold a press conference as if they ran a perfect system, ready to pile on to Afiuni once more, without qualms and moral doubts.

It just seems that Venezuelan sinks deeper into a lawless and amoral state as time goes on. Where is the People’s Ombudsman when this happens? Where is the Prosecutor? What does this whole thing say about the venerable and amoral Hugo Chávez? The horror continues as I write. Forty thousand plus Venezuelans live in squalor in Venezuelan jails, abused, raped, tortured, without food, while the President of the “people” looks the other way, ignoring a problem too complex for anyone in his administration to even attempt to solve it.

But as Hugo himself,said on the occasion of a couple of hundred deaths in Venezuela because of his irresponsible Government, the “show” must go on, that is all that matters in the Chavez revolution.

Truly depressing…

Added: And now INOF sets up a media show with some interns denying this was possible.

While a lot has been written about Chavez’ “Dedocracy”* and his choice for Governors, I am surprised how little has been said about Chavez’ choice for Guarico State, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, shown smiling for the first time ever above. Here is a case a candidate who fits the image of the perfect Chavista citizen that the revolution has promised to create in the future, a truly “nice” guy, tolerant, democratic, honest, above reproach. I mean, it is really hard to find anything to complain about in this choice. we find all the criticism simply jealousy, without foundation.

Why complain if he is not from Guarico? Born in Anzoategui, he has never lived in Guarico, but we are sure that he will learn fast and will even visit the State regularly once he is elected. He roamed the Llanos of Venezuela carrying out secret counter intelligence and military operations, so he knows his way around Guarico.

While many think that Rodriguez Chacin first came to public light for his heroic participation in the November 1992 coup attempt against Carlos Andres Perez, his earlier claim to fame was his leadership role in the El Amparo Massacre, where fourteen people died. Rodriguez Chacin was accused of being part of those that participated in the massacre and even formally accused, but once Chavez got to power, the case was never considered again.

And when Chavez won in 1998, Rodriguez Chacin was appointed to an intelligence agency and later, in 2002 became Minister of the Interior and Justice (nice, no?), where he could make sure that his case never resurfaced again.

Rodriguez Chacin was discovered to have two Venezuelan ID cards, his own, and another one in the name of Jose Montenegro. Montenegro had opened an account in Banesco and other banks and Congress investigated it, since it was Rodriguez Chacin’s picture on the cedula opening the account. There were a number of accounts opened by “Montenegro” and they had fairly sizable withdrawals and deposits regularly. The real Montenegro was actually quite worried about it. Never heard from him again.

Rodriguez Chacin became Minister of the Interior and Justice in 2002 and then again in January 2008, but was there less than nine months, just three weeks before the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) ungratefully declared him as a “significant narcotics trafficker” under the Kingpin Act. It was rumored at the time that the US Government had given the Chavez Government advance notice of this and that led to his removal.

Later, Rodriguez Chacin’s name surfaced quite frequently in the captured computer at a FARC camp in Ecuador. Among the exchanges there was a generous offer (Told you he was a nice guy!) of a “loan” for US$ 250 million to the FARC guerrillas to buy weapons, which Rodriguez Chacin referred to as “don’t think of it as a loan, think of it as solidarity”. See what a nice guy he is? There was also an email in which Rodriguez Chacin was asking the FARC to train Venezuela’s military in guerrilla tactics, just in case the US invaded Venezuela.

He was also in charge of the humanitarian operation “Operacion Enmanuel” to retrieve three persons kidnapped by the FARC in a negotiation in which Chavez tried to get Ingrid Betancourt out of Colombia, but had to settle for Clara Rojas and her son born in captivity. Because of Chavez desire to promote his role in this, camera crews from Chavez’ Telesur accompanied Rodriguez Chacin in the rescue and he was taped during the exchange, expressing his solidarity to the guerrillas in no uncertain terms:

Rodriguez Chacin says in the video: In the name of President Chavez…we are watching your struggle. Maintain your spirits and you can count on us”. See the niceness coming through again?

For all his help, his record in all these dubious activities and having no experience running for office, running a municipality, let alone a State, President Chavez used his “Dedocracy”* to name him as PSUV’s candidate to be Governor of Guarico State, a State where Chavez won by 30%, insuring that even Rodriguez Chacin can win there.

And proving once again, that in Chavez’ revolution, nice guys like Rodriguez Chacin, do finish first.

*Democracy by Chavez’ finger

This week, Bolivia sold a ten year bond in the amount of US$500 million to foreign investors.

The yield?

Just under 5%, precisely 4.875%, Venezuela’s 2022 bond yields 11.2% to maturity, more than twice as much*

While Bolivia certainly has certain economic variables than are better than Venezuela’s, such as lower debt to GDP ratio (about 30%) , US$ 10 billion in international reserves which is about 20 months of imports for that country and a lower fiscal deficit, it also has a long history of defaults, a Government with a rich history of expropriations and nationalizations and an unproven track record in terms of willingness to pay.

Thus, while Bolivia enjoys a credit rating of BB-, just one notch above Venezuela’s B+, which should imply a lower yield, given the uncertainties, I would have thought investors would have demanded at least 1% or 2% more yield. Instead, the issue was oversubscribed by a factor of almost ten and the yield is like that of countries that are more respectful of private property rights and the law, like the Dominican Republic.

To me, this suggests that investors are overly punishing Venezuela for the lack of transparency in its numbers, its large fiscal deficit and the lack of growth in its oil production and therefore exports. Because even while Chávez could easily announce tomorrow that he will no longer pay the country’s debt,  during the last fourteen years, he has shown that willingness to pay in the bad moments, even if he has also stepped over private property rights as much as Bolivia.

Thus, either these investors were smoking (or chewing?) some coca leaves and the bonds should drop in value (higher yield) once the hangover is over, or Venezuela’s bonds should move up significantly over the next few weeks or months and narrow the gap in yield to maturity, and thus country risk, between the two countries. Simply put, in a world without yield, Venezuela having to pay double what Bolivia does for similar bonds* seems somewhat illogical.

But what do I know?

*The two bonds are not identical, the Venezuela 2022 matures in three equal parts in 2020, 2021 and 2022, but all Venezuelan global bonds maturing around 2022 yield more than twice what Bolivia does.

President Hugo Chávez has just been reelected as President of Venezuela by more than one million votes. According to the Electoral Board, these are the results with  90% of the vote counted, 19.9% abstention:
Hugo Chávez Frías                             54.42%       7.444.082 votes

Henrique Capriles Radonzky         44.97%       6.151.594 votes

I am in no mood to analyze, abstention was incredibly low, I understand Zulia went badly,  it was when that State started coming in that the difference began opening up. Abstention is simply incredible, never had been that low. Remember this graph? It had a lot to do with it, but it was not the full story.

As is customary on election days, I went around the city first thing in the morning. It was not as successful as other times, First, I was alone, so driving and taking pictures at the same time made it difficult. But the biggest  problem is a new custom to block a few streets surrounding the electoral centers. It used to be one block, but somehow this time around they extended it to three or four blocks. This makes it difficult for older people to get to the voting center and more so for the handicapped. I tried to get close to voting centers in Catia and downtown, but it was difficult, no place to park and pictures from afar. This one was about as close as I got to small centers:

All places I saw had huge lines, in Liceo Gustavo Herrera, the line went out to the street and then all the way back to the Sambil shopping center, about five to six blocks. At Liceo Andres Bello, this is a small subset of the lines I saw:

A good friend sent a picture of the line ahead of her, as you can see there seems to be no end to it:

The biggest problem seems to be with null votes occurring whenever the voter fails to wait for the full picture of the candidate to appear on the screen after selecting it in the touch sensitive pad. Apparently, if the full picture has not appeared and you press select, the vote is null and you can not go back. This is creating problems for both sides as both campaign spokesmen have warned voters on TV about this glitch in the “best voting system in the world” (Message for Jimmy and Jennifer). Another problem is the “information point” at the beginning where you are checked to see if you vote in that center. After that, theer are no lines. Supposedly the only function of that position is to know how many voters have voted.

The only dissonant note was that of the Minister of Defense who came on TV and talked about “intelligence” reports which suggest that “armed irregular groups” were planning to disrupt the process in the afternoon and began warning them that they would not be allowed to act and the Armed Forces were ready to stop them. With such calm and peace in the process this was unnecessary.

Oh yeah, three voters swallowed their ballots after casting their votes and they were jailed. No kidding!!!

Chávez has yet to vote, with reporters waiting at his voting center since early morning. They initially said it was customary for Chávez to vote between 10 and 11 AM, but it is now 12:30 PM and he has not voted.

The weather has been mild so far. Caracas had a bright morning but clouds are beginning to show up and the rains are likely to come in the afternoon. The Devil has not voted, I saw long lines were I vote, will go in a little bit.

While I was downtown, I got trapped in the maze of streets that were closed, spinning around over and over looking for a way out. I was not alone, there was lots of traffic in this sort of infinite loop. So, I did some tourism. I had not seen the new (and ugly) Simon Bolivar mausoleum:

which you can see is next to the Panteon Nacinal where Bolivar is buried and which did look nice and clean:

so did this building in Avenida Urdaneta, I am not sure the colors are the original ones, but it looked nice:

and I certainly liked this mural in a corner on the wall of a house in a barrio near La Pastora, very colorful:

As I was trying to get out of the maze of the traffic, I realized I was very low on gas, like really low, I managed to get out and by sheer luck there was a gas station, but they only had low octane gasoline. I purchased 10 liters of the lower 91 octane stuff, just to make sure I would get home. I paid all of Bs. 0.70 for this,  16 cents US$ at the official rate of exchange, around 6 cents at the rate you can’t talk about.