The Devil's Excrement

I will be away all of next week, coming back in the middle of the final for the World Cup a week from Sunday, hope plane is on time. If anything important happnes I will update by email, since I can’t get remote updating to work again. Jorge Arena will also keep an eye open for me.

Venezuela needs investment to create jobs and education. Investment is not going well, there is very little of it by the Government or the private sector. Well, if what follows in this article from Ultimas Noticias is the path for education, things are truly bleak for our beleagueared country.

Minister Istúriz: “I am politicizing education, so?”
(Últimas
Noticias, 6/28/2206)

Caracas. In the framework of the III national Pedagogical Congress: Towards the
consolidation of the Bolivarian Educational System,, building the national
Pedagogical theory”, the Minister of education Aristóbulo Isturiz pointed out
that in order to change the current educational model “it is necessary to have
an ideological and political floor, because without politics there is no
pedagogy and without them education”

The
Minister proposed an educational system based on pedagogical theory: “The state
is in charge of forming citizens according to its political theory, according
to its vision for the Republic.

He pointed out that for the implementation of the new Bolivarian
educational system which is based in equality, social democracy and a state of Justice;
this is only possible through the teachers.

The Venezuelan teacher now more than ever needs politics and ideology.
All teachers have to be politicians compromised with a dream for the country in
order to turn it into a reality. Without teachers there is no revolution,
education has to be at the service of the liberation of the people.

He informed that education is in a reversion process, because the
Government is implementing a process of renewal of public education which will
only be possible if the privatization of education is eliminated.

Each teacher has to be married with the model of the Republic and our
political ideology has as its objective to build the socialist ideology of the
XXIst. Century, the Minister pointed out.

End of article

Note the following:

–No mention of excellence

–No mention of merit

–No mention of content, knowledge, culture, learning

–It says public education can only work if you eliminate private
education. Shouldn’t it be the other way around, you make public education so
good you wipe out private education?

–It is clearly discriminatory, to be a science teacher you must have
the right politics, otherwise you are out no matter how good you may be as a
teacher. The mediocre will rise to the top on the back of fake ideological
grounds! Well, after all Mr. Isturiz is the same man who said Chavez had “smoked
an egg roll” because of his nutty ideas, but then he got the job of Minister of
Education and he apparently shared it with the autocrat!

–Note that there is still no ideology behind XXIst. Century Socialism,
it remains “to be built”

God help Venezuela
if this is the who and how their children will be “educated”!

Today you get a break from the tough world of politics and conflicts. Below a picture of one of the weirdest Venezuelan orchid, Coryanthes Speciosa. I just posted about it in my orchid section if you are interested why this strange shape helps reproduction and pollination. Have a good one!

And here is the campaign ad against Lopez Obrador using Chavez’ image that the Venezuelan Government complained about and the Mexican Electoral Board pulled off the air.

I usually
don’t use swear words in my blog, but a while back when I heard
Hugo Chavez say that the success of Invepal will determine the future of
corporate coops in Venezuela I said, literally
and precisely:

Oh shit! That program is in real
trouble!

Last Saturday
more problems in the Invepal coop began to
surface and the more people speak or say something the clearer it gets that
the whole things is a failure. Workers now refuse to even talk to management
(mostly Government personalities including the Minister pf Labor), the Minister says things are
not as bad, but there are serious accusations of irregularities, no audited
financial statements and while the Government claims Invepal is making money,
the workers say otherwise.

It was
very difficult to imagine a different ending for such a harebrained scheme as
Invepal. Take a company in trouble that could not survive under knowledgeable management
and give it to the workers, running it with a Board made up of political hacks
and union leaders and try that balancing act! Of course, workers, as happens
everywhere, want more, except that it is not easy to restart a company that
already had problems competing, in a cyclical and very competitive business
under an environment of let’s be goody, goody to each other. Add to that nepotism,
perks and financial irregularities and what you had was simply a time bomb, as
the last few days have shown.

In fact, the
unions never broke conversations with the previous “mean” and “oligarchic” management
the way they have done with the Government, which is simply rejecting the statements
by union leaders and saying that everything is simply peachy.

But things
are bad. Invepal not only lacks audited financials, but there are
accusations of graft, nepotism and the Government nor respecting labor union
regulations. Thus, Invepal’s workers are fired, when there is a nationwide
firing freeze and union leaders are not given the free time established by law
to attend to union problems.

What is
really happening is what you would expect. In a paper company in trouble like
Invepal, you have to make very tough unbiased decisions, when you are both
owner and manager and union, that is very difficult to do, if not impossible without creating to much friction. Add
to that lack of know how, an ignorant and political Board and anyone would have
realized this was another crazy scheme.

Thus, we
are seeing the same thing that happened during the last oil bonanza of the 70’s,
the state assuming a role that it should have and wasting huge amounts of money on it. It used to be called “La Gran Venezuela”, now it is called a revolution. Same thing, different decade. Expected,
yes, you could read it here,
here or here months
ago in this blog.

The sad
part is that the workers were told they owned the company and now they discover
that they owe the Government the funds for their share of the equity, but on
top of that they have little say in how the company is being run, by whom and
what is done with the cash flow it generates. In the end they own nothing, they have seen no improvement in their salaries, lives or working conditions.

Not
exactly a worker’s paradise.

In a few
months you will hear similar problems coming out of Inveval (Valve coop) or
Invetex (textile coop). The Government chose as pilots for their infamous “congestion”
or shared management three companies that were closed by their rightful owners
(Inveval and Invetex) because they simply had no future or a third one
(Invepal) that began shutting down facilities in order to try to rescue the
remainder of the company. Unfortunately, the rightful owners never thought politics
would get in the way so much as to force the shutdown of the company, the illegal
expropriation of the company and the rest as they say is simply history.

You can’t
improvise and ignore the basic rules of economics and human behavior (Which may be the same in the end!). This is simply Chavez’ invention of a workers corporate paradise which only exists in his imagination. But hey!
Now we are doing the same with failed companies in Uruguay and trying in Brazil, exporting both the the crummy model and the silly revolution!

Not much can be said, I thought that what the oppsoition needed to get people going was a primary, but today Sumate said that there is no longer time to organize one. This is disheartening, as I have said before what this country needs is more democracy and we seem not to be getting more from either side. Primero Justicia candidate Julio Borges said that he was still committed to primaries, while the Government obviously rejoiced with Vice-President Rangel saying the opposition was simply burying a cadaver, while Minsiter of Communications Lara said that the primaries were Bush’s Troy Horse (??).Sumate basically is saying taht thsi was their timetable and if they want primaries it is now or never.

Now either the candidates agree to a primary quickly or they decide among themselves who the candidate should be. I still believe that the primary was the better mechanism, no matter what. It is more democratic, allows people to participate and, in my own opinion, it was a mechanism to get people mobilized. Nothing was ever lost by asking people what they think.

So many
things going on, it’s hard to write about everything I would like, here
are the things I would write about tomorrow, if I had the time:

–The Head
of the Comptrolling Committee of the National Assembly went to the Supreme
Court to clarify the role of the Assembly in comptrolling how funds are used by
the Government and whether they are spent according to what the Assembly
approved. The Deputy said that the books handed in by Ministries and other
institutions that depend on the Government were “huge useless tomes”,
impossible to audit and lacking the necessary information for any sort of
supervision.

–In October
2004, Carlos Barboza won the race for Mayor of the Miranda municipality of Zulia
state by more than 3,000 votes (with a total of 12,443). Last week, the
Electoral Hall of the Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled that the backing of the
losing candidate from COPEI after the election took place,
giving him more than four thousand votes and thus defeating Barboza. Thus, the
Court ruled, the new Mayor is the MVR candidate Tiberio Bermudez. The most interesting
facts about the decision is that COPEI itself says that it never backed
Bermudez before or after the election. Additionally, it is unheard of that a
party can change who it backs after the decision, COPEI’s candidate was Henoc
Guerere and he campaigned until the last day. Moreover, Barboza is closely
aligned with Zulia Governor Manuel Rosales.

–Hugo Chavez
announced yesterday that General Raul Baduell will be the new Minister of
Defense. Baduell was the man that brought Chavez back in April 2002. He is a strange
character who believes in reincarnation and has personal ambitions. He has told
his close friends in private that if Chavez can be President, he is much better
qualified to occupy the position. Reportedly Chavez did not trust Baduell
sufficiently to name him Minister, but he decided to go for him to strike a
balance within the so called Chavismo sin Chavez movement and the military.

–The much
ballyhooed contract between Petroecuador and Venezuela was suspended due to
imprecisions.

–Chavez promised
to build a gas pipeline to Panama,
despite the fact that experts claim Venezuela does not even have enough
natural gas to send through the Transamazonic pipeline.

–Chavez
said that he will initiate “monetary reform” and change the currency to make it
smaller. The only questions are whether it will still be called the Bolivar or
the Bolivariano and whether he will remove three zeroes or divide by 500.
Dividing by 500 would make the Bolivar 4.30 to the US dollar, exactly the same
it was in the “glory” days of Venezuelans traveling abroad to shop, because
everything ta’barato (it’s cheap)

–The
Government was ready to issue US$ 3.5 billion in debt under PDVSA, thinking
that it would be cheaper for that company to issue debt than for the Government
to do it. However, they apparently did not take into account that the company
has yet to file its 2004 financials (despite announcements that it “was” done
last week and has no plans to make any future filings. In fact, this week,
credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded the four oil partnerships that produce
heavy oil to a notch below Venezuela’s
sovereign bonds. The reason? Increased royalties, increase taxes and, get this,
the risk
that PDVSA may want to control and take over a majority stake of the projects. In
the end, it will likely be a PDVSA issue with a sovereign-like coupon, not what
the Government had planned.

—Four people drove straight through the fallen viaduct in a car and died. Here is one tragedy you can’t blame on the Government, these guys must have been really loaded!

–Last week Bill Gates announced he would quit Microsoft to devote himself full time to his foundation, today Warren Buffet, the world’s richest man, announced that he will give 85% of his money to charity with the largest share going to Gates’ foundation, which will go from the best endowed foundation in the world to the best endowed foundation in the world. I must say, it is a great way to spend their money and the world has never seen anything ever in the scale of what these guys are doing. Hats off to both of them!

Daniel from Venezuelan News and Views contributes this letter to my blog in reply to my letter on Friday, explaining how the futbol watching may even be subversive:

Dear Miguel

I read your great letter of
last Friday . I think you are quite right
in asking all of these soccer, football, futbol fans to consider giving from
their time at least the duration of one of these games they watched to the
cause of democracy. I could not be more in agreement with you.

However I think there is
something that you missed in the whole phenomenon.

You do point rightly that
in Caracas and the main cities of Venezuela there
is almost no eatery that do not display a TV set during game time, with dozens
of people clustering around. We never see that, even during a “World
Series” featuring some Venezuelan pitcher. I know you cannot quite
make sense of it as you are a devoted Red Sox fans. You even write
“[soccer] is not as much of an integral part of our heritage”. And
that is why I think you missed a critical point.

Of course, I am not writing
to justify my own distraction with the World Cup, to the point of opening a temporary
blog dedicated to it . You know
very well the uncounted hours I have spent “quemandome las pestañas” describing
all the abuses, arrogance and incompetence of the undemocratic regime we live
under. But where you miss the point is
the almost rage with which we are enjoying this World Cup. At least those of us
who decided to do so: it is almost an act of rebellion.

Last World Cup was stolen
from me. Not only because the time
difference with Korea and Japan was
settled for the European TV market benefit, but because it was 2002 and we were
trying to overcome the consequences of the April 2002 events. The Cup was stolen from us by Chavez and his unwillingness
to settle the issues raised in 2002. He
kept the country askance on whether a truth commission would be installed, on
whether a democratic dialogue will be attempted to reconcile the country. Nothing was done, the tensions were fawned and
we ended up in a painful strike and even more painful Recall Election process. Who could care then about a distant World
Cup?

Since then Chavez has always
wanted to steal all attention to him, be it his social programs (many a failure
but successes in that they keep Chavez at the center), be it his foreign
ambitions and his forgetfulness and obvious boredom as to Venezuelan matters. Thus, in this electoral campaign as Chaves is
trying to tighten the yoke around the opposition neck, he is again trying to
steal the World Cup from us, from me. And
I will not let him get away with it, and we will not let him get away with it. In fact we are succeeding as Chavez has had to
cancel two Alo Presidente, has had to postpone the cadena on
the Carabobo parade. Almost with cruelty
we are letting know that his antics are less interesting than a Tunisia Saudi
Arabia game.

But it goes even further:
football is allergic to authoritarian regimes, futbol is perhaps the most democratic
sports that exists. And not because you
can play it barefoot with a tin can and two sticks as a gate. No, Futbol is a unique combination of individual
brilliance, daring initiative, disinterested team work and art. No Eastern block country could ever manage to
control this team sport the way it control the other ones at one point or
another. Even Cuba can control baseball but is
unable to play football. Such regimes
frown on the values that drive football, the most anti ideological game that
exists. I believe that there is a reason
why Chavez likes baseball so much, the control and “protagonismo” one can reach
there. Pele would have never been Pele
without Brazil and Brazil would have not been Brazil without Pele. When Chavez yesterday said that today was an important
day in futbol because Ecuador
played he did not realize how much of a provincial ignoramus in soccer he
revealed himself to be.

Thus I hope you can forgive
us while we enjoy futbol, perhaps there is more subversion to it than what you
might think.

One of our
readers, amieres, has been analyzing the Electoral Registry (REP) and found
numerous interesting things that should be made public in detail. I invited him
to write a post on it and he was gracious enough to accept my invitation and
here is the post with all the details. This goes right to the heart of the
question why the CNE does not want a good audit of the REP made, it would show
all of these inconsistencies. Only today El Nacional showed how there are more
people above the age of 45 registered to vote that the National Institute for
Statistics (INE) says there exist in that age group. This incredible
inconsistency is why the three universities rejected by the CNE to perform the
audit wanted a wider audit that would include demographics. Now wonder the CNE
does not want this!

Mision Matusalen by amieres (Mission Methuselah by amieres)

First some background

In March
2004 when the Presidential Recall Referendum (RR) process was in its way the
Electoral Registry (RE) had 12,394,109 voters. In a multi-tiered campaign that
Chavez called “Batalla de Santa Ines” a big push was made to add new
voters to the RE. That’s how the Misiones were created: Mision Robinson, Mision
Ribas, Mision Vuelvan Caras, Mision Barrio
Adentro, Mercal, Mision Milagro, Mision Identidad, Mision Zamora, etc. http://www.gobiernoenlinea.ve/miscelaneas/misiones.html.
A variety of public assistance efforts offering anything from food, health
care, education, land, temporary jobs and of course money.

Particularly
Mision Identidad offered foreigners living in Venezuela a fast-track
nationalization, no questions asked, as long as they showed support for Chavez.
Everyone that benefited from the ‘misiones’ was registered in the Maisanta
database and if they were not already part of the RE they were immediately
entered in a joint effort between the CNE and the ONI-DEX (the National Identification
Office). By July 2004 the RE had grown to 14,037,900 an incredible 1,643,791
new voters or 13% in just 4 months.

In August
15th, 2004 Chavez won a widely denounced Referendum with 60%-40% advantage that
in the exit polls showed as 40%-60% against him.

The Lists

The
Maisanta list, a by-product of the RR, was created by the chavistas by merging
the infamous Tascon list with the RE of March 2004 and complementing it with
the information from the Misiones and the Reparos. It is a tool that serves the
double purpose of identifying, pressuring and discriminating against those that
opposed Chavez but also to identify, keep track and pressure those that have
benefited from the Misiones. Last year, Maisanta was leaked into the public and
it was being sold by street vendors for Bs 15000 (about 8 dollars). It quickly
found its way into the internet where it can be downloaded.

Following
the lead of Adolfo Fabregat I also downloaded the official RE of January 2006
from the CNE website (http://www.cne.gov.ve/int_generacion_re/html/index.html)
and combined it with the Maisanta list. That allowed me to compare the changes in
the RE between March 2004 and January 2006. By January 2006 the REP had grown
to 14,849,127 adding 811,227 more since August 2004.

The first
thing to note, is that the RE is full of irregularities, practically everywhere
you look you can find something wrong with it.

Several of
the discrepancies have already been denounced:

– The
amazing Gonzalez family.

– The one
letter names and last names.

– The
duplicate entries.

– The
extraordinaire longevity of Venezuelans

Partly, I
wanted to verify these findings myself, which I did and so and now I can attest
to their veracity and give you specific instances of those cases.

The Analysis

Based on
the information reported in the TV and newspapers my general belief was that
most new entries to the RE would be from foreigners hastily nationalized, youth
that recently have reached the voting age of 18th and to a much lesser degree
of people that had never voted previously but benefited from the ‘Misiones’.
Thus my expectation was to find only a few new entries with old identity card
numbers, which are lower.

By using a
query that would bring only the new entries that were not present in the 2004
RE the first surprise came when I found so many new entries that had low
Identity card numbers. I expected most new entries to have new ID numbers
around the 20,000,000 figure. But there were thousands with very low numbers,
and I mean very, very low as low as 10. Could it be that so many people had
never bothered to vote until now? Could all of them be beneficiaries of the
Misiones?

Here is a
sample of new voters with low id numbers that I found:

But the
really big surprise came when I noted the ages. It had already been reported that
there were many entries in the RE of people older than 100 years old. Those can
easily be attributed to a carelessly maintained database where deceased were
not removed appropriately. But this is different, this are NEW ENTRIES! People
who were not registered to vote before 2004!

Here is a
sample of the 50 oldest NEW voters.

What does it mean?

Some of
the impossibly old ages could be attributed to typographical errors while
registering new voters due to the sloppy and rushed process of the Mision
Identidad (like in the case of FERNANDEZ
MONTI MINERVA CI: V-24,369,789
DOB 1879/11/27)

But that
explanation falls short when considering someone with ID numbers V-10 or V-14
or V-117 or V-123. How did their information find its way into the RE. They
didn’t register themselves, we know that much. That information could only have
come from the ONI-DEX, the government agency in charge of issuing the Identity
cards and could only have been entered into the RE by someone in the CNE as
they are the sole custodians of that database. This is incontrovertible proof
that the RE was tampered by the CNE.

How important is it?

How much
damage can a couple of thousand deceased cause?

The fact
is that we don’t know how many people were added fraudulently into the
database. What made it obvious in this case is their impossibly old ages, but
there could be hundreds of thousands more for all we know.

Look at
the distribution of new voters based on their ages (only Venezuelans):

And based
on their ID card numbers (only Venezuelans):

On the
other hand if they added deceased people, what would stop them from adding
non-existent people with new ID card numbers? Remember Mision Identidad? That may
explain why the CNE doesn’t want to release the voters addresses, virtual
voters simply don’t have real addresses.But why do it?

In 2004
Chavez started the ‘Misiones’ and he desperately needed to show enough new
voters to be able to swing the result. My guess is they didn’t get as many new voters
as he needed, so they started creating new ones. The same seems to be happening
now when Chavez boasts about winning the December elections with 10,000,000
votes, which is a ridiculous figure. Considering what he allegedly got in the
RR after all the tricks and manipulations.

By adding
their own virtual voters they can ensure a minimum of votes whenever they need
them as long as the ballots are not counted. Also, by inflating the RE the CNE
can make any result hard to audit because anything that falls outside the
historical pattern can always be argued saying that is because of all the new
voters that are in favor of Chavez.

This makes
it so much clearer why the CNE doesn’t want a thorough audit of the RE. This is
really incriminating evidence. If this much can be found by a few individuals
working in their free time, just imagine what a team of dedicated specialists may
find.

My fellow
Venezuelans in the opposition:

I hope I
can catch your attention for a few minutes now that the first stage of the
futbol World Cup is over and before you immerse yourself in the next stage with
the same passion, joy and dedication that you did in the first. I must say that
I find such passion remarkable, given that the event is one month long, that
Venezuela did not qualify and that futbol, as we call soccer in Venezuela, is
not as much of an integral part of our heritage or our competence, as other sports
are.

And I am
impressed by the passion, I have seen cars and motorcycles with as many as four
flags from different countries, I have seen stores in the streets with crowds
watching on the plasma TV’s that have become ubiquitous both in stores and food
places, whether areperas or fancy restaurants. I have also noticed how the
horrible Caracas
traffic simply dies out during games; buses run empty at those times and there
as fewer people in the streets.

However, I
would like to call your attention to a number of concerns:

First of
all, while you were watching the Iran-Angola match, the CNE appointed the most
mediocre universities in the country to audit the REP rejecting more
prestigious and capable ones, Chavez dressed in military uniform and caressed
the first 30,000 Kalashnikov rifles to arrive in Venezuela, the CNE ordered an
additional 4,000 fingerprint capture machines for the December elections, the National Assembly threatened to impose
even more ferrous controls over NGO’s that are already in place, Chavez said he
would visit North Korea (and North Vietnam!), the Ministry of Finance bought U$
242 million more of Argentinean bonds and 660 homicides occurred since the
World Cup began.

My point
is very simple: Yes, the World Cup is fun to watch, but by the time you watch
the final match between Germany
and England
(bold prediction from someone that knows little here), a full month would have
gone by. This means that we would have lost 30 days out of the 174 days we had
left until the December Presidential election. It may not seem like much on the
scale of the fourth time dimension implied. But it is a long time given what is
at stake and how little time there is to change the outcome of the upcoming
Presidential election.

You don’t
think the election will be fair? You don’t think we have a chance? You think it
is irrelevant? You may be right in one, two or three of these questions, I just
don’t know. But what I do believe is that we just can’t give up. Everyone has
to pitch in a little bit of his/her time, in his/her own way. You can work for
a candidate; you can work for an NGO. You can talk to someone, you can send an
e-mail. You can start your own goofball project. You can write an article.
Nobody is going to come and solve our problems, we have to do it ourselves and
we have to keep the same democratic spirit alive that we have had ever since
the autocrat was first elected. The alternative is just not acceptable.

This
Government is a gigantic failure. Yes, Chavez’s promises capture the
imagination of the have-nots, convincing them that he really cares or that he
will deliver something someday. But we all know it is all smoke and mirrors and
that all he cares about is his personal project as leader of the third world,
which is not what he was elected for. Meanwhile, he selects the unconditional but incompetent
collaborators to run things, insuring that 99% of his projects will be a
failure.

Thus, he
can be defeated, even as he cheats. He is not as popular as the Government
wants to convince us he is. His hard core support is as large as our hard core
opposition. Those in between, those that have yet to see “el queso a la
tostada” (the cheese in the sandwich) are wavering. And they need little to be
convinced that the fake revolution is a sham. They see Chavez everyday giving
away our wealth to other countries and other people before our own problems
have even been tackled, let alone solved. They see him buying weapons, spending
more than half his time abroad, reneging on almost all of his promises, they
see the revolutionaries leaders and military officers in fancy cars, corruption
rampant, security non-existent, housing starts at the lowest kevels of a decade
despite a huge oil windfall, they see an intolerant Government using
doublespeak at every turn, they see internal disputes over the bounty, they see
people going hungry, kids dying of malnutrition, tropical diseases on the increase, they see
more corruption, hospitals that don’t work, they see the poor protest, the
students protest and even the revolutionaries protest. The poor may be hopeful,
romantic, but most Venezuelans are intelligent and they realize that the
revolution has not delivered and are doubting that it ever will. Thus we have a
chance, but we have to work at it.

Thus, all
I ask is that before July 9^th. when the World Cup ends, you spend
the time equivalent to the duration of a game doing something to help Venezuela
become a better country, more democratic, fairer, convince someone we need change, work for
someone campaigning for change, get involved. Once again, no magic solution
will come out of nowhere, we are the solution, and we have to work at it. You
can never have too much democracy, you can never have too much involvement, you
can never allow the autocrat and his new very rich oligarchy take over to the
extent that we are not heard, felt or controlled.

And after
July 9^th. double the time you devote to this cause. If each and
everyone does that, we will surely be able to shake the ground on which the
autocrat stands. Just think, we are committed, we believe that change is
needed, but only 17% of the Chavistas are equally committed. If we all show up
to express our dissatisfaction on December 3d. even if we really are a minority,
which I don’t believe we are, we would still get more votes than the other
side. But we have to work at it! Freedom is just not a gift, sometimes you have
to earn it or fight for it

Thus, my
fellow Venezuelans, before you go back to the games of the next round, think
hard about the future, think hard about the possibilities, enjoy the games, but
save something of that passion, dedication and joy for a more important,
meaningful and higher cause.

Your friendly blogger

P.S. I hope you don’t take my prediction for the World Cup final as serious as you take my letter

(The Spanish version is over at Cuentos Intrascendentes)