The Devil's Excrement

What we feared became true last night: The CNE managed to make the audit
of the Electoral Registry (REP) appear to the world to be respectable, but all it is simply a charade
which will make the world believe there was truly an honest audit but in truth
is simply a grotesque and dishonest manipulation by our electoral authorities. Simply
one more fraud! 

As you recall, three universities, Universidad Central de Venezuela,
Universidad Simon Bolivar and Universidad Catolica Andres Bello had months ago
made a proposal to audit the registry. When the new CNE was named, some
universities questioned why only those three should be involved and the CNE
“invited” seven universities and a scientific research institute to participate
in the audit, in the interest of more democracy, participation and transparency.
 

For the last week, the three universities that originated the project
have been objecting to the fact that the committee became basically a political
committee in which the seven “new” institutions would vote as block drowning
the technical proposals of the original three and preempting them. In the end,
these three universities simply said that they strongly disagreed with what was
approved, in that the CNE was limiting the audit to the internal consistency of
the registry and a more thorough job had to be performed in the interest of transparency
and in order to have everyone trust the registry.  

Now, clearly this is a technical issue. You need experts in databases,
demographics, modeling, statisticians and the like. Therefore, the CNE should
ask academic institutions that have expertise in these fields to participate if
it wanted additional input or a wider range of experts. Let’s first find a way
to evaluate qualitatively the institutions involved on both sides. 

An easy way would be to look for the total number of publications from
each institution last year or in a longer period of time, but this may be too
stringent a requirement for some young universities. There is a simpler and
more self-consistent way, which is to look at the Program for the Promotion of
Research (PPI) which is run by the Government itself via the Ministry of
Science. This program is a yearly evaluation of credentials for which Professors
need to show either that they are “active” via some form of publication in a
regular fashion or that they are at the beginning stages of a career in
research in either the social or the natural sciences, even if one has no
publications. This seems fair, since the technical requirements for the audit
fall in the general area of sociology, statistics, mathematics and computer
science. You would think that any well qualified Professor in the academic
world in these areas, would and should be part of such a system. Additionally
those that qualify get paid an additional amount of money every month, so it is
your own interest to qualify.

Well, there are 4432 Professors and/or researchers who are part of the
PPI. Of these, only 58 are from the six universities that the CNE requested
help from, while 1,215 are from the three original universities that submitted
the first proposal, UCV, USB and UCAB. Moreover, only one of the six
universities in the CNE group ranks in the top ten in the PPI among public
universities in Venezuela,
this is Universidad Simon Rodriguez which actually has 45 of the 58 Professors
that qualified for it from this group, leaving a scant 13 from the other five!
In fact, three of the six have zero Professors in the PPI, including the Maritime University whose technical connection
with the audit is tenous at best!

Curiously, the only one in the top ten, Universidad Simon Rodriguez, has
no technical careers, but it specializes in Education (including Natural
Sciences), business and food technology. Why did the CNE not invite the other
seven Universities in the top ten, the majority of which have Math, Computer
Science, sociology and engineering departments in favor of these obscure
institutions with little relation to the technical issues at hand and the
lowest academic levels in the country? I wonder if the CNE members would do the
same thing if they were looking for someone to operate on their brains, for
example. 

Additionally, the six universities that are participating fall under the
regime of experimental universities which have limited autonomy and in many
cases do not even elect the people that run them, but are directly named by the
Government, i.e. Chavez himself. This
has been covered quite well today here (In Spanish) in Cuentos Intrascendentes.

Case apart in the CNE group is the seventh member, the Venezuelan Institute
for Scientific Research (IVIC). This research institute does have 260
researchers who did qualify for the PPI. However, the CNE “invitation”
specified that no statisticians
should be in the group and that the committee from IVIC be composed of “more
than just the researchers”. Thus, IVIC’s representatives to the audit are a
sociologist who specializes in the History of Science, two researchers from
Anthropology, two technical people from Anthropology, two technical people from
Physics and the Head of the computer network. Curiously, no one from the math
department was involved. Additionally, recall that IVIC’s Director was named by
Chavez despite the fact that he lost the election by something like 60 to 17
within the community of researchers of the institution. So, he is clearly pro-Chavez
and willing to defend the revolution.  

Thus, the CNE has managed to do it again, manipulate the process in such
a way so as to make it a charade, but make it appear respectable on the surface
in the eyes of international opinion and even in the eyes of Venezuelans who
may think the Bolivarian University and the others in the group have any
semblance of academic excellence or technical expertise. All of this in the
name of democracy and transparency. But the truth is that this is one more fraudulent
process by the Chavez administration to control and cheat in any electoral
process that takes place in order to preserve Chavez and his revolution in
power and trampling over democratic principles and fair practices.

I can already see the President of
the CNE gloating after the audit that they the whole process was transparent
because these excellent group of institutions audited the questioned registry.

Clearly, there is a lot to hide in
Venezuela’s
Electoral Registry, but we already knew that!

Kudos to Alek Boyd for suing the Mayor of London for calling him a terrorist. Hope he wins! I buy the drinks if he does!

Our esteemed General Prosecutor said when former Justice Velasquez Alvaray that the recordings and statements made by Velasquez where simply gossip and he did not investigate gossip (At least against Chavistas). Well, in today’s Tal Cual, the newspaper shows two pages from an affidavit that arrived anonymously at the newspapers office in which the first circuit control Judge of Bolivar State and his assistant say that they were called on the phone by people who identified themselves as convicted murderer and Judge Maikel Moreno and the Vice-President so they keep their hands off the candidate as Mayor for the Caroni municipality Saul Cordero who was charged with eight counts for crimes ranging from illegitimately jailing someone to abuse of power.

Of course, in this country where justice is “supposed” to be beginning to work this has not been investigated. It is gossip or hearsay according to the General Prosecutor!

Maria seems to be a source of wealth for REP curiosities and oddities, how about these! Nobody absolutely nobody uses four initials!

Too shy? Too dumb? Too simple minded? William Lara’s relatives?

There may be Gonzalez’ 2,000 born on the same date or with no first names or 150 year olds in the Electoral Registry known as REP, but I must say I think we have a winner here with the person with ID number C.I. 25214345, his/her name is simply XX, no first name, no last name, simply XX.

Houston! Houston! We have a winner! Hard to beat this for oddity. Of course, William Lara, Minister of Information and Miscommunications would say: “There is nothing wrong with the REP”.

You can check it out for your self at the CNE website. I guess this person could bring anybody’s Cedula and vote!

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–It turns
out that the reason why former Governor Lapi was ostensibly jailed for was not
following the law and not opening for bids for a highway contract. Well, the
President’s father has done this repeatedly and denounced for it, but hey! He
is the father of Hugo Chavez the autocrat, thus he has not even been
investigated for it! Chavez’ father is also accused of naming Chavez’ brother
Argenis as “pro-tempore Governor” allowing him to essentially run the state.
That position does not exist in Venezuela’s
legislation.

–And how
about the Milan
family. Oly Millan is the Minister for the Popular Economy and before that she
was the President of the fund for agricultural development Fondafa. Fondafa has
been formally charged with financing more hectares for planting that there are
available in Yaracuy state. Well, the Minister’s
brother went to the Prosecutor’s office yesterday to accuse his own brother
in law, for asking for a Bs. 1 billion commission if he wants to obtain a Bs. 7
billion loan from Fondafa. Oly Millan’s husband now works at Fondafa where his
brother in law says he wields and enormous amount of power, given that his wife
is a Minister. He also accused his brother in law with threatening to kill him.
I guess it is all in the family with the Millans.

–Former
Causa R leader and supposedly now Presidential Candidate Pablo Medina showed up at the
Prosecutor’s General’s office to denounce the Minister of Interior and
Justice and his brother for influence peddling. The case was reported here long ago, but
Justice Velasquez Alvaray mentioned it when he was charged by the moral
council. Chacon’s brother Arne was a lowly employee of the tax office in 2002
but now has purchased milks pants and owns an investment bank. Moreover, the Superintendence
of Banks had to approve the purchase and the basic requirement for purchasing a
bank is having banking experience which Chacon lacks. You also have to prove
the source of funds. These are the miracles of corruption in the revolution.

–There
was an interesting
interview with former Minister of Finance under Chavez General Francisco
Uson. Uson is the only person jailed for the case of the burnt soldiers of Fort Mara
because…imagine! He said that the burns were caused by a flamethrower on a TV program. Those
who caused the deaths are at large, they have not even been charged, but this was
a good excuse to jail Uson, a true political prisoner in Chavez’ Venezuela. Nothing has been done about the human rights
violations that day or who killed the soldiers, but Uson has been jailed since last summer for his crime of sying what he thought.  It is all a huge cover-up by the
military. And nothing happens.

Amazingly, Uson was quite quiet after resigning
on April 11^th. 2002 because he blamed Chavez for the deaths that day. In
the interview Uson says that Chavez acts like a gangster head of an organized
crime family. He says literally with reference to the Generals in power “He
(Chavez) places them where there is (money) and let’s them steal with full
hands”. What impressed me about the interview, besides the fact that Uson has
always been a very serious character, was the fact that in many questions he answers
by saying that all he knows about a topic is what he has read in the media and says nothing more. Uson
was convicted for a “crime of opinion”, a crime that does not exist in Venezuela’s
legislation.

These four cases show that contrary to the
Vice-President’s statements Justice has progressed little in the robolution.
In fact, most of these corruption cases are simply too obvious and blatant and
nothing happens. Somebody should explain to him that except for the Velasquez
Alvaray case, few Chavistas have been investigated or charged, despite the many
cases of corruptions denounced in the media with evidence.

Without giving any explanation, Chavez’ MVR rejects the audit of the electoral registry proposed by three universities. What are they afraid of?

1- Could it be that it does not make sense that 65% of the Venezuelan population is now registered to vote, for which they have to be over 18? Does this correlate with the census?

2.- I had placed three ID cards here with teh same picture. I was told a magazine reported this guy was caught with thrree ID’s with different ages and names. I tried to track it down today but coudln’t. The point is and was that thousands of people got ID cards that allow them to register to vote without anyone checking the validity of the card. I will post again if I get the copy promised to me.

In any case the point is that there are a huge number of irregularities that justify audting and making the electoral registry better. For example, I placed this in the comments:
By the way, if yo go to the INE webpage (www.ine.org.ve) it extrapolates using the data from the 2001 census
that in 2006 the population would be 27,030,656 persons. Of these,
11,037,506 would be 19 or below. One can estimate from this that some 360,000
turned new voters were eligble that year to vote, so the total 18 or
below is 11,001,000 approximately. That would say that 16,029,500 would
be eligible to vote IF YOU REGISTERED THEM ALL TO VOTE. The CNE says there will
be 17 million regsitered to vote in the December presidential election.
Efficient no, one million more registered than people avaialable? This is the type of inconsistencies that USB, UCV and
UCAB want to look at.This is the reason why there is no justification for MVR opposing the audit.But they coudl care less about logic, technology and the like.

3.- Or, as seen in Noticiero Digital , there are eight Gonzalez in Venezuela who have no first name, no second last name, but hey, they can vote as seen below as taken straight out of the electoral registry. This is illegal by the way, your name has to be exactly as in your ID. These are the same people who invalidated half a million signatures from the recall petition for simple smudges. Can Mr. Lara explain this curioisty to us? Are they part of the amazing Gonzalez family since they are also from Maracaibo? How many other last names show this? (You can try these at the CNE website www.cne.gov.ve)

The Miami Herald is
reporting that in the draft of the final resolution of the OAS meeting in Dominican Republic, Venezuela indicated that the
Internet was a “valuable contribution” it “lamented” that it could be used to
promote negative stereotypes of individuals and vulnerable groups. I guess they
mean Chavez and his movement and us bloggers in reverse order.

As to
calling the Internet just a “valuable contribution”, this shows what the
revolution thinks of technology, the Internet is a bigger revolution than Chavez’,
but they find the lack of control counter to Chavez’ autocratic style. They
would love to control people like me that tell you the truth and their lies,
but, for now, they simply can’t….Hopefully, this will remain that way.

We will
keep an eye for more information on the details of Venezuela’s position.

The three
leading opposition candidates in the polls Julio Borges, Teodoro Petkoff and
Manuel Rosales (who has yet to announce), announced
today that they will find a way of choosing one of the three as a united opposition
candidate before July 31^st. If they don’t, they will all participate
in the Sumate primary. They will create an independent commission to try to
find this consensus going forward. At the same time, they will integrate all
three campaign commands to create a joint proposal and a “governability” agreement
for the new Government. They said that they do not reject a primary offhand,
but would prefer a mechanism that shows there is indeed unit of purpose in
their goals.

They also
announced that they will not accept any conditions for the December election that
in any way worsens the conditions for the vote used in December 2005. This
means that the use of fingerprint machines is unacceptable. They also asked for
the CNE to consider both proposals to audit the electoral registry.

I believe
this is a positive announcement in the sense that it shows that their conversations
have indeed have been focused in leading to a consensus and unity. I still feel
that primaries would get the people excited and get them out of their doldrums,
which is badly needed at this time. At the same time, it does show a lot of
goodwill and maturity to attempt to reach that difficult decision by a consensual
mechanism, so they can spend their time showing the people what a mess this
country is in.

So Peru
has made its choice. Given the possibility of picking between a leftist, militaristic,
autocratic and nationalistic populist and a leftist, populist, charismatic, incompetent
manager, they chose the latter. In some sense, they chose democracy and
stability over the lack of freedom and instability. Garcia was responsible for
pushing Peru
over the economic brink in the 80’s. He saved his party from oblivion then and
he did it again yesterday. Humala on the
other hand offered an unknown economic path and the shadow of Cha¡vez and
Morales hung over his election.

Both Garcia and Humala have many similarities to Hugo Chávez. Both are
populists who have little idea about economics and both lack a true economic
plan. Where Garcia has Chavez’ charisma and ability to mobilize crowds, Humala
has Chavez’ militaristic-nationalist and autocratic streak. Thus, the two
together would be almost be a Chavez clone, which shows that people like some of
the same features that I find so undesirable.

The main question now is whether Garcia learned anything from his first
Presidency. This will be very important in determining his success. In his
first presidency Garcia appointed a good first team to his Cabinet, who quickly
were replaced by part apparatchik and friends over time. This team was the one
that innovated time and time again on economic policy, leading to the well
known disaster in Peru’s
economy.

Can it be different this time? It is very hard to tell. While Garci­a is
likely to try to be different, there will be lots of pressure from his party
APRA to involve party people in the Government. If Garcia can limit this, he
will have a higher probability of success. In some sense, both Fujimori and Toledo were more
successful, precisely because having no political parties behind them they had
to staff the Government with professionals, which have run ministries and other
offices much more efficiently than ever before. Maybe Garcia will do like
Carlos Andres Perez did in 1989 and do a complete turnaround from his first
presidency.

In terms of the region, Garcia represents a huge counterbalance to
Chavez. Chavez is unlikely to stop picking fights with him, which in turn will
make Garcia more popular with his countrymen. This will put Humala in a tough
position, since it will force him not to participate in the controversies to keep his distance to Chavez, but
at the same time he needs to keep a high profile. Peruvians will also look towards Bolivia to
judge whether they made a mistake or not in leaning towards Garcia. The
performance of Morales will be key to a possible Humala charge in the future.
If Morales’ Government encounters problems, it will reflect badly on Humala, as
long as Garci­a is not doing even worse.

For now, Peruvians made a choice between a rock and a hard place.
Hopefully Garcia will do what is best, will surround himself with competent
people and push his country forward both economically and socially. That is all
we can hope for now.