The Devil's Excrement

And so 2006 is almost gone. While many people see the end of the year as something sad, I tend to look forward more than back. What will the new year bring? What exciting or new thing will happen to me? What can I do differently? Should I start a new project? In general, a couple of ideas do come up and I am typically a great one for coming up with off the wall ideas about what I want to do that is new. And typically, I do it.

2006 did not bring the things I wanted in my country’s life, even if I was quite happy with my own personal life. And therein lies the paradox, things went well personally, while all the time I devoted to trying to change how this country works went to waste with Chavez’ victory on Dec. 3. The satisfaction is that I lived up to my principles and will continue to do so in the new year.

And thus my friends, Happy New Year from your blogger, hoping that in 2007 you have all your wishes fulfilled and wishing that in the new year you will be able to follow that remarkable wisdom: “Stay hungry, stay foolish“

When I made my post on Chavez and RCTV, it was not clear to me why there was a difference in opinion between the Government and the owners of RCTV on whether the concession expires or not next year. I talked to a few people and I will explain it to the best of my understanding, which still has some gaps. If I were to learn that the details have some imprecision, I will make corrections.

The RCTV concession was indeed due to expire next year. However, the National Assembly approved in 2000 the new Telecommunications Bill, which specified, among many other things that existing concessions would have two years to “transform” or comply to the new legislation. Transforming to the new legisltaion implied the automatic renewal of the concession under the conditions of the new law. The regulator, CONATEL issued the regulations for the application for the transformation. All of the existing TV broadcasting channels submitted their requests to transform their concessions to the new Law.

The problem arises because CONATEL never replied to any of the TV broadcasters approving their  transformation to the new Law. Thus, there is no formal act approving the change. In Venezuela, there is a law called the Ley Organica de Procedimientos Administrativos (LOPA), which establishes time limits (I believe it is 4 months if no reply is ever issued) for Government offices to reply to requests, such as the transformation of the concessions to the new Law. Since CONATEL never formally approved the transformation, but never rejected it either, under the law, the request by the owners of RCTV is considered to be approved and thus, their concession was extended for twenty years counted from the time limit of two years imposed by the law. This is called in Venezuelan legalese “administrative silence” and it is applied to all requests a citizen or any legal entity may make in front of any Government office.

Thus, the difference of opinion arises from the fact that the Government considers the concession to have expired under the old law, while RCTV believes that the administrative silence automatically extended their concession.

Note that in any case, the Government would need to have a legal reason not to renew the concession. That is, if RCTV complied with the requirements for renewal, teh Government can’t simply deny it  without giving a valid reason and those given by Chavez are certainly not valid. It is not a “right of the state” to deny at will or whim, as the Vice President indicated today, there is a rule of law and there has to be a valid legal or technical reason for denying a renewal that has not even been requested by the TV station.

And thus, whether it expires or not next year will have to be decided by the Courts, which I am sure wil find a way to side with the President’s wishes.

As usual cartoonist Rayma hits the right spot below, the genie tells Chavez that he can grant him one wish, Chavez responds that he would like to end with all coup plotters and puff!!!

Wearing military garb and using his now customary intolerant and confrontational style, President Hugo Chavez began the second phase of his fake revolution by announcing that the concession to TV station Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) will not be renewed in March. The owners of the station claim that the concession was renewed until 2020, but whether one side is right or not from a legal point of view is simply irrelevant. What is clear is that dissent is not and will not be tolerated and the scope of action of the media and the press will be slowly quenched, until only one view is available.

The President justified the measure by saying that RCTV had staged coups, a strange claim coming from a man that led one bloody one and supported a second one, for which Venezuelan democracy, the one he claims was so bad and heartless, only showed tolerance and compassion in pardoning him.

But this is just another step in the total control of the Nation by the autocrat. As other TV stations have their concession expire in the next few years, they will either have to put up or shut up, essentially killing free speech, which we have already seen diminished dramatically in the last few years as other TV stations have stayed quiet on many issues which may annoy or offend the autocrat.

And it was done in typically dictatorial and autocratic style. He himself decided it on the basis of politics and hate, there was no technical decision, no evaluation, no evidence, no proof, just Chavez himself deciding that RCTV’s criticism and opposition to his Government was sufficient not to renew the license. Dissent ist verbotem.

Of course, while this is happening the Government absolutely controls the Government TV station VTV, has created Vale TV, VIVE TV, Telesur and has recently purchased privately held CMT, as well as giving out a few dozen regional concessions for TV broadcasting. A single view will be broadcast one day, in the best totalitarian style.

Moreover, Chavez threatened to turn his weekly program “Alo Presidente” either into a daily affair, so he can turn himself into a “teacher”, promoting hate and division among Venezuelans and, obviously, promoting himself, the unique and lifetime leader, or into a daily obligatory broadcast by all TV stations, in another attempt at self-promoting and making sure the Hugo Chavez cult receives all of the attention of all Venezuelans.

He also threatened that we are now in a new stage of the fake revolution, that there will be no continuity with what has happened so far. In criollo terms, the only thing he did not say is “Lo que viene es joropo” (What is coming is joropo, a typical Venezuelan dance) which signifies you have to be ready to dance at whatever rhythm is played. Or else.

And while the President of RCTV Marcel Granier, tried to put up a brave face, saying Chavez is “ill-informed” and they are simply trying to put fear in them, the truth is that no Court in the land will ever side with RCTV in a Chavez vs. RCTV fight over the concession.

And as we said right after Chavez’ reelection, this is what we will see from now on, the regular imposition of controls and limits and a total all out war against dissent and the right to free speech. All so that an ignorant Lt. can “spend time reading to prepare himself” for the next stage, in a clear and absolutely cynical admission, that even after eight years in power, Hugo Chavez is still trying to create a plan of where and how he wants the Nation to go. And that he will not discuss it with anyone, he will step back, read, decide and come back to tell us daily his newly found wisdom, in the hope that one day, he will find the right way to do things.

It is totalitarism at its best.

To me, Christmas is all about being and laughing with family. For the last twenty years, we all meet on Christmas Eve, which is the Venezuelan tradition, to share the traditional dishes of the Venezuelan Christmas: Hallacas, pernil, pan de jamon and many others. Hallaca is tamal-looking thing, wrapped in plantain leaves and made of corn flour which contains a stew of chicken, pork (lots of fat!) and many other ingredients, some of which vary regionally and even from family to family. I have always found hallacas to be quite symbolic of that puzzle that is our Venezuela, among its ingredients you can even find three or four items that are imported and not produced locally.

After dinner and a few drinks, laughing and singing (and dancing when we were younger!) we exchange gifts in a somewhat chaotic affair since there are quite a bit of siblings and their descendants. For the last twenty years or so, we have stayed all night at one place, originally the house where I used to live outside of Caracas. After staying up late, singing, laughing, talking, dancing and even watching some dumb program on TV to the early hours, we would sleep in couches, three to a bed, lounge chairs and the kids would camp out in the garden. In the morning, we would all see the young kids open their Niño Jesus presents. Afterwards, very tired, we would have a full breakfast with arepas, cheese, croissants and the like, before we would go home to rest from the marathon.

This year there will be fewer of us. Some have emigrated in what appears to be an irreversible trend. Not only some siblings, but even more from the next generation. Others have left on vacation outside the country. Through the magic of technology, we will use webcams to watch each other open presents wherever they are. There will be no all nighter either, there are no kids left who still believe in Niño Jesus to watch open the presents in the morning.

Every year in the morning I would think this was the last year I would stay up, but I would always forget it the next year. I guess this time I will miss the all nighter, and the arepas in the morning too, but mostly, I will just miss those that are not here…because Christmas is less Christmas without all of them here…

Merry Christmas to all!

Early in the Chavez administration, I could help but be impressed by a pair of military officers that Chavez had named to the Office of the Budget. One was Guiacaipuro Lameda, whom I had the fortune to meet for a few minutes at the time, the other was Francisco Uson. They seemed competent, caring and were doing a good job in their office, including the fact that they were posting the budget and its execution in the OCEPRE’s website.

Later, Lameda was named Minister of Finance and Uson replaced him as Head of the Budget office and when Lameda was moved to head PDVSA, Uson became Minister of Finance. On April 11th. Uson had a special vantage point to the carnage that took place that day atop the office of the Ministry of Finance. He quit in the afternoon, way before the events that are now called the “coup” took place, not before setting up a makeshift hospital in the parking lot of the Ministry.

It was a quiet departure for a quiet man. He quit, but did not make a big deal out of it, no press conference or TV appearances. He never participated in Plaza Altamira or activities against the Government. In fact, I was very surprised at how little attention Uson’s resignation got. A few months later Uson gave an interview in which he said that he quit not only because of what he saw, but also because of the violent attitude he witnessed in Chavez’ Cabinet four days earlier, which in his opinion caused the violence that day.

Many months later, Uson was invited to a TV program because he is a weapons engineer and at the time, there was the Fort Mara case, the case of the stockade at a military fort where three prisoners had been burned by those in charge and there were different versions of how this had happened. Uson was asked in that program whether the burns were consistent with the use of a flamethrower, to which he replied that yes, it was possible that the guards had used a flamethrower and it was consistent with what had been found.

Not too long after that, a military court charged Uson with defaming the military institution and tried him for his statements and found him guilty. Uson was condemned by the military court to five years in prison, despite the fact that he all he did was express his own personal opinion on a technical matter and that he was no longer an active member of the Armed Forces as he had retired after April 11th. But in a country without Justice, Uson could not get any civilian Court to intervene and he has been in jail since he was sentenced.

Why Uson was persecuted with such vengeance has always been a mystery to me, obviously there has to be some source of resentment that allowed for such a miscarriage of justice to take place and it had to come from the top.

Thus, I was a little surprised when Chavez suggested right after his reelection that he may pardon political prisoners, not only admitting that there are some, but specifically mentioning Uson, saying that if people stopped plotting against the Government he could pardoned them. Days after that Uson wrote a letter to Chavez rejecting the pardon, saying eh could not ask for a pardon for a crime he did not commit and improperly charged with.

While Chavez has not mentioned the pardon again, the church, opposition groups and members of the National Assembly have. Opposition groups and human rights NGO’s have been active with a petition to submit an Amnesty Bill to the National Assembly, which is possible under the Constitution. Some members of the National Assembly have said they would consider it if proposed, but then a couple of days ago Deputy Cilia Flores said that this would only be possible if those pardoned publicly asked for forgiveness before the pardoned could be granted. This was rejected by many of those in jail and obviously kills the possibility of the amnesty bill and is not in the spirit of such pardons.

In fact, the Assembly does not need to approve the pardons; Chavez could do it with a decree, much like he pardoned each and every man that participated in the 1992 coups. None of those were asked to ask for forgiveness and none of them have ever expressed regret or sorrow at the killings that took place in the February and November 1992 coups. In fact, I never even heard any of them send a message a message of condolence to the relatives of those that were killed those two days.

Uson’s opinion, expressed yesterday in an interview, is that the fact that his case has reached international human rights courts is embarrassing to Chavez and thus the idea of pardoning him is to stop the case from being considered. Uson also says that he has been approached by Government representatives suggesting e could be pardoned if he adopted an attitude like Francisco Arias Cardenas, who ran against Chavez for President in 2000 and now has become the country’s Ambassador to the UN after even calling Chavez an assassin in April 2002.

As Uson says, Chavez does not do anything if he cannot gain something from it. Thus, the idea of a blanket pardon seems remote at this time, least of all if conditions are imposed before the pardon can be approved.

In fact, the attitude by the Government is exactly the opposite. Not only has the Government initiated both civil and penal cases against PDVSA workers who participated in the 2002 strike, intending to not only not pay them their severance and pensions, but also to go after them criminally, jail them and take their property away, but last week it began charging 33 military officers with rebellion, conspiracy and promoting crimes. This case relates to the protests of Plaza Altamira in 2002 and 2003 and selectively chooses to charge some of the officers who participated in it. The Government had never charged anyone in that case. Curiously in both instances the Government waited until the election to revive the cases.

Thus, it is unclear what game the Government is trying to play; you can’t be talking about pardoning a couple of dozen prisoners, while going after thousand new ones. It seems as if it was indeed Chavez’ intention to stop the Uson case, but the possibility of Amnesty has now extended to others. The problem is that nobody will accept conditions such as those being imposed, suggesting that when the National Assembly gets the formal petition for an Amnesty Bill, they may simply sit on it for as long as they want.

These are bad days for democracy in Venezuela. The continued avoidance of democratic methods is creating crisis and problems in both Chavez’ coalition and in opposition party Primero Justicia. The two cases are actually quite related and in some sense rather curious: They originate in the continued use of a Stalinist structure by Venezuelan political parties, where a few self-chosen ones decide, appoint and control or at least attempt to control events.

Thus, eight years after Chavez was elected under his now almost forgotten slogan of participatory democracy, our political parties, or the remains of them, continue to be run in the same manner they were run since 1958 and likely before. What is more remarkable about this is that the 2000 Bolivarian Constitution mandates exactly the opposite (Art. 67), specifically saying that the authorities of political organizations will have to be elected via elections by its members. Despite this mandate, not a single party has actually followed up on this, refusing to hold elections In fact, the Constitution also mandates that all candidates for office have to be selected by election among its members, but to date, except in a handful of cases in regional elections, no party has done so for all of its candidates, using the infamous “private poll”, which is agreed on in smoke-filled rooms and conducted by unknown pollsters.

In Venezuela, the more things change the more they stay the same and this issue is not new. In the 48 years of Venezuelan democratic history, parties have mostly used delegates, handpicked by the leaders in each state, to select and elect both the authorities of the parties as well as the candidates for election.

There have been some exceptions, none of which ended well. In the 1960’s Accion Democratica (AD) held elections at the base to elect its presidential candidate. The election was held and the members of the party voted for educator Luis Beltran Prieto Figueroa. The de facto leader of that party Romulo Betancourt voided the selection, handpicking close ally and friend Gonzalo Barrios. This led to one of the many divisions of that party and to Barrios’ defeat to Rafael Caldera by a mere 30,000 votes.

Many years later Caldera himself abandoned the party he had founded, COPEI, when the delegates chose his heir apparent Eduardo Fernandez to be the party’s candidate. Everyone thought Caldera was dead politically, but no such luck.

Fernandez lost the election and tried to be a candidate again n 1993. In a democratic gesture, which I thought was clever politically, Fernandez decided that any Venezuelan citizen could vote at COPEI’s primary. The citizens thought otherwise, and voted Zulia Governor Oswaldo Alvarez Paz as COPEI’s candidate, stunning Fernandez. Alvarez Paz was at teh time so confident that he first disappeared from public view, to rest, and later decided that he disagreed with Carlos Andres Perez’ impeachment, so he disappeared again as CAP was impeached, never to recover.

Since then, not a single Presidential candidate or party authority has been elected democratically, despite the many claims of participatory democracy and the like.

The last week has seen a lot of news and tension surrounding Chavez proposal to unify his party and now with Primero Justicia’s demand for more democracy. In both cases, it reflects the traditional attempt by leaders to control, as well as growing pains in both cases, even if they are at different stages.

In the case of Chavez’ proposal, the whole idea stems from his tendency to exercise control as well as the fact that he prefers to have as little dissent as possible within his ranks. Thus, the presence of both PODEMOS and PPT (Patria Para Todos), represent for Chavez an unnecessary nuisance that he now is trying to simply wipe out. The threat is simple, either you accept to merge your party into his or else. Of course, there are no promises of whether those that agree will have even a relevant position in the new structure (Whose name has now been changed to Partico Unico Venezolano Socialista (PUVS), after Petkoff’s Editorial translated here)

The problem is that political parties and their leaders in Venezuela have historically tended to fade into oblivion after merging with other parties. Even worse, both PODEMOS and PPT had never obtained any significant fraction of the votes in any national election until, you guessed it, last Dec. 3d, when they got 6.5% and 5.1% of the Presidential votes respectively. Thus their leaders are reluctant to give up their constituency, when they know the party leaders will be chosen singlehandedly by Chavez and they are likely to be mostly former military.

Priemro Justicia’s problems are similar. The failure to use democratic means in its origins, is now hurting the party as it got its first significant results (11%) nationally. From a group of friends in Caracas, the party expanded nationally in the last two years, except that the party’s electoral structure is weak and largely controlled by those that were there at the beginning, but are the least favored leaders by the party’s members.

For PJ, the discussion is really making it look bad. After the relative success of the party on Dec. 3d., it is now embroiled in a daily and sometimes violent discussion about how to choose their leaders. The discussion is in the end somewhat sterile, but threatens to divide the party just when it seemed to be one of the few surviving political organizations in the country.

Primero Justicia can at least argue that its fight is about its internal democracy, which is not the case in Chavez’ case, where his emblematic institution, Movimiento Quinta Republica (MVR), was dissolved without much noise and without the input of the members of the party.

In both cases, Venezuela and its citizens lose. The caudillos are the eternal and unquestionable leaders of this dysfunctional democracy. After decades of asking for more democracy, Venezuelans seem to be getting the shaft in all fronts and the leaders don’t seem to be paying much attention. As I said at the beginning: the more things change in my country, the more they stay the same.

Weil strikes again with his depiction of the Venezuelan Courts

This Court still has insufficient proof to determine who is devouring you

I have been meaning to discuss the new “Social Services Bill” approved by the Venezuelan National Assembly last week, but the topic has so many edges to it, that I wanted to think a little before tackling it. In brief, the National Assembly last Thursday approved a Bill which will make it obligatory for any Venezuelan between the ages of 15 and 50 to provide five hours a month of free “social” service for a total of two years.

Before we start, I need to make clear that this law, when The President signs it and becomes effective does not apply to me, so it is not as if it bugs me that I will have to do this, since I have no vested interest in it.

Perhaps my biggest objection to the Bill is simply that I have a hard time imagining in what mind it can possibly fit the idea that something like this will work in a country, which is practically dysfunctional in most areas. Instead of trying to get an ineffective Government to work in areas which are critical such as health care, housing and the like, the members of the National Assembly (I can’t insult them, it would be illegal!) approve the creation of a bureaucracy under the name of INASES, which if read in English, the last part of the acronym would describe them rather well. This new institution will be in charge of making sure that some 15 million people do monthly, free, community or social work, which is so broadly defined, that almost any activity would fall under its definition. More bureaucracy, more Government workers, which next time the economy takes a downturn, will see their salaries destroyed.

As if this was not sufficient, the Bill also mandates the creation of “networks” for social service. Every institution, be it public or private, will have to have its own “network” of people who will elect a Board, which will coordinate the activities, plan and coordinate them and report top INASES every three months and “reward” those that do a good job.

There will be sanctions; those that do not comply will have to pay an amount to be determined by INASES in regulations to be issued in the future. The fines will be deducted from your salary or you will pay them with service, just in case you don’t have a job. (Meant to be a joke!)

Now, my first objection is why it should be free. Who gave the Government power to “use” us, at no cost? They already throw away our money in their harebrained projects. People doing their military service get paid. Students providing service under the new community service law get paid. People who serve in juries get paid. People who participate in handling the vote in elections get paid. Under which part of the Constitution or the law for that matter, is the Government allowed to dispose of our time at no cost? Thus, just on these bases I not only disagree, but I strongly object to the Bill.

A secondary aspect of this is that this will have a negative impact on voluntary social services across Venezuela. Since your “organization” will tell you what to do, if you do something else voluntarily, which actually happens quite a bit, then you will have to comply with the mandatory service at the expense of the voluntary one.

But let’s look at the reality of Venezuela. We live in a country where 50% of the people are unemployed or are part of the informal economy. Of the other half, a full 30% barely makes a subsistence salary and even among those employed, the purchasing power of their salary is low, due to years of inflation and devaluation. (A recent university graduate makes $10,000 a year if he or she is lucky to get a job). Add to this that most families are headed by single women who receive no aid from the father(s) of the children. To make matters worse, those that have formal or informal jobs spend an average of over two hours in traffic to get to and from work daily and most work six days a week. Thus, to spice up their already crummy life the Government is going to force them to spend five hours a month doing unpaid social service and they will likely have to pay their own transportation, pay their meals away from home, get some family member to take care of the kids while they are away and the Government will pay them absolutely nothing for their inconvenience and taking the little free time away from them. You have got to be kidding me!

And then we come to Venezuelan Ingenuity, locally known as “Viveza Criolla” (Loosely translated as “Creole sneakiness”). You have created a system, which is decentralized to supervise a system of social work by everyone within the organization, where you work or where you live. What will stop them from simply filling out the paperwork and signing off on everyone and going off to drink some beers, going dancing (cultural?) or playing baseball? Or how about charging for certifying you did the work? Or how about choosing a “soft” activity for everyone to fulfill the job?

After all, the definition of the activities is as follows: I) Improvement of schools, health care facilities, plazas, parks and gardens ii) “Self-construction” of family housing iii) Elaboration, conduction, execution and evaluation of community plans iv) Elaboration, conduction, execution and evaluation of cultural activities. (Define cultural!) v) Social support with priority for kids, adolescents, seniors citizens, people with drug problems, handicapped, families of the victims of crime. And vi) promotion of activities that create social consciences and more sensitivity towards social activities.

And then we come to the political angle. Everything tends in the end to be political for Chavismo. Thus, expect “networks” to be created to promote Chavista candidates or causes, political campaigning and the like. Or to squeal on their neighbors, who are not loyal. Or who speak badly of Huguito. Or on those who lie about their “revolutionary” spirit and commitment. Or just to watch and spy on them. All for a “social” cause.

In the end the possibilities are as endless as the level of incompetence of those that thought of this Bill. These are the same people who are already changing the Constitution they wrote, only six years after they did it. Who have yet to even issue the laws and the regulation that same Constitution mandated. Who have tripled the number of employees of the National Assembly, while its output has dwindled to historically low levels. Who have given up their right to inspect and supervise how the Government spends. Who believe that laws fix all of the problems of a society and a country. Who unconditionally accept what the Supreme Autocrat says. Who have quadrupled their salaries and given themselves huge bonuses in the name of the “revolution” and because they truly “care” for the people.

The same people who simply have no clue at all…and this Bill proves it.

Because common sense is the least common of all senses.

Tal Cual published today this interesting graph correlating Chavez’ votes and poverty in each state, if you remove Zulia from the statistics, then the correlation coefficient is 0.70. I guess there is no incentive for Chavez to eliminate poverty.