The Devil's Excrement

Hugo Chavez, the autocrat himself, comes out today and threatens to call for a referendum so that he is allowed to stay until 2031 if the opposition does not participate in the December elections, showing that he has no belief in democracy. He claims he can call for it with a decree, that presumes he considers it just an amendment, not a reform. I think it is a reform because it would remove an important limitation.

Meanwhile, the new CNE is starting to show its true claws. Today CNE Board member Janeth Hernandez “discards” the possibility of a manual count in parallel with the automatic one. According to this lady, this is “too much work”. Come on! How can it be too much work, if they were unable to do 125 audits in the recall referendum, or less than 50% in the regional elections. They could not even do these audits in the five weeks promised in the December elections when only 17% of the people voted! Hard work my a…!

Thus, the loyal hardcore is ready to act and the man who wants to be King also is. A true autocrat wants to crown himself and his idiot supporters around the world are ready to cheer him!

And at the Boston Globe they publish Daniel’s letter in response to the awful Editorial that paper wrote last week::

IT IS rare to see such an offensive editorial on Venezuelans as yours (”Getting past oil’s ideology,”
April 28). You seem to think that just because the United States is a
major consumer of oil, it is entitled to some rebate, just as from some
electronic retailer.

That would be fine if Venezuela were a democratic country playing by
the rules and with a standard of living at least not too far behind
that of the United States.

Neither is true. While some folks get
subsidized heating in Massachusetts, there are too many Venezuelans who
do not get three meals a day, and this after nearly eight years of
President Hugo Chavez’s rule through a populist and leftist
pseudo-revolution.

What is really going on in Massachusetts, at
least from the viewpoint of the average Venezuelan who knows where to
pinpoint Boston on a map, is a congressman shamelessly playing politics
for his reelection on the backs of Venezuela’s poor. The actions of
William Delahunt are close to despicable, at least as seen from here.
They give liberals a bad name, and it is beyond belief that The Boston
Globe supports such actions in its editorial.

DANIEL DUQUENAL

Daniel has his own comments in his blog, where he takes advanatge of the occasion to blast the NYT.

A blogger from Venezuela getting a letter to the Editor in the Boston Globe: Priceless!

All in a single day of the ugly revolution:

-A group of 50 women at Caracas’ largest maternity clinic, where more than 120
women give birth everyday, holds a demonstration to protest to the Director of that hospital because they have yet
to be paid the salary increase decreed by President Chavez three months ago.
The Director of the clinic calls a commando from the irregular pro-Chavez “Tupamaro” group and
more than 50 Tupamaro hoodlums, fully armed and on motorcycles, shows up to
stop the protest and defend the Director. The protestors took their
demonstration to the street where the Tupamaros continued to intimidate them.

-A group of homeless people invades a parcel of land and refuses to move. The
National Guard shows up
and what do they do? Easy, essentially detain them by using the same fences the
invaders built to not allow anyone in or out of the property. People are not
even allowed to go out to buy food and husbands are not allowed to come in to
their improvise homes. You wonder where the People’s Ombudsman is in all this.

-Protestors begin a
demonstration in front of the Ministry of Housing and Habitat, an event
that is beginning to take place almost daily. The National Guard shows up to
guarantee public order. Annoyed employees of the Ministry go out and start
assaulting both the protesters and the National Guardsmen! They even tried to
take the weapons away from the Guardsmen so that they could preserve
order (Read: repress the protestors)

-A group of Tupamaros, who have become the law in some parts of the West of
Caracas under the eyes of the Government and the police, take
over the Cultural House of the La Pastora parish in the west of Caracas.
They place the Tupamaro flag outside the building and simply appropriate the
cultural house where many activities organized by the neighbors take
place. They have gone to the Prosecutor’s office as well as the Head of the
parish to no avail. The group that runs the Cultural house was elected by the
parish to do so.

Such is the state of lawlessness and repression that common Venezuelans live in. Dissent and protests are repressed by the law and the lawless. The law is there only to defend the revolution, not those that oppose it and are not unconditional to it. “Revolutionary” groups replace the police and the army in maintaining law and order. Of course, Government leaders come out on TV and say that there is absolute freedom of expression under Chavez. And we are supposed to believe it!

Meanwhile today’s El Nacional (via Venancham) shows how well the revolution has done in becoming independent of the “Evil-Empire” (a.k.a. the US) in contrast to its Latin neighbors and why it does not want cheap neo-liberal products to get into Venezuela, via the free trade treaty ALCA that Colombia and Peru want to sign with the US. As the graph shows, last year Venezuela “only” exported US$ 33.9 billion, a record, to the US, while imports from that country hit US$ 6.4 billion, also an all time re cord and another truly revolutionary and sovereign accomplishment. How we hate those gringoes and their US$ and products!

I bet Mr. Danger is worried (anyone of these two)

It was a vertitable circus today at the OAS meeting, as both Peru and Nicaragua complained about the intromission of Hugo Chavez in the internal affairs of their respective countries. The Venezuelan Ambassador defended Chavez saying that he had been insulted by Alan Garcia, but the truth was that Garcia was responding to Chavez’ threat that he would break relations with Peru pif that hood, thief and corrupt politician reched the Peruvian Presidency. The Peruvian Ambassador was also incensed becaued he had asked for a video of Chavez’ statements bee shown, but was denied he possibility by the President, the Ambassador from St. Vincent and the Granadines. The Ambassador said that he it had been agreed prior to the meeting that he woudl show the video, which in his own words, had nothing obscene or vulgar in it, but the clear intromission by Chavez in Peru’s electoon by threatening the Peruvian citizens if they elected  Alan Garcia.Meanwhile, the Peruvian Electoral Board withdrew its invitation (by subscription) of the two pro-Chavez observers that had been invited to the election, one of which was none other than the jnfamous ex-President of the Electoral Board Jorge Rodriguez.

Nicaragua meanwhile was accusing Chavez of trying to buy with his oil money the victory Daniel Ortega has been unable to achieve via the ballot box. While the Venezuelan Ambassador said that Chavez was just expressing his solidarity, something which has little credibility, given that Chavez is only giving oil to Sandinista Mayors.

Meanwhile Uruguayan President Tabare Vasquez was very clear that he did not say anything of the many things he said in the last few days, now saying that his country will not leave Mercosur, but will join ALCA, while becoming an “associate” member of Mercosur, demosntarting that only politicians are capable of contradicting themselves and claim they are being consistent.

Meanwhile in Brazil, President Lula was trying to put his best face on Evo Morales’ decision to nationalize Bolivia’s gas operations, while his commercial arm Petrobras, was speaking from Lual’s pocketbook, saying that it was cancelling its investments in Bolivia and that declaring the increase in the price of Bolivian gas “unacceptable”.

Thus, it was another day for desintegration in Latin America as conflicting signals were being sent all over, while it appeared increasingly likely that Lula may be leaning  closer to ALCA and its rule of law, now that his freindly “partners” in Latin America have acted in unfriendly and unexpected ways.

Besides throwing money right and left abroad, now most Venezuelans have become second class cirtizens as Hugo Chavez yields under pressure from the Government of Zapatero. Why very few of the Venezuelans who have had their farms taken over by the National Land Institute (INTI) have received payment in compensation, the twelve Venezuelan farmers of Spanish ancestry whose land was taken over will reportedly receive payment within twenty days, under political pressure from both the Spanish Government and that country’s Parliament  forced the Venezuelan Government into action to quelch the interntional noise on the issue.

What makes the issue even worse is that Venezuelan law is quite clear, the Government or INTI may take over the land only after a judge has approved it and adequate compensation has been paid to the owners. But the law is basically nirrelevant for the revolution as the autocrat bully continues to manage the country as his own personal fiefdom. In the end, it is the Venezuelan “people” who end up being discriminated against or fail to benefit form the oil bonanza as Chavez disposes, decomposes and composes at will. Thus, the only way to benefit is by being the autocrat’s friend or receiving some help from his friends. Ask Evo or Fidel or these group of Venezuelan farmers of Spanish origin.

Some revolution!

As decided by ghost blogger Jorge Arena, there are two winners to the caption contest: LECO and Miguel Aguirre, with the following captions:

LECO: “Leche is what I have on oil prices”

Miguel Aguirre: “I have just been crowned king of milk”

The winners shoudl send me an e-mail via the enevlope at the bottom of the page with the name of the book they want and their address to deliver it. Still need 13,000 visitors to truly celebrate the one million mark!

(In the interest of disclosure one of the winners is a nephew, Jorge did not knwo this)

Curious that I used last night the word desintregrate referring to what is happening in Latin America and today Tal Cual’s Editorial is entitled “The Desintegrator” in reference to our President and his recent behavior surrounding Peru and and the CAN. By the way, I have no idea whether it is still Petkoff writing these Editorials, it is either him or Javier Conde, until they clear it up in their front page, I will leave a question mark.

The Desintegrator by ????? in Tal Cual

In the matter of the Andean Community of
Nations (CAN) and that of Peru,
the form is as important or more important that the matter itself. The conduct
of President Chavez is unacceptable from any point of view, international or
diplomatic standard that you may want to use. In a Chief of State, that
behavior can not be justified under any argument. It is not only inappropriate
and coarse with other countries but also, to a large degree, with his own
people.

In the case of the CAN, Chavez acted
without consulting the country in general and the interested sectors in
particular, he even barely explained his acts, but only after executing them as
a fait accompli, and he did not even make an attempt to discuss the issue with
his Andean colleagues.

He simple hit the lamp with a stick. The
oldest integrationist experience in south America went into a coma forno reason
other than the pure and arbitrary will of the President of Venezuela. The free
trade treaties signed by Colombia
and Peru
with the US induced “noise” in the CAN? To fix the damage in one of the rooms
in the house you don’t have to destroy it first. That is what Chavez did. But,
we insist, the worst part is the treatment that Chavez gave his own country and
his own people.

Like the owner of a large farm state, because he felt like it (untranslatable:
Because of the cover of his kidneys) this champion of participative democracy did
not even propose the obvious: a consultative referendum with his people, as it
is contemplated in the Constitution for decisions of this nature. His conduct
was the pure quintessence of authoritarism and autocratic behavior. He was sure
that none of the powers of the State was going to raise a voice of protest agaianst
such a huge barbaric act.

In the case of the discussion with Alan
Garcia and the threat of breaking diplomatic relations with Peru if he should win,
we face the same conduct. What the hell is this, disrespecting the people of a
nation, blackmailing them with breaking relations if they don’t vote for the
candidate that Chavez likes, in this case Humala? Does Chavez believe that he
is the Great Elector in Latin America, the man that decides how people should
vote?

What the hell is this disrespect towards us
Venezuelans handling diplomatic relations with our country as if it was a
private matter, subject to the humor and whims of the President?

Where has anyone seen such a grotesque
and outlandish posture? Is it that Chavez can manage the country as if it was his
own property? Why should Peru pay for a discussion between Chavez and Garcia,
since the later is just a candidate?

Chavez is becoming a pest in this
continent. Even Lula and even his friend Kirchner were forced to reprimand him,
in a very tough manner by the way, because of his intrigues around Mercosur. In
two words they told him not to get involved in something he knows nothing about.
Our busybody President was forced to apologize

In his arrogance with so many dollars;
Chavez however is beginning to find a continent that is getting tired of his
bragging.

Let me see
if I get it, Chavez gets out of the CAN, so he can join Mercosur or start his
own block ALBA, sans ALCA signees. Uruguay,
the beneficiary of Chavez’ largesse, pulls
out of Mercosur and will visit Bush, saying he will model his country’s
trade policy after Chile (read ALCA),
joining many trade agreements (Why pull out of Mercosur then?).Evo nationalizes
gas away from the Brazilian and Spanish imperialists, after Lula asked Chavez to
stop Evo from making trouble. Lula is mad, saying
(in Portuguese) that Bolivia’s
act is not a friendly act. Evo talks
about nationalizing everything (Including Chile’s sea?). Zapatero is still apparently sleeping, but when he wakes up, he will say he is “concerned” (That’s all he knows how to do). Why are Fox and
Uribe smiling?

Who is on first?

I guess
you have to disintegrate to integrate or something like that. Or maybe we are just too diverse to make it work anyway.

You have
to feel sorry for Peru,
having to choose between Alan Garcia or Ollanta Humala. In fact, Chavez seems
to be a hybrid between the two: Humala is a former military populist who uses a confrontational style; Alan
Garcia is a populist social democrat. Garcia allowed corruption to be rampant
during his term in office while he innovated in economic matters to levels that
almost drove Peru
to bankruptcy, disregarding all economic knowledge. He thought he knew better.
Sound familiar? Maybe that is why Chavez dislikes him so much, they are so
similar. Chavez now criticizes
Toledo for
siding with Garcia, but all Toledo
was doing was asking Chavez to stay out of Peru’s
Presidential race.  Curiously while Peru recalled its Ambassador, Venezuela
announced it will not do the same. This is obvious; Chavez and Humala need a
conduit for Venezuela’s
help in the Peruvian Presidential race. Jorge Rodriguez has been advising
Humala, now that he is an “expert” on electoral shenanigans.

Chavez seems to be extending abroad the style in which he has treated his
fellow countrymen. It is the same confrontational style, disregarding civilized
concepts of coexistence and diplomacy.  Alan Garcia seems to be snapping back at Chavez
at every turn, suggesting to me that his advisors think that he will gain form
this.  I think he will, given the image that Humala has within Peru and the fact that over 70% of the voters are looking for whom to vote. Garcia said Chavez was hypocritical as he mantained very good relations with the US.

Petkoff also got into the argument,
challenging Chavez to break relations with the US and not to threaten smaller
countries, saying this is typical behavior of a bully. 

All in
all, a very depressing scenario for our neighbor Peru, only Fujimori seems to be
missing from the picture to make matters even worse. (But some of his formers
advisors seems to be floating around Humala). Come election day, it will just be a matter of which of the two candidates can destroy Peru faster. If experience counts, Garcia has the upper hand. If not, Humala leads.

What a depressing choice!