The Devil's Excrement

And in the bizarro revolution we read today that:

—The “Development” Fund Fonden was created to finance development projects and is banned from spending in local currency. Well, it turns out that last year it not only spent in local currency, but bought both old and new houses which were given to people that had lost their homes which violates the law that created it, but you could argue does something good even if it has nothing to do with development. But more interestingly, Fonden created a trust for the Ministry of Defense to purchase 15 multipurpose helicopters, 38 MI-17V5 helicopters, Kalashnikov rifles, AK-103 assault rifles, 24 SU-30 MK2 airplanes, long range radars and funds to establish a gunpowder factory.

—Day before yesterday President Hugo Chavez announced the creation of 28 new higher education institutions all of which, according to the imagination of the Autocrat/Dictator will begin functioning within one year. These institution will be comprised of 11 specialized universities, 13 state universities and 4 technical institutes. A surprised Minister for Higher Education, physicist Luis Acuna, says in today’s paper that there is no money for these projects. Another empty and unfulfilled promise by the autocrat. In any case, Venezuela needs more investment in education at lower levels. Higher education receives almost half of the education budget, which makes little sense.

—And how about actor Danny Glover, he finally got his payday for supporting Hugo Chavez as the autocrat gave the actor US$ 18 million to make a movie about Haiti. I guess Glover has no scruples for taking money away from the Venezuelan poor that he sobs so much for. In fact, imagine the impact those same US$ 18 million could have on the Haitian poor.

—And while the Minister of the Interior and Justice minimized on TV the mob assault on Globovision last night, where they are still waiting for him to send the police, the Mayor of Maracaibo issues a decree essentially forbidding any demonstrations this weekend in that city. I guess he has yet to read our Constitution and the rights it gives us, which he is violating.

A group claiming to be pro-Chavez, Marxist, Leninist, Bolivarian surrounded and harassed TV network Globovision in another clear threat to freedom of speech. Meanwhile the authorities “condemned the actions from far away and no police or any of the thousands of National Guards spread around the city to protect the “people” today showed up to defend the ioaltion of the media’s rights.

RCTV is out, is Globovision next?

So this morning students at two universities (UCAB and USB) began early to protest the shutdown of the RCTV network demonstrating peacefully, blocking the entrance to the university and chanting against the Hugo Chavez regime. After a while, other universities followed (UCV and ULA). The Minister of Interior and Justice called the protests small and said the largest was about 600 people, which did not match what was being seen on TV in Globovision or RCTV, the only two networks “actively” covering the protests.

Then, National Guardsmen in motorcycles and armored cars begin parading around Caracas, some near where the protests were taking place, other just parading around like the picture below left, which was taken near Los Ruices, far from any military facility or any university in what was a clear and direct effort by the regime to intimidate. (Notice the near 100 Guardsmen in motorcycles with anti-riot gear). The picture below right was at the Headquarters of Government station VTV, in charge of promoting Hugo Chavez and his revolution and not informing and entertaining the population.

Then the Minister of Defense going into a military parade comes in and says that “minority groups can not go against the majority feeling of the Venezuelan people to create uncertainty with the closure of RCTV, as if there was a majority support to the decision, which is in any case a legal decision and not one to be decided by popularity, but in any case, all indications are the illegal and political decision is highly unpopular, contradicting the Minister’s words. Meanwhile, as people begin checking the newssites on the Internet, Noticiero Digital, Megaresistencia and RCTV websites are taken down by denial of service attacks, the effects of which are still being felt hours later. This is compounded by problems with the CANTV network which take down some other news sites in what may be unrelated to the denial of serivce attacks, since all the others are hosted abroad.

Then the autocrat/dictator himself shows up at the military parade, the main focus of which is the new Russian planes. I had little tie to listen (or interest) to the speech, but what little I heard may have been Chavez at his nuttiest . While I will wait to have the transcript, the intimidation was there, dressed in military garb (which is illegal since he is not active), the President told his supporters not to worry that “his” new planes (on the right above) are flown by experts and carry bombs which these experts can drop with pinpoint accuracy on their targets. (Us?).

And then, as if this were not enough evidence and proof of how we have lost our rights and freedom in this country, the Constitutional Hall of the Supreme Court decides to “protect” the diffuse rights of the “people”, the same rights that it refused to protect in allowing the shutdown of RCTV, and essentially allows the Government not only to shutdown the network, but to take over the equipment rightfully owned by the owners of RCTV, all in the name of the “Law”. Gimme a f… break! This is a simple and direct confiscation of the enemy’s property, which goes beyond anything ever seen so far in the Chavez Dictatorship, as usual under the guise of “legality”.

There you have it, a President who is no longer military in military garb threatening the citizens, the National Guard intimidating protesters, the Minister of Defense threatening protesters and the Supreme Court confiscating the private property of a group whose concession has been illegally canceled to protect the “people’s rights”.

And some people still have the audacity to claim this is a democracy, the “script” today certainly proved otherwise. This is as totalitarian as modern Government’s can get without killing people.

And we can still see what is happening, imagine when we can’t! Coming soon in a city near us!

Dorothy Kronick wrote an excellent article for The New Republic, which you can read in its entirety by registering free here. Entitled “The Kingdom of Darkness”, it could have as subtitle a saying Venezuelans use frequently “We have seen this movie before” as it outlines how Chavez is making the same economic mistakes made by some of his predecessors. Yes, we have seen this movie before and we know the ending and it is not very pretty. Some highlights from the article, but you should go read it all, worth your time and the perspective:

“In fact, the long economic catastrophe that led to Chavez’s
election in 1998 was created not by market reforms but rather by
policies just like those that define Chavez’s Bolivarian project. While
neoliberal adjustments in Venezuela were problematic, a Chavez-style
development model holds primary responsibility for the country’s
abysmal poverty and inequality.”

“To be sure, there are significant differences between Chavez’s
economic policy and Perez’s: Chavez devotes a larger portion of the
federal budget to social spending; tax collection has increased under
Chavez, while it suffered in the ’70s; and, perhaps most importantly,
Chavez has kept the national debt profile under control (total debt is
about 30 percent of GDP). The government still has nearly $25 billion
in international reserves, though this represents a sharp decline from
$36 billion at the close of last year.

But these differences are unlikely to save Venezuela from
1980s-style troubles when the price of oil falls–and perhaps before
then. While debt accumulation has not yet reached dangerous levels, it
has been increasing since January; analysts predict that the government
will finish 2007 with a sizable fiscal deficit. Unless the economy
generates value outside the oil sector, it is only a matter of time
before the government must borrow or cut expenditures (and it is
unlikely to do the latter).”

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.

Mision CANTV by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

The topic of nationalizations is not for us Venezuelans and ideological one. It is more of a practical matter.

We have lived too many years of our lives with a State owning hundreds of companies so as to feel now any form of vindication of our patriotic fiber with the nationalizations of CANTV and the Electricidad de Caracas. The only ones here who believe that we are taking a revolutionary step are the usual ultra leftists and the new ideological priests of the “process”, who operate from the Anauco Hilton Hotel.

CANTV was part of the State until 1991 and it was a piece of garbage. You had to wait ten minutes to get a dial tone and one day to make an international long distance call. In the whole country, with the exception of Margarita, Valencia, Barquisimeto and Ciudad Bolívar, the distribution of electricity is in the hands of CADAFE and it is impossible to have worse service than that. They live from one bright period to another. Sidor was in the hands of the state until 1997 and it survived thanks to the mouth to mouth resuscitation that public finances gave it. The same with the aluminum companies, that have never stopped being part of the State and whose losses are covered by state funds. We had here state airlines living off state funds; the State was also a hotel chain owner, owner of sugar processing plants, radio stations, banks (let us not mention that poor Banco Industrial, eternally looted by its Directors), etc., etc. Thus, we have absolutely no reason to feel ourselves facing a sort of great novelty when we someone talks to us about nationalizations.

We are too accustomed to state companies and their terrible service, as well as the frequent corruption scandals.

The only state company that has worked well is PDVSA, but Chavismo is already finishing it off. Only the extremely high oil prices dissimulate a chaotic situation. And you can not blame the strike for the current disaster. And this is the crux of the question. If these Government leaders (who deserve the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, because everything they touch turns to shit), have managed to unravel PDVSA, what can you expect from CANTV and Elecar, now in the same hands? Will we also start living in Caracas from brightness to brightness? Will they be able to manage the advanced technology that we have today, the same incompetent that failed in their efforts to build a new viaduct of the La Guaira highway with the resources of the Minister of Infrastructure and had to go and hire a private company to get them out of the tight spot? The matter is thus not an ideological one. One listens to “I the Supreme being” offering wonderful telephone things and hopes it will be that way, but it is enough to remember the street kids, the La Carlota Park, the road to Macuro, the 200 thousand homes a year, the parties, the Zamoran estates, the implacable fight against corruption, the Vargas reconstruction and so many other swindles of that type, to realize that it is the same usual BS. Let us pray to God that will be not be communicating with each other via smoke signals soon.

No, this is not a brand new refrigerator. This is the meat display at the supermarket I go to. This is a daily occurrence as they have not had meat for quite a while, as a matter of fact since at least April 20th. they have received meat twice, both times selling it in less than two hours. This had never happened in the country’s history, but between land being taken over and left unused and price controls, supply has simply disappeared. There you have it, a true, real accomplishment by the revolution!

Ironically, below the fridge is a row of dog food bags, some of the imported. No comments!

Somehow, I am always surprised by the lack of scruples of the revolution and its leaders. Maybe I am naive, maybe I would really like in an ideal world, or maybe I was raised by my family and my profession to have high ethical standards. But I can’t help but be surprised by statements from the autocrat like the one last weekend when he said:

“The only way that RCTV’s concession will not end on Sunday the 27th. is for Hugo Chavez not to be President of Venezuela”

There it is, in plain words: I am the law, the king, the autocrat and the Dictator. You disagree with me, either you overthrow me or else. As simple as that.

But then, we also have that apprentice of Dictator, the man who did such a good job as “impartial” Head and Director of the Electoral Board, that he was rewarded now with being Vice-President. No ethical conflict or debate there for the revolution: He was a fanatic serving the revolution in his earlier role, he is now second in command and clearly learning the ropes as mini-Dictator in training, a role that always served VP Jorge Rodriguez well:

“There is nothing to talk about (closing RCTV)…there is nothing more to be said”

Was there ever something to discuss with a Government that barely even talks even among its members? They all play at the rhythm of Chavez says and follow their leader. There are no “legal attributions” that the state is using. The regulator CONATEL initiated one process against RCTV which has not been completed. The Prosecutor initiated another process against RCTV that has barely even been initiated. There is no legality involved. On the day in which the so called “coup” took place, the autocrat actually tried to stop Venezuelans and the world from watching the carnage going on outside. If it were not that the networks decided to split the screen Chavez calmly on one side, bloody carnage on the other, we would have never known how cynical and without scruples Chavez and his cohorts are. That was murder, wholesale murder, but the fanatics that support Chavez could care less about the blood of Venezuelans, as they support and administration that murdered that day and allows without care the daily murders of hundreds of Venezuelans.

This is a Government with no compassion towards its own supporters, least of all the blind daughter of a former President who is denied her passport out of the lowest and cruelest form of spite. Human Rights are secondary in the revolution . RCTV is being closed out of spite, as much as all of the other cruel and negative policies of the autocrat are carried out. Other TV stations complied with Chavez’ desire to silence them, RCTV did not. Unfortunately for the others, one day Chavez will wake up and decide to shut them down too. Then they will remember this week.

Meanwhile, human rights organizations have come out en force to declare the reality of the Chavez administration’s lack of democratic credentials and how they are simply punishing RCTV because it is too critical of its actions. From Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch today, the cry is in unison: Chavez is politically motivated to squash its enemies and is using incorrectly his total control of the state. For once, the left is split unevenly, much like Venezuela’s left has been split over the years. The appearance of democracy has fallen down, only those with pseudo fascist tendencies still support the autocrat who looks more and more like their old nemesis’ Fujimori and Pinochet. They can no longer support the unsupportable.

It is now up to Venezuelans to do something about it.

I guess I can’t pass up the comments today by President Chavez that he would cut both fixed line and cellular prices by 20%. He also announced that he would cut taxes on phone service for those living in “poor” areas, as well as cutting interconnection fees by 30%. Thus, in one swipe, the Government has set the course to ruin CANTV much faster that I ever believed possible.

When I first heard that the Government was taking CANTV over, I thought that given the company’s financial health, it would take sometime for the inefficiency, politicking and indecision to start affecting the company. But given that in the December quarter the company’s margins were 27%, the 20% cut in these three very significant revenue streams will be a large hit.

Some people think that these price cuts will drive customers towards CANTV, but in fixed line, CANTV is essentially the only game in town and in wireless it has come back from a distant second place thanks to good service and smart marketing, neither of which are guaranteed now. In fact, I understand that the company’s advertising agency has already been fired in favor PDVSA’s company, so we will see red colors a lot in CANTV’s advertising going forward.

But even worse were Chavez’ comments about wireless (can’t find the quote I heard), saying that wireless communications was an invention of capitalism. This comment shows the President’s ignorance and superficial understanding of communications. In saying that the “new” CANTV will emphasize fixed line, he ignores or seems to be ignorant about the impact and importance of wireless for Venezuela’s poor. The cost of wiring homes which will generate low ARPU’s was the problem of most underdeveloped countries for years. With wireless communications, penetration of communications soared as the home by home investment was replaced by the building of cells which were shared by all users in the area. In 1991, when CANTV was privatized, Venezuela had 1.7 million telephone lines under a mismanaged Government telecom company. Today, CANTV has 3 million fixed lines, but between the three wireless operators, there are some 15 million cellphones in the country, a staggering number that nobody, either from the Government or from the telecom industry ever thought could even happen and so fast. That is real results for everyone, particularly the poor. It would simply be very expensive for anyone, Government or private to undertake the wiring of 5-6 milion homes to achieve a similar penetration with fixed line.

To compound matters, the people named to run the company have little telecom experience or in running large organizations. People are already resigning en masse, as they have been asked to do, if they are not with the “process”. The President of CANTV comes from PDVSA, a former SAP specialist who had a fairly gray career until she pledged allegiance to Chavez. The new President of the wireless company Movilnet, is the former Minister of the Environment, who did not precisely leave a great track record there. I am surprised by the absence of anyone from the military telecom area, one of the few areas in which the military is strong relative to the rest of the country. Even more, I can’t help but mention the presence in the Board of the academic “expert” who advised the CNE so “impartially” on random number generators when the recall vote took place. The revolution certainly rewards those that claiming to be impartial, participate without ethical values in biased processes to favor the Autocrat/Dictator.

Those are the values of the revolution.