The Devil's Excrement

In 1993, then AD Presidential candidate Claudio Fermin inserted in his campaign program a proposal to subsidize having all public transportation vehicles convert to natural gas as a way of removing the price of gasoline from being a political issue. Once the change had been completed, then gasoline prices would be raised to international levels and PDVSA would not be subsidizing the gasoline for those that can afford a car in Venezuela, which are not exactly the poor. At the same time, public transportation would use natural gas that is mostly burned in Venezuela and sold cheaply.

Fermin lost the election, Caldera came in as President and two years later was forced to sign an agreement with the IMF after the financial crisis, which imposed the condition that gasoline prices had to be adjusted to the FOB price periodically (I can’t remember whether it was quarterly or every six months). In this manner, every three or six months the price of a liter of gasoline was adjusted slightly and the issue disappeared from Venezuelan politics until Chavez won the election and froze gasoline prices again.

The math is fairly simple, a liter of gasoline costs 4.6 US dollar cents or 20 cents a gallon (3.5 cents and 15.4 cents at the parallel exchange rate). In terms of barrels, a barrel of gasoline goes for around US$ 48 per barrel and costs PDVSA about US$ 6.5 per barrel to produce. Since internal consumption is 240,000 barrels a day of gasoline, according to today’s El Nacional (page A-20), we are talking about a subsidy that costs PDVSA about US$ 9.96 million per day, which turns into US$ 3.6 billion subsidy per year!

I don’t know how many public transportation vehicles there are in Venezuela, but I do know there are about 2.6 million total vehicles. If I assume that one million are for public transportation of any sort, and that the conversion to natural gas costs $1,500 (it used to cost $1,000), then for half of the amount that is being subsidized yearly, the Government could pay the conversion of every single public transportation vehicle to natural gas and eliminate the subsidy. The money thus saved could be used elsewhere.

Now, this would truly be revolutionary, no?

Some encouraging signs are coming out of the CNE. First of all, it has agreed to give the opposition copies of the voting “notebooks” in which people signed that they had voted. This is important because the opposition will be able to check the consistency of the total number of voters in the notebooks versus the final tally of the electronic and manual registries.

The CNE has also agreed to allow the manual counting of up to 10% of all machines. This is an improvement, but I still do not understand what is the rationale for not counting them all. After all, the counting will be done by the volunteers manning the polling stations and it would all be done simultaneously nationwide.

What bothers me is that a precise count will be more important in the upcoming regional election that in the recall vote. There will be races for Mayor that will be decided by a few hundred votes and common sense would suggest that having a manual and electronic count that match would eliminate most sources of controversy. It would seem to me that for the CNE, the winners of the regional races, the opposition and the Government, having transparent and unquestionable results would help reduce the high level of confrontation present in Venezuela. But common sense is rare these days here, reminding me of the saying “common sense may be the least common of all of the senses”

Good discussion in the comments section of the previous post about what exactly are Sumate officials being charged for. Stig cites the correct article of the criminal code:

“Artícle 132.- Anyone that, from within or outside the national territory, conspires to destroy the republican political form that the Nation has been given will be punished with jail from eight to sixteen years.

The same punishment will be incurred by the Venezuelan that requests foreign intervention in the national politics of Venezuela, or requests its participation to alter the peace of the Republic or those that went in front of their officials or by publications made in the foreign press, promoted civil war or defamed the President or injured its diplomatic representative or the consular officials of Venezuela, because of the nature of their functions in the country where the deed was committed”

Clearly, what the prosecutor from the Attorney General’s office wants to argue is that the officers of Sumate “requested foreign intervention in the national politics of Venezuela” by asking the National Endowment for Democracy for funding. This is made quite clear in statements made by the prosecutor in today’s El Universal.

This is of course simply a narrow and vindictive interpretation aimed at getting back at Sumate leaders for what they have done against Chavez by organizing the petitions and establishing the controls that allowed the opposition to get there. The key here will likely be whether funding is or not “intervening in the national politics of Venezuela”.  After all, it was the Sumate people that did the intervention, not the NED.

The amazing thing is that the same article applies to Chavez receiving US$ 1.5 million from Spanish bank BBVA during his 1998 campaign, which was also illegal because he did not report it. But more importantly, NED has also funded a number of pro-Chavez organizations which would be guilty of the same crime.

In fact the application of this article would simply mean that no Venezuelan organization could get foreign funding for any politically related issue, whether its human rights, elections or environmental issues. Local chapters of Greenpeace, Amnesty International and the like would be threatened by this. Even religious groups could be threatened by this, if they get involved in anything that could be considered political and most activities in Venezuela today are so influenced by politics that it could be applied if the Government wanted.

In fact, this blog could be in violation of this article if it is considered to be foreign press and of defaming Chavez.

This is of course trying to make sense of something that can not make any sense whatsoever and is simply a political vendetta by Chavez against Sumate, which reflects the problems of not having independent powers. If the Attorney General were truly independent, the case would have never reached the point it has. In fact, the Attorney General’s office seems to give undue priority to these political cases, ignoring much more serious crimes involving deaths, injury and other human rights violations.

Good discussion in the comments section of the previous post about what exactly are Sumate officials being charged for. Stig cites the correct article of the criminal code:

“Artícle 132.- Anyone that, from within or outside the national territory, conspires to destroy the republican political form that the Nation has been given will be punished with jail from eight to sixteen years.

The same punishment will be incurred by the Venezuelan that requests foreign intervention in the national politics of Venezuela, or requests its participation to alter the peace of the Republic or those that went in front of their officials or by publications made in the foreign press, promoted civil war or defamed the President or injured its diplomatic representative or the consular officials of Venezuela, because of the nature of their functions in the country where the deed was committed”

Clearly, what the prosecutor from the Attorney General’s office wants to argue is that the officers of Sumate “requested foreign intervention in the national politics of Venezuela” by asking the National Endowment for Democracy for funding. This is made quite clear in statements made by the prosecutor in today’s El Universal.

This is of course simply a narrow and vindictive interpretation aimed at getting back at Sumate leaders for what they have done against Chavez by organizing the petitions and establishing the controls that allowed the opposition to get there. The key here will likely be whether funding is or not “intervening in the national politics of Venezuela”.  After all, it was the Sumate people that did the intervention, not the NED.

The amazing thing is that the same article applies to Chavez receiving US$ 1.5 million from Spanish bank BBVA during his 1998 campaign, which was also illegal because he did not report it. But more importantly, NED has also funded a number of pro-Chavez organizations which would be guilty of the same crime.

In fact the application of this article would simply mean that no Venezuelan organization could get foreign funding for any politically related issue, whether its human rights, elections or environmental issues. Local chapters of Greenpeace, Amnesty International and the like would be threatened by this. Even religious groups could be threatened by this, if they get involved in anything that could be considered political and most activities in Venezuela today are so influenced by politics that it could be applied if the Government wanted.

In fact, this blog could be in violation of this article if it is considered to be foreign press and of defaming Chavez.

This is of course trying to make sense of something that can not make any sense whatsoever and is simply a political vendetta by Chavez against Sumate, which reflects the problems of not having independent powers. If the Attorney General were truly independent, the case would have never reached the point it has. In fact, the Attorney General’s office seems to give undue priority to these political cases, ignoring much more serious crimes involving deaths, injury and other human rights violations.

Problem #1: Everybody questions how you ran the election, there are accusations of fraud and manipulation, at least 40% of the population does not trust you or the process you organized. How can you regain the trust of the public?

Solution: You ask everyone about their complaints, make the process as transparent as possible, respect the law and remove all possible steps that give rise to mistrust and improve the process.

Chavista CNE solution: Maintain everything as it is, approve regulations by which machines will once again transmit the information before printing the results in violation of your own regulations, refuse to change the regional electoral boards to make them less partisan and create a position at each electoral center: the “Head” of the center, chosen and paid by you to run each electoral center. This despite the fact that the regulations say that the members of a center will be chosen at random among the voters at that center and that they will organize themselves as they see fit, choosing their own coordinator.

Problem #2: You create a number of committees to study problems. At the end of their period none of them present reports on what they did.

Solution: You make sure they write the report and give them a deadline

Chavista National assembly solution: when only 2 of 88 committees presented their reports, they eliminated 44 of them! At least the percentages improve significantly.

This revolution is so logical, coherent and democratic; you’ve got to love them.

Problem #1: Everybody questions how you ran the election, there are accusations of fraud and manipulation, at least 40% of the population does not trust you or the process you organized. How can you regain the trust of the public?

Solution: You ask everyone about their complaints, make the process as transparent as possible, respect the law and remove all possible steps that give rise to mistrust and improve the process.

Chavista CNE solution: Maintain everything as it is, approve regulations by which machines will once again transmit the information before printing the results in violation of your own regulations, refuse to change the regional electoral boards to make them less partisan and create a position at each electoral center: the “Head” of the center, chosen and paid by you to run each electoral center. This despite the fact that the regulations say that the members of a center will be chosen at random among the voters at that center and that they will organize themselves as they see fit, choosing their own coordinator.

Problem #2: You create a number of committees to study problems. At the end of their period none of them present reports on what they did.

Solution: You make sure they write the report and give them a deadline

Chavista National assembly solution: when only 2 of 88 committees presented their reports, they eliminated 44 of them! At least the percentages improve significantly.

This revolution is so logical, coherent and democratic; you’ve got to love them.

Jorge Rodriguez (The good guy) is one of the academics that has collaborated with Elio Valladares in the problems of numerical coincidences and whose work and interaction showed Prof. Jonathan Taylor that he had not done the proper calculation about these coincidences. Today, he wrote this article in Tal Cual that I thought was worth translating.

McCoy, Taylor et al. By Jorge Rodriguez (El bueno)

Academic publications cite with precision who are the authors of the work, or who is responsible for certain conclusions on the basis of which the paper is written. Let’s say it is a formal way in which you respect copyright. It is not a whim, but a way of achieving recognition (or blame) on whomever it is due. If somebody makes an analysis of Venezuela and says that the number of hospital beds is the highest in the continent, or that our alphabetization level is one of the first of the world, he needs to indicate where the numbers are coming form, if it is something that was determined in a study or if it comes from the statistics Jesse (the Minister) sent.

More to the point, ever since the fraud was perpetrated on August 15^th, Venezuelans have had Mrs. Jennifer McCoy, a Director from the Carter Center, telling them that all of our complaints were groundless.

When in the morning of August 17^th. the numerical coincidences appeared- “The caps” remember that? Mrs. McCoy got rid of us in a few hours with the argument (argument?) that she had consulted the matter to “an independent statistical expert” from Stanford University. She kept us at bay for three more weeks, until at last she told us the name of the expert, a gringo version of the bearded Smartmatic kid. A young statistician, expert in medical applications, that had no clue as to what an electoral notebook was and thought voters were assigned to the lottomachines at the voting centers, according to their time of arrival. This was the “expert” Mr. Taylor of Stanford. Not even Dr. Smith of “Lost in space”. When this expert was confronted by a group of Venezuelan mathematicians, in less than a week he had to admit that his work had “severe errors” and that McCoy’s numbers were “seriously defective”. Later McCoy made him retract, but that is another story.

The other week, Mrs. McCoy came back in style, not against those that exposed Taylor, but against the work of Rigobon and Hausmann (Sumate). This time she resorts to the weakest of practices: that of anonymity. That statistical work-which I must let you know is a travesty, carried out by the Carter Center, has no author. Nobody you can address to point out an error, or to establish a serious dialogue with, only the “authority” of Ms. McCoy in statistics, or even worse, of one of her buffoons. Venezuela claims for seriousness Mrs. McCoy.