The Devil's Excrement

Via Pedro
Mario I read The Times
Editorial on Hugo Chavez, which shows that British papers can not be fooled as
easily as others:

Chav Politics (Chav means trashy
people in Britain)

The Hugo Chavez show is
bad burlesque. The
“private” visit of Hugo Chavez to London has proved enjoyable for those who
feared that 1980s nostalgia was not what it used to be. There may be
well-meaning souls prepared to view President Chavez with an open mind.
According to his promotional material, the Venezuelan leader is all that stands
between enlightenment and President Bush inflicting his twisted values (such as
democracy, the rule of law and market economics) on the entire world. Señor
Chavez, in his spare time, rescues his country’s grateful poor while rekindling
a Latin American sense of purpose and identity.

But if it is wise to judge
a man by his friends, those inclined to give the visitor the benefit of the
doubt might want to reconsider. It was not just the Central Casting collection
of faded radicals in his thrall. Having waited since the failure of the
Sandinistas to spark the (inevitable) anti-Yanqui revolution two decades ago,
their excitement was understandable. Ken Livingstone’s presence added
authenticity. It was good to see Harold Pinter there, a man who once had
something relevant to say (about Eccles cakes), but a long, long time ago. More
significant than those present were the absentees who would surely have wished
to be present at the lion-ising of the self-proclaimed Anti-Bush. Robert
(Mugabe), Kim Jong Il (The Dear Leader) and Muhammad (Ahmadinejad) are comrades
who were otherwise engaged. Señor Chavez’ eclectic choice of friends suggests a
man so deeply affronted not to have merited inclusion in Mr. Bush’s original
axis of evil (he is also an enthusiastic defender of Saddam Hussein) that he is
keen to create a new club of the touched.

President Chavez demands
attention, not just because he can wear a natty suit and, on occasion, employ
moderate tones. Because of rocketing prices, Venezuela’s oil revenues have
quadrupled since 1998, giving him economic and political clout that he is
exploiting with relish. His credentials as a leader of heroic stature would be
laughable if not so grave. On his watch, poverty rose as oil prices climbed for
the first time since records began. Murder has tripled, making Caracas the continent’s killing capital. His
disrespect for property, the rule of law and press freedom is now threatening
to infect Bolivia.
Corruption is endemic. He may be elected, but he talks of remaining in power
until 2031, and is no democrat.

Fortunately, many see
through him. Candidates in Peru
and Mexico
embraced by him have seen their support fall. The President’s next stop is Libya and a
meeting with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, a man who abandoned pariah status for
something approaching acceptability. Señor Chávez would do everyone a favour if
he embarked on a similar personal journey.

So, the former and now reactivated General Muller says that Venezuela will sell the F-16’s to the Iranians, which prompts a US spokesman to say that Venezuela can not sell them without authorization from the US and Venezuela should stop the vomiting of rhetoric, which prompts Minister of Defense Maniglia to say that since the US has breached the contract, they could sell them if they wanted.

But really, would you buy twenty year old used F-16’s from Maniglia, Chavez or Baduel?

(Note: The parrot is there for color, I don’t know if I would buy an F-16 or not from him)

From a Chavez
interview during his visit to London:

“I
don’t think in Cuba
there is a lack of freedom of speech,” he says with worrying speed. ”
If you approach Cuba
from the perspective of the Western world, you might think so. But there, you
have the people who express themselves on many matters. There is no repression in Cuba.”

“What
you have in Cuba
is a very specific model of revolution. We are very respectful of the
revolutionary people of Cuba
and its institutions. In the grassroots in Cuba, there are constant elections
that take place. Is it true that by electing a President or Prime Minister
every five years you have democracy? Is it because you have press and TV
channels that you have freedom of speech? There’s a lot of cynicism behind
that. So many lies behind that. Every country has its own model.”

What about
Robert Mugabe? Does he regret calling him a ” freedom fighter”?
“He is my friend. I think he has been demonised too much. Have
you met him?” No, I say – but I have met many of his victims. “We all
make mistakes. I think you should interview Mugabe yourself so you have a
better idea who he is and what he’s about. You have to understand history of
colonialism in Zimbabwe
against the black people, he wants a world where people are equals without
racism, that’s my opinion.”

“Freedom”
in Cuba
and genocide as a Mugabe “mistake”, The autocrat himself has clearly spoken to the
world!

–Since
Chavez won the 1998 Presidential election, the separation between Government
activities and those of Chavez’ MVR have slowly become blurred, becoming
essentially the same. At the beginning there was some pretence that there was a
difference, but these days, the Government funds that party’s activities but
nobody says anything about. The so called “moral” power is as partisan as the
guys in power, so they say nothing; they could be fired by the autocrat.

But the
differentiation has disappeared so much that that the Minister of Information
and Communication William Lara also hold the position as spokesman for Chavez’ Stalinist
party Movimiento V Republica MVR. So yesterday, he showed up at that party’s
headquarters to tell the country that MVR was unhappy with the pace of new registrations
for national ID cards and the electoral registry.

And he
kept a straight face as he spoke. But did not blame the opposition.

–If you
are a member of the opposition and were involved with April 11^th. you
are disqualified, indicted and persecuted. But if you are Lucas Rincon, the man
that started it all by telling the country and the world that Chavez had
resigned that fateful day, you are named, Minister of Defense, and then Minister
of the Interior an d as of today Venezuelan Ambassador to Portugal. What a
rough life!

Why was Rincon never investigated? Or was he? Did Rincon have Chavez letter of resignation? Fishy Fishy!I don’t know, but why
is it that he has never been investigated on the matter?

–It used
to be in the pre-Chavez era, that university professors had salaries similar to
Government officials. Today, a Full
Professor makes some Bs. 3 to 4 million a month. (US$ 1,350-1,860 a month), but
after CNE Board member Sobella Mejias was pensioned off with a Bs. 22 million a
month (US$ 10,000), today we hear that the new CNE approved unanimously that
Oscar Battaglini should be pensioned off with a Bs. 20.8 million a month
package (US$ 9800 a month). Of course, he only worked at the CNE for three
years, but you see a month ago the University where he worked for 25 years
(including the three at the CNE) pensioned him off with Bs. 2 million a month
(He never made it to Full Professor), which immediately qualified him for the
new higher pension. You have to love the purity of the revolution!

By the
way, the alternate rector of the CNE, Esther Gauthier, got a Bs. 16 million
pension a month. (US$ 7441 a month)

The nice
thing is that they don’t have to worry about inflation; their pensions are
adjusted automatically to the salary at the position.

No wonder
these guys fight for these jobs!

As Chávez says: A paso de vencedores! (At the pace of winners) while the country
simple gets screwed.

–You have
seen it elsewhere either here
or here,
but I can’t help but quoting the
excellent article by Ian Buruma:

“One of
the most vexing things for artists and intellectuals who live under the
compulsion to applaud dictators is the spectacle of colleagues from more open
societies applauding of their own free will. It adds a peculiarly nasty insult
to injury.”

All I can
say is Mr. Buruma, if you are ever in Venezuela let me know, I owe you a
bottle of wine and you can come by and it would be an honor to talk with you!

— And borrowing
freely from Francisco’s
blog, como debe ser, as influenced by Harry
Hutton, I am honored that the word excrement shows in google trends that Caracas
is the city where it is searched the most for, and Venezuela is the country
where it is a favorite.

When the Summit at Iguaçu last week was over, a talkative Hugo
Chavez, (what else is new?) hailed the meeting, said it was wonderful and that
the pharanoic mega pipeline would now include Bolivia.

But
somehow that is not what apparently happened, as press reports tell us that Lula
told Chavez not to meddle so much in South American affairs and that he was
endangering the gas pipeline project with his intromissions.  The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry claims
to be surprised by this reaction, while none other than Evo Morales says
that he will try to save the Andean trade pact while in Europe.
Morales meanwhile is now being accused of being himself a puppet of Chavez, as he
is criticized for flying in a Venezuelan plane to Europe and Morales tries
to distance himself from the Venezuelan President. But it is hard to do as his
Minister of Energy confirms that PDVSA employees helped with the
nationalization decree, Morales says expropriation of large states is next,
then a Constituent Assembly and you bring Chavez to a Summit where he has
little role to play other than defend you from the ire of Lula and Kirchner.

Of course,
all of these problems are supposedly being caused by the “right wing” Brazilian oligarchs
like Celso Amorin and Marco Aurelio Garcia, Chavez’ allies two yaers ago, who are now at the center stage of criticism
in their own countries because essentially Lula had his thunder and leadership stolen
by Chavez.

The result
of all this is that Lula is looking North more than ever, as he realizes he can
not count on his supposedly ideological partners to go along with him, Uruguay is mad at Argentina, Peruvian candidates
now all attack Chavez, Lopez Obrador seems to be losing not first place but
now even second place in the Mexican Presidential race tahnks to Chavez and the President of Guatemala tells
Chavez not to meddle, even before he has.

All in all
not a very good week for someone that wants to be the leader of this southern
hemisphere. A lot of the work Chavez had done regionally to integrate was lost
this week because of the style Venezuelans have seen in the last seven years: confrontation,
intolerance and ignoring others opinions.

This is in
the end bad for the whole region. The world is becoming highly connected and if
we can not connect with our most natural trading partners, we all lose in the
end. Chavez’ difficulty is that he truly believes that free trade is bad, while
the rest of the region has come to recognize that free trade is the way out of
poverty for many of these countries. Moreover, he wants to impose his point of
view, the way he did on the CAN, later on Mercosur, then with the G-3 and
helping Morales make decisions that have created a rift between his country and
his natural (and only!) clients.

So far
only Argentinean President Kirchner has yet to distance himself publicly from
Chavez. Maybe he can not yet afford to, given the largesse of the Chavez
Government in purchasing that country’s debt in the last year, no questions
asked.

The only
question is what will be the next step. Lula is facing an election, while his
own country is beginning to doubt his ability to lead the country
internationally. Mexican, Peruvian and Colombian politicians distance
themselves from the Venezuelan President, who has an election in eight months
that will likely push him into radical positions that many neighbors will not like. The
US
seems to have no clue as to how to play this game, other than do little or fumble even when they try to do something.  

Unfortunately,
all of these countries continue to benefit from the world commodities boom,
which hides many of their structural problems and lack of competitiveness. Decisions are delayed, conflicts are avoided and important opportunities
are being missed as the more radical left interferes with the traditional one
to slow down progress in trade within then region. Integration efforst falter simply because of ideology, the same ill that has affected the region for decades.  In the end, the people are hurt as the economies if their countries d not grow as fast as they need to, while other areas of the world, such as Asia and Eastern Europe continue to make strides in solving those same problems with pragmatism.

And the Washinton post has somehow discovered that the revolution has flaws, such as the tripling of the crime rate in the last seven and a half years. It really does not make me feel very good to think that Caracas has the worst crime rate of the planet, but hey, that is what revolutions are all about, achieving new milestones, no?

In the
last few days, there have been a number of interviews in the press with one of
the new members of the Electoral Board. In them, some of them, while attempting
to sound impartial, send a terrible signal, in my personal opinion, as to the
future of their decisions.

There were
four interviews in the press, one with Janeth Hernandez (Tal Cual, page 6, May
8^th. 2006), Sandra Oblitas (in charge of the all important electoral
registry, El Nacional, Monday May 8^th. page A4)), German Yepez (El
Nacional, May 7^th. 2006, page A4), Janeth Hernandez (El Nacional,
May 6^th. 2006, page A4) and Vicente Diaz (El Nacional, May 5^th.
2006, page A4). All of these are by subscription only and only one member is missing, Tibisay Lucena, the current Electoral Board President, who was part of the previous one and thus, well known in that she supported Jorge Rodriguez at every step and breath.

First of
all, the three members of the Board who are considered pro-Chavez, claim independence,
impartiality and all of that. However, all of them say that they consider the
auditing of any more than 5% of the votes ridiculous from a technical point of
view. They say this, even after accepting that the previous Board may have had
less credibility because of some of the decisions. They claim that this is a
technical problem and should be handled as such, but they fail to acknowledge
that none of the audits since the recall vote were actually completed as
promised and the audit performed in the December election was not a live or hot
audit, but instead was supposed to be completed in five weeks, which did not
happen.

Particularly
tough on this issue was Board member Janeth Rodriguez, who in the Tal Cual
interview said that “the rules of the game are not negotiated” or “The old CNE
made too many concessions that I would not have accepted”. Curiously, while
defending technical issues, she admits that only 43% of Venezuelans trust the
electoral system, something which apparently she fails to take into account I
her “technical” decisions and considerations. She is actually quite strong
telling El Nacional that she disagrees with manually counting 100% of the
ballots. “Never that!” she said in that interview.

The next
issue in which they are all quite strong is the matter of using the fingerprint
capture machines. Two of the new Board members (Hernandez and Oblitas) think
they should be used in order to guarantee the one man, one vote precept; the
third one German Yepez says he is “open” but thinks the are an important
element to guarantee the one man, one vote concept. However, none of them
mention that it ahs always been shown that the number of people voting twice
was simply insignificant, while it is well known that the fingerprint machines
have been used both as an element of fear to suggest to voters that it may be
known how they vote, as well as the fact that by having access to the real time
data, the CNE can tell the Government how things are going in terms of
attendance and help them make decisions like keep polls open beyond the time
they are supposed to be opened as was done in three of the last four elections.
(In the fourth one, there were no machines so it could not be monitored)

Even more
laughable are Oblitas’ defense of the Capel audit of the voter registry. Capel
only audited up the year 2000, while the huge jump in new people registered and
irregularities in the registry took place in 2003 and 2004. Second, the
registry was never handed over to all political parties as stated by law, but
nevertheless turned over to the Government and its political hacks repeatedly
in 2004 and 2005 for political harassment and the violations of rights of
Venezuelans. Curiously, this is simply ignored by all of the new board members,
except, of course, the lonely so called voice of the opposition in that Board.

Even more
naïve is Oblitas’ statement that she has no basis to think that the electoral
registry may have irregularities. It is well known that both the identification
and registration processes in 2004 and 2005, did not follow the rules and
regulations in terms of checking identities, addresses and facts before the
issuing of ID cards, as required by law and that there are numerous
irregularities, such as 2,000 Gonzalez’s that were born on the same day, people
who are over 150 years old and the like.

Even more
laughable are the repeated statements that criteria should be technical and not
political. What is this? The return of Carlos Andres’ technocrats? The CNE is
in the end at the service of the voters, not the Government or technical
matters. It is supposed to guarantee the precision of the vote, but also to
develop the confidence of the voters in most of the electorate, something that
goes well beyond simple technical decisions. To say otherwise is to cynically
try to misrepresent or misinterpret the role of the Electoral Board in
Venezuelan political life. Even Yepez acknowledges this, saying that
“everything that generates more confidence is necessary”, but later he says
that auditing 3% of the ballots should be sufficient.

All in
all, too many inconsistencies in the statements by the new members of the CNE
to feel comfortable about it. Despite their many claims of impartiality and a “new”
CNE, they sound like the same old, same old Electoral Board. Fortunately or unfortunately
for us, the new CNE will have to define many of the matters within the next
month, so that the opposition will be able to judge whether the new Board
members truly want a transparent and simple system that can make everyone
comfortable with the results or whether the partisan acts, votes and secrecy of
the Jorge Rodriguez era are still there.

So far, it
does not sound very positive. I hope I am wrong, for the sake of democracy in Venezuela.

So now everyone
is jumping on the Government because that marvel of Chavista engineering “The Trocha”,
the temporary road, which has become permanent, which replaces the viaduct that
will never fall (Chavez
dixit), has been temporarily shut down. But people
simply don’t listen. First of all, it has not been shut down, it was simply
closed at the worst hour of rush traffic on a Monday evening, in order to do
some scheduled repairs, including the placing of much needed lighting and
reinforcing some walls that may come down and kill some people.

This had
all been planned for later, they had schedluded the “programmed landslide” for later, but the engineers in charge decided to listen to
the School of Engineers and fix it before it got
worse, so if you should blame anyone, you should blame them. After all, they have
been right all along and the Government had never listened to them and look
at what happened.

You should
not blame Chavez either. After all, a year ago, he was thinking about building Iranian bicycles,
to replace the Chinese bicycle plant that was never built to replace the Cuban bicycle
plant that never got off the ground.

But see, you can’t blame it on Chavez either, after all, he never thought “the people” used the
Caracas-La Guaira highway until someone told him, he always believed that this
road was only used by oligarchs to go to the beach every weekend. That is why
he never paid attention to it, until the stupid viaduct began to fall down, because all
of the opposition members jumped at once on their feet, making the earth
tremble, which in turn made the viaduct collapse. But soon they will no longer
be able to do this, because they are leaving the country very fast. Or so Jose
Vicente tells him.

People are
just too critical. Just yesterday Chávez in Alo presidente said that his Government
will build 150,000 housing units this year, even if only 17,000 have been built
so far in 2006. You are skeptical because last year it was
100,000 for the full year and in May only 8,000 had been built and only 19,000
were built all year, but last year was a practice run, because 2006 is an
electoral year, so I am sure that the Government will build at least 20,000.

After all,
Chavez can’t do everything He did not pay attention to the viaduct because he was busy helping
Luis Tascon with the Maisanta list, for which he has never taken the credit he
deserved, while that minor leaguer Tascon got it all. He was also building his own
construction company, which somehow never got off the ground because he has
too many incompetent collaborators and was promoting Iranian
solar panels, which one of this decades will have a huge impact in our
daily life. So please, be patient, Chavez is working very hard.

In fact,
there is a blessing in disguise in all this. Last week Chavez suggested to Lula
that the Transamazonic-pharanoic gas pipeline may go down first from Caracas to
La Guaira, so that the pipe could become the viaduct itself and that way some
money could be saved. Lula looked at Chavez, admiring his genius, his
creativity, turned to Brazilian Foreign Minister Amorin and said:”We are out of
here”. Clearly, Chavez had left him speechless.

So please,
start appreciating what Chavez is doing. Don’t criticize “The Trocha”. Eight years is just not enough. Ask Fidel. Why do
you think Chavez is asking to stay as President until 2031? Easy, he wants time to
do the Trocha right. He wants to be known as the man who built that engineering marvel “The Trocha”.
So, please give him a chance. He may have no clue as to what he is doing, but
he is well meaning and deserves a chance to do right by all of you.

On Saturday I wrote about the $18 million dollar retainer. I missed the fact that I had not placed the correct link on the story. What makes the story strong was the fact that I dug out from the court in New York the decision by that Court in the case of Silvestre versus Bigott de Loaiza, without that correct link the post was simply hearsay. Bigott de Loaiza says the contract is real, but that the numbers are not true, but she also says that she knows nothing about the injunction. Hard to believe no?

So now you can all read what Silvestre claims and all of the support to what I said on the post. I apoligize to Mora who pointed out I had duplicated the link and I understood it was the link to the Court, not to my post. I have corrected the original story.

Esther Bigott the Loaiza is a Venezuelan lawyer close to Vice-President Rangel,
who has acted in a number of cases to defended Rangel and even President Hugo
Chavez. Last week, it was revealed that the Ministry of Finance was paying her
US$18 million per year to help defend the Government in the Bandagro suit.
The Bandagro bonds are some reportedly phantom bonds that have been around for
years. I
referred to the case recently, because the Cabinet’s lawyer Marisol Plaza
was removed recently because she gave an opinion saying the bonds were real
which are the bases for a billion dollar suit against the Venezuelan Government
in Ohio and Switzerland.

Bigott de Loaiza has denied that she was being paid such an amount per year,
saying she is only getting “expenses”. However, it has surfaced that
she hired another Venezuelan named Claudia Silvestre who lives in the US, to
help her out in the case promising 14.4% of her payments (of the US$ 18 million
retainer) to the tune of US$ 2.59 million dollars. Unfortunately, Bigott de
Loaiza reneged on her promise and Silvestre sued her in New York Court as can
be seen here. Silvestre lost the case because the contract between her and
Loaiza explicitly said that any disagreement would be decided in Venezuelan
Courts.

However, the contract gives nice tidbits of how money is thrown around by the
revolution. According to the Court’s papers Claudia Silvestre, while residing
in Miami, is only authorized to practice law in Venezuela and not the US. Moreover, Silvestre says in her
injunction that her service was simply:

” she provided assistance in setting up the Account so that the
Venezuelan Government could directly deposit payments for the legal services
provided by defendants in connection with the foreign actions and that she
arranged payment to United
States counsel from the Account.”

Nice job if you can get it, no?