The Devil's Excrement

The Directors of Sumate held a press conference to inform the public that they have been asked to go to the Attorney General’s office to testify as “accused” in the case of the contribution by the National Endowment for Democracy from the US to their cause. NED contributed $53,400 to Sumate’s efforts. Curiously, the same Attorney General never found any cause for concern with the illegal campaign contribution by Banco Bilbao y Viscaya to Hugo Chavez’ presidential campaign. That contribution was not only illegal, but was never reported by Chavez’ MVR, despite this, the Attorney General never pressed charges. (By the way, NED gave over US$ 1 million in contributions in Venezuela to 15 projects in 2003 alone, how come Sumate is the only one under investigation)

All of a sudden and as if by magic, the Directors of the CNE, the same ones that on Saturday were saying that the OAS and Carter Center representatives had not retracted, said today that all “edges were smoothed out” and after informal communications the international missions had reiterated their respect for their CNE to make decisions.

This time around, not everyone was informed that the two sides had smoked the peace pipe as PPT Deputy Albornoz, made statements shortly afterwards that the representatives of the two international organizations should be replaced. Albornoz accused the OAS and the Carter Center of taking sides and being politicized.

But what can you expect of a Government whose Foreign Minister says that his own Government may have exaggerated the role of the paramilitary force captured last week, only to be contradicted by Chavez himself a few hours later, when the President said that they were planning to bomb the Presidential palace.

Continuing with the contradictions, tonight the Vice-President said that Generals Gonzales Gonzales and Uson are sought in relation to the paramilitary cases. Gonzales Gonzales was on of the Generals from Altamira Square, but Uson, who was Chavez’ Minister of Finance, has always distanced himself from the anti-Chavez movement. However, after the Vice-President said this, the military prosecutor refused to confirm that this was true.

Meanwhile the Government held a large rally yesterday against terrorism at which Chávez called for all citizens to become soldiers to defend the country. The concept was severely criticized by all opposition parties, rejecting the concept of having Venezuela become a country of militiamen. 

Over twenty years ago a reporter took me and four friends to almost every Venezuelan TV talk show in existence. We were young and somewhat nervous about the whole experience, so she suggested essentially ignoring the questions and just prepare what we wanted to say and simply start answering questions and quickly twist our answer to fit whatever it was that we wanted to say.

There is an analogy to this in a very well known joke in Spanish about the little kid who only studies the Phoenicians for his world history oral exam. No matter what he is asked, his answer will always somehow tie the part of history he is asked about to that of the Phoenicians, at which point he will relate verbatim all the knowledge he has acquired about them.

These stories come to mind after watching again the outraged words of CNE President Carrasquero and reading Caracas Chronicles’ article on Article 31 of the rules for recall referenda. In FT’s translation Art. 31 simply says:

“…electors who allege that they did not sign the petition form may go to the National Electoral Council to petition their immediate exclusion from the signature tally…”

This is fairly straight forward. If there was an error you may go to have your signature included or “repararla” and if you did not sign, Art. 31 says in unequivocal and simple terms that you may go and exclude your signature. There are no alternative options or interpretations to Art. 31 like the pro-Chavez CNE Directors have intended to do in order to allow the Government to pressure Government workers and contractors to withdraw their signatures. The outrage with which both CNE President Carrasquero and Director Jorge Rodriguez asked the OAS and the Carter Center to retract, is simply proof of their cynicism and of the fact that they are not fair minded and the last thing in their minds is to allow the electors to express their will.

But going back to my original story, what I do not understand is why the Coordinadora Democrática does not implement its own version of the Phoenicians strategy. They should all memorize Art. 31 and no matter what they are asked on TV, the press or the radio, always answer by first reminding everyone that withdrawing your signature if you did sign is simply not a legal option and quote Art. 31 word by word for emphasis.

I am sure that if all major politicians did this for the next two weeks, every Venezuelan that participated in the Reafirmazo in November would hear it a few times and understand it, making the Government’s campaign to intimidate fail completely. In fact, the Chavistas have used this same technique to make lies become true, changing history, simply by having everyone around Chavez repeat and parrot, over and over, their version of the truth, however farfetched or distorted it may be.

I really do not expect large number of people to go and withdraw their signature later this month, but the opposition needs the widest possible margin of success in having people ratify their signatures in order to deflect and block any new attempt at cheating by the CNE and the Government. You all should do the same, memorize it, discuss it, argue about it at every chance. Each signature counts and in fact, Art. 31 is much simpler and shorter than learning all about the Phoenicians.

And it seems to have gone unnoticed that the Penal Hall of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that the Fort Mara case of the burnt soldiers will have to be decided in a civilian court. Not that I have much hope that this will help in solving the case, but it will certainly eliminate the total cover up that has so far been performed by the military. Of course, these Justice face the risk with theoir decision that they will be investigated like the President of the Electoral hall Martini Urdaneta “for faults in the fulfillment of his duties”. This simply means that he ruled against the Government’s wishes, which in a totalitarian state is considered to be a very grave fault.

And it seems to have gone unnoticed that the Penal Hall of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that the Fort Mara case of the burnt soldiers will have to be decided in a civilian court. Not that I have much hope that this will help in solving the case, but it will certainly eliminate the total cover up that has so far been performed by the military. Of course, these Justice face the risk with theoir decision that they will be investigated like the President of the Electoral hall Martini Urdaneta “for faults in the fulfillment of his duties”. This simply means that he ruled against the Government’s wishes, which in a totalitarian state is considered to be a very grave fault.

Yesterday, in a somewhat surprising move, the usually diplomatic OAS and Carter Center representatives gave a press conference in which they called for the CNE only to allow people to withdraw their signature if they had not signed in the November Reafirmazo. According to both international organizations, this is the usual spirit in such processes worldwide and is also the spirit which can be derived from the text of the regulations.

The statement caused the outrage of two of the three pro-Chavez members of the Electoral Board who accused the observers of going beyond their duties and threatening them with reconsidering their role in the process, unless they retracted their statement. While one of the CNE directors indicated that his outrage was aimed at the questioning of the spirit of the regulations, it may actually be that the OAS and the Carter Center explicitly referred to the intimidation of people by the Government to induce them to withdraw their signatures.

Today both Carter center and OAS representatives held another press conference where they certainly fell short of retracting their statements, giving a vague clarification of what they had said and why. They certainly did not seem to retract their statements and it would be interesting to see the reaction by the CNE Directors tomorrow.

The statements by the CNE Directors simply show, once again, the partiality of its members against the process and how they are willing to go to any length to stop the opposition from getting the required number of signatures to call for the recall referendum against Hugo Chavez. As the former head of the CNE said today, the attitude of the CNE Directors is unheard of in their attempt to block any possibility of the recall referendum ever taking place as well as not facilitating the people’s rights to express their will.

Dictators don’t hold clean elections, as simple as that. And this particular one has a bunch of servants at the service of his abuses agaisnt the people and their rights.

Yesterday, in a somewhat surprising move, the usually diplomatic OAS and Carter Center representatives gave a press conference in which they called for the CNE only to allow people to withdraw their signature if they had not signed in the November Reafirmazo. According to both international organizations, this is the usual spirit in such processes worldwide and is also the spirit which can be derived from the text of the regulations.

The statement caused the outrage of two of the three pro-Chavez members of the Electoral Board who accused the observers of going beyond their duties and threatening them with reconsidering their role in the process, unless they retracted their statement. While one of the CNE directors indicated that his outrage was aimed at the questioning of the spirit of the regulations, it may actually be that the OAS and the Carter Center explicitly referred to the intimidation of people by the Government to induce them to withdraw their signatures.

Today both Carter center and OAS representatives held another press conference where they certainly fell short of retracting their statements, giving a vague clarification of what they had said and why. They certainly did not seem to retract their statements and it would be interesting to see the reaction by the CNE Directors tomorrow.

The statements by the CNE Directors simply show, once again, the partiality of its members against the process and how they are willing to go to any length to stop the opposition from getting the required number of signatures to call for the recall referendum against Hugo Chavez. As the former head of the CNE said today, the attitude of the CNE Directors is unheard of in their attempt to block any possibility of the recall referendum ever taking place as well as not facilitating the people’s rights to express their will.

Dictators don’t hold clean elections, as simple as that. And this particular one has a bunch of servants at the service of his abuses agaisnt the people and their rights.

The pro-Chavez majority in the National Assembly just reached a new level of indecency, totalitarism and intolerance when it passed a resolution to ask the Attorney general to revoke the nationality of Robert Alonso (the man who owned the farm where the paramilitary were caught), Norberto Mazza (a TV reporter), Marta Colomina (a radio and TV reporter who has been one of the Government’s harshest critics), Napoleon Bravo (a radio and TV announcer who supported Chavez initially but turned quickly against the Government) and Gustavo Cisneros (who owns TV station Venevision, the Coca Cola Distributor in Venezuela and the Regional beer brand and is in the Forbes list of the world’s richest men).

Like in all totalitarian regimes, pro-Chavez Deputies have no morals or any limits to their lack of scruples.

The pro-Chavez majority in the National Assembly just reached a new level of indecency, totalitarism and intolerance when it passed a resolution to ask the Attorney general to revoke the nationality of Robert Alonso (the man who owned the farm where the paramilitary were caught), Norberto Mazza (a TV reporter), Marta Colomina (a radio and TV reporter who has been one of the Government’s harshest critics), Napoleon Bravo (a radio and TV announcer who supported Chavez initially but turned quickly against the Government) and Gustavo Cisneros (who owns TV station Venevision, the Coca Cola Distributor in Venezuela and the Regional beer brand and is in the Forbes list of the world’s richest men).

Like in all totalitarian regimes, pro-Chavez Deputies have no morals or any limits to their lack of scruples.

The pro-Chavez majority in the National Assembly just reached a new level of indecency, totalitarism and intolerance when it passed a resolution to ask the Attorney general to revoke the nationality of Robert Alonso (the man who owned the farm where the paramilitary were caught), Norberto Mazza (a TV reporter), Marta Colomina (a radio and TV reporter who has been one of the Government’s harshest critics), Napoleon Bravo (a radio and TV announcer who supported Chavez initially but turned quickly against the Government) and Gustavo Cisneros (who owns TV station Venevision, the Coca Cola Distributor in Venezuela and the Regional beer brand and is in the Forbes list of the world’s richest men).

Like in all totalitarian regimes, pro-Chavez Deputies have no morals or any limits to their lack of scruples.