The Devil's Excrement

Former Chavez comrade in the 1992 coup, Presidential candidate (against Chavez!) and former Governor of Zulia state Francisco Arias Cardenas of the party Union, proposed today that former Minister of Planning and Presidential candidate for Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) Teodoro Petkoff (Editor of Tal Cual) should be the opposition candidate for the transition after the recall referendum. Petkoff, an economist, did a very good job under very difficult economic circumstances during the last years of the Caldera Government. Petkoff speaks bluntly and is not charismatic, but he would appeal to both the pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez forces in the country. He would seem to be an ideal choice, thus he will unlikely be nominated. Petkoff applied very simple common sense rules during his tenure in planning, but if I had to name one Minister that I agreed the most with in the last twenty years, it would have to be him. Personally, I think that if the opposition manages a consensus around him, it could precipitate a Chavez resignation. Petkoff has been critical of both the Government and the opposition and has had an important influence in some of Chavez’ decisions, such as changing the economic Cabinet after April 2002. The idea makes so much sense that it is unlikely to be adopted in the best Macondo style of our country.

In today’s editorial, as an example, Petkoff points out how it would be impossible to commit fraud in the petition dirve on the scale that Chavez and his collaborators want to claim. He points out each possible type of cheating, noting how it would be impossible to do under the current rules or would simply be an illegal signature. There can be no duplicate signatures, no fake forms or no illegal signatures, thus, he states, to try to find fraud is silly and this argument will collapse as the CNE checks the sigantures. As pointed out here before, the process was made so complicated, that it is almots impossible to cheat,  so the ball is in the Government’s court. And in one month it will be, the question is what will they say then. No matter what anyone may think 3.6 million signatures are simply too many…

While accusations have flown back and forth between the Government and the opposition on pressures to sign or not to sign, the most relevant case to date was that of the Governor of Falcon state who kicked out sixty employees for signing against Hugo Chavez. This would not be news, except that the Legislative Assembly of that state voted unanimously today to censor the Governor and ask him to hire back the fired workers. Obviously, both pro and anti Chavez workers voted in favor of this resolution. Some interpret this as fairness, others simply say that some pro-Chavez politicians want to make sure they land on the correct side after the recall vote. (Note that there is a presidential decree in effect since June that prohibits firings, dumb decree, but who cares anyway)

Interesting poll in today’s Tal Cual asking people what weighed the most in signing to recall Hugo Chavez. The main reason, for which 55.25% of the more than six thousand people polled responded was the economic crisis. Surprisingly (at least to me) was the second reason: 41.69% said that the division and high polarization of Venezuelan Society was the important factor. 3.06% said that they wanted Chavez to go away, with his nationwide addresses, so they could watch their soap operas and baseball games in peace. Clearly “the poor” know where reality lies.

A lot has happened during my absence from blogging (Sorry for the hiatus, I am back now), but in reality nothing has really changed. Hugo Chávez continues to look for a way out of a reacll referendum, but it appears to be too late for that. I never understood why Chavez was allowing the petition drive to take place. Basically he believed his advisers that told him that with all the tricks in the way and all the requirements anddifficulties it would be almost impossible for the opposition to gather the required signatures. Now that they have been collected, Chavez wants a way out, but the doors are closing rapidly. Before the signature drive, the CNE and the Government had said repeatedly that no foreign technical advisers would be allowed to oversee the process of collecting the signatures. Something changed in the last month, most likely the charges of fraud by Chavez and his Government, while international observers and the military saw with their own eyes the successful drive by the opposition. This simply means that it will be essentially impossible to invalidate the more than one million signatures that need to be invalidated for the referendum not to take place. Thus, the invitation by the Head of teh CNE to teh OAS and the Carter Centaer to oversee the verification of signatures becomes a very significant event.

Chavez’ words yesterday that if the CNE allowed the referendum to go forward he would not accept it are simply hollow words. He no longer has the mandate or the power to not recognize it and the CNE will have no recourse but to approve the recall referendum. That is why now the Chavistas are inventing new criteria, such as the digitization of all of the fingerprints in order to validate them. They are trying to invent a new concept beyond the what our democracy really is. If they think there was fraud, or that some signatures were faked, the most direct way of proving it simply be for the referendum to take place. Venezuelan elections have fewer requirements and are fairer than the recent petition process invented to stop the opposition from recalling Chavez.

The opposition will submit all of its signatures this week (Curiously, the Chavistas have yet to hand in all of theirs). Within a month the CNE will rule on the validity of the opposition signatures. Chavez claims that he will not accept it if the CNE recognizes the signatures. The opposition will not accept that more than a million signatures be invalidated on some made up technicality and neither will the international observers. If the number of signatures is there, and they are there by far, the CNE will be forced to approve the recall referendum. Then Chavez will try to change the way that process works, to no avail. In the end, Chavez’ statements continue to show that after five years in power Hugo Chávez still does not understand that he is not the law and that there is such a thing as separation of powers. Combine that with the fact that he likes to micromanage (He actually said he wanted to check the signatures himself) and the huge failure of his Government can easily be understood. At this point, attacking the CNE will do little for his popularity and not recognizing the recall referendum is simply not an option. There will be a recall referendum and Hugo Chavez mandate wil be recalled, his worst option is not to allow and he knows it.

In a clear change in strategy, the Chavez administration has toned down its attitude. Leaving aside charges of fraud, major Government officials have begun saying that the Government will respect the decisions of the Electoral Board, whatever that may be. Apparently the new strategy is to stop the opposition from getting the 3.75 million votes required to recall Hugo Chavez’ mandate. Strictly speaking, this seems difficult to do since the opposition gathered  3.6 million signatures last weekend, under less than ideal conditions. However, if abstention were to increase a win by the opposition in the recall vote could be averted next March by Chavez if the opposition does not its job correctly.

I will post lightly for the next few days.

The opposition says it has verified over 3.6 million signatures but they are still arriving in Caracas. Meanwhile President Hugo Chavez blasted OAS Secretary Cesar Gaviria for saying the signature drive was clean, saying Gaviria had taken sides with the opposition. Thus, it is clear the strategy by Chavez will be to question the results.

I want to make sure that I personally recognize the effort of Venezuelans abroad. Despite the fact that their signatures are not being recognized by the Electoral Board, they showed up by the thousands all over the world to have their signatures notarized. Above, pictures taken from the april11 site (Right) from New York and those posted by Ernex from Barcelona (Left) in one of the comments.

The opposition says it has verified over 3.6 million signatures but they are still arriving in Caracas. Meanwhile President Hugo Chavez blasted OAS Secretary Cesar Gaviria for saying the signature drive was clean, saying Gaviria had taken sides with the opposition. Thus, it is clear the strategy by Chavez will be to question the results.

I want to make sure that I personally recognize the effort of Venezuelans abroad. Despite the fact that their signatures are not being recognized by the Electoral Board, they showed up by the thousands all over the world to have their signatures notarized. Above, pictures taken from the april11 site (Right) from New York and those posted by Ernex from Barcelona (Left) in one of the comments.

As I sit here reading Francisco Toro’s latest post in Caracas Chronicles, I can’t but be impressed by his quantitative argument on how it would be impossible in a country that is 80-90% poor, in which 60-65% oppose the President, for the non-poor to be a majority. As a trained scientist (I am still not quite sure whether I am a “former” scientist) I love quantitative arguments like that. People like to oversimplify when it comes to countries and Venezuela is largely abused on the subject. From the black against white argument in a country 80% mestizo, to the rich versus poor argument in a country which once had a large and thriving middle class, people think Venezuela is closer to Africa than it really is, as much as we Venezuelans think that we are further from Africa than we really are. In fact, even our illustrious President Hugo Chavez becomes a victim of his own myths, when after years of talking about the 80% poor that live in Venezuela, his own Institute for Statistics concludes the number is closer to 50%, while more rigorous studies indicate it is more like 65%.

This all comes to mind, because all weekend I have been trying to be a good journalist, even if I am not either “good” or  a “journalist” by not spreading either good or bad news about the progress of the signature collection to ask for the recall of President Hugo Chavez Frias’ mandate. The reason is simple: How can I be quantitative in the absence of inside information that I did not have. But one can always be quantitative about it and I have tried a number of variations on the same theme:

Before the recall, my biggest question was not whether we would get the 2.4 million signatures or not, but whether we would get the 3.8 million required to actually recall Hugo Chavez when an actual recall vote ever takes place. Understand that the question was not whether sufficient Venezuelans would or not be willing to sign the petition against Hugo Chavez, but whether how many would be intimidated into not showing up. You see, there was an all out campaign by the Government, Hugo Chavez and his MVR cronies to use all forms of intimidation, including Chavez publicly threatening public workers, companies that handle Government contracts and civil servants on pension if they dared participate in this conspiracy against the country. (You see, in his mind HE is the country, not us). The rules made it easy for this pressure to work, in contrast with the guarantee by the Constitution that the vote is secret, the new regulations made the signatures public, allowing for the Government to apply a direct threat against as many as 1.5 million workers nationwide, as witnessed by the obscene billboard place outside the PDVSA refinery in Paragauna posted earlier by me.

But as the lines did not dwindle Friday afternoon and continued on Saturday, the quantitative argument was actually quite simple. As I stood in line that morning to sign with my brother Alfredo, another science Ph.D. turned generalist; we simply found that the math was too easy and that there was no way to go against the then reality that four million signatures appeared to be a piece of cake. The argument was simple, two signatures per minute (which was slow) for eight hours a day, times two days, times 2700 hundred polling centers made the goal easily within reach. In fact, any improvement to the calculation increased the number above four million, not below. And even if the line did not help by simply not being long enough, it was clear that there was a steady state in which someone was always feeding the line, insuring our two signatures per minute average. Since we were in a pro-Chavez area, we also understood that this average could not hold everywhere, but after all, where we voted the average was actually a factor of three or four higher that would easily compensate for any errors. In fact, as some polls stations were closed due to the lack of forms, in perhaps the most absurd restriction of all, the adequacy of the prediction became clear when polling stations shut down in towns like Caucagua, areas of Guayana and downtown Caracas, all of which would be characterized as “largely” poor and not having a poor majority. (Francisco’s old boss Juan Forero had to ruin a rare reasonable article by him about Venezuela in today’s NYT by saying that polling stations had also run out of forms last weekend during the Chavista drive, something that was never either apparent, clear or demonstrated but simply stated by the Chavista leadership after the polls had shutdown. This inaccuracy was somewhat compensated by the title “Venezuelans flock to sign petitions to ouster Chavez)

And as the first reports that we have reached the magical four million number are published, I can not help to feel a certain degree of satisfaction, at the number, at the people, at the organization, at the fact that I am surprised we got this far. I can’t help but worry at the Chavista strategy of attempting to discredit our number, talk about “megafraud” or about a “third coup” by the opposition. Only the fact that internationally the whole process is being defended as clean, gives me some sense of comfort.

I also remember other Venezuelans when, at a time when it was needed, came out and defended democracy with their hearts: Gonzalo Barrios when he conceded he had lost in 1968 by less than 32,900 votes in 1968, Rafael Caldera in is concession speech in 1983 saying: “the people are never wrong” or Eduardo Fernandez showing up at the TV station to defend the democratic rule of his political arch-enemy Carlos Andres Perez, the night of the Chavez-led coup in 1992. I never liked any of these three politicians, but there was something very noble about their acts, about the timing, about realizing what was important at a time when they were either facing one of their biggest political setbacks of their lives or the opportunity to advance their political careers. Instead they came out and defended the only thing that did not belong to them: democracy. Interestingly enough despite this, two of them, Barrios and Fernandez, never recovered politically. 

I wished the Chavistas would simply be silent, if only out of respect for the millions of Venezuelans that signed the petition to recall Hugo Chavez this weekend. With this act, no matter what the future brings, this four million plus Venezuelans, despite the fears and the intimidations, literally ripped away from Chavez’ hands what he claimed was his most important achievement: his mandate for his “revolution”.

As I sit here reading Francisco Toro’s latest post in Caracas Chronicles, I can’t but be impressed by his quantitative argument on how it would be impossible in a country that is 80-90% poor, in which 60-65% oppose the President, for the non-poor to be a majority. As a trained scientist (I am still not quite sure whether I am a “former” scientist) I love quantitative arguments like that. People like to oversimplify when it comes to countries and Venezuela is largely abused on the subject. From the black against white argument in a country 80% mestizo, to the rich versus poor argument in a country which once had a large and thriving middle class, people think Venezuela is closer to Africa than it really is, as much as we Venezuelans think that we are further from Africa than we really are. In fact, even our illustrious President Hugo Chavez becomes a victim of his own myths, when after years of talking about the 80% poor that live in Venezuela, his own Institute for Statistics concludes the number is closer to 50%, while more rigorous studies indicate it is more like 65%.

This all comes to mind, because all weekend I have been trying to be a good journalist, even if I am not either “good” or  a “journalist” by not spreading either good or bad news about the progress of the signature collection to ask for the recall of President Hugo Chavez Frias’ mandate. The reason is simple: How can I be quantitative in the absence of inside information that I did not have. But one can always be quantitative about it and I have tried a number of variations on the same theme:

Before the recall, my biggest question was not whether we would get the 2.4 million signatures or not, but whether we would get the 3.8 million required to actually recall Hugo Chavez when an actual recall vote ever takes place. Understand that the question was not whether sufficient Venezuelans would or not be willing to sign the petition against Hugo Chavez, but whether how many would be intimidated into not showing up. You see, there was an all out campaign by the Government, Hugo Chavez and his MVR cronies to use all forms of intimidation, including Chavez publicly threatening public workers, companies that handle Government contracts and civil servants on pension if they dared participate in this conspiracy against the country. (You see, in his mind HE is the country, not us). The rules made it easy for this pressure to work, in contrast with the guarantee by the Constitution that the vote is secret, the new regulations made the signatures public, allowing for the Government to apply a direct threat against as many as 1.5 million workers nationwide, as witnessed by the obscene billboard place outside the PDVSA refinery in Paragauna posted earlier by me.

But as the lines did not dwindle Friday afternoon and continued on Saturday, the quantitative argument was actually quite simple. As I stood in line that morning to sign with my brother Alfredo, another science Ph.D. turned generalist; we simply found that the math was too easy and that there was no way to go against the then reality that four million signatures appeared to be a piece of cake. The argument was simple, two signatures per minute (which was slow) for eight hours a day, times two days, times 2700 hundred polling centers made the goal easily within reach. In fact, any improvement to the calculation increased the number above four million, not below. And even if the line did not help by simply not being long enough, it was clear that there was a steady state in which someone was always feeding the line, insuring our two signatures per minute average. Since we were in a pro-Chavez area, we also understood that this average could not hold everywhere, but after all, where we voted the average was actually a factor of three or four higher that would easily compensate for any errors. In fact, as some polls stations were closed due to the lack of forms, in perhaps the most absurd restriction of all, the adequacy of the prediction became clear when polling stations shut down in towns like Caucagua, areas of Guayana and downtown Caracas, all of which would be characterized as “largely” poor and not having a poor majority. (Francisco’s old boss Juan Forero had to ruin a rare reasonable article by him about Venezuela in today’s NYT by saying that polling stations had also run out of forms last weekend during the Chavista drive, something that was never either apparent, clear or demonstrated but simply stated by the Chavista leadership after the polls had shutdown. This inaccuracy was somewhat compensated by the title “Venezuelans flock to sign petitions to ouster Chavez)

And as the first reports that we have reached the magical four million number are published, I can not help to feel a certain degree of satisfaction, at the number, at the people, at the organization, at the fact that I am surprised we got this far. I can’t help but worry at the Chavista strategy of attempting to discredit our number, talk about “megafraud” or about a “third coup” by the opposition. Only the fact that internationally the whole process is being defended as clean, gives me some sense of comfort.

I also remember other Venezuelans when, at a time when it was needed, came out and defended democracy with their hearts: Gonzalo Barrios when he conceded he had lost in 1968 by less than 32,900 votes in 1968, Rafael Caldera in is concession speech in 1983 saying: “the people are never wrong” or Eduardo Fernandez showing up at the TV station to defend the democratic rule of his political arch-enemy Carlos Andres Perez, the night of the Chavez-led coup in 1992. I never liked any of these three politicians, but there was something very noble about their acts, about the timing, about realizing what was important at a time when they were either facing one of their biggest political setbacks of their lives or the opportunity to advance their political careers. Instead they came out and defended the only thing that did not belong to them: democracy. Interestingly enough despite this, two of them, Barrios and Fernandez, never recovered politically. 

I wished the Chavistas would simply be silent, if only out of respect for the millions of Venezuelans that signed the petition to recall Hugo Chavez this weekend. With this act, no matter what the future brings, this four million plus Venezuelans, despite the fears and the intimidations, literally ripped away from Chavez’ hands what he claimed was his most important achievement: his mandate for his “revolution”.

OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria reiterated that up to now there has been no proven irregularities in the petition drive known as the “Reafirmazo” and assured everyone that the results have a high degree of legitimacy, attempting to block the strategy by Chavez and his supporters to accuse the opposition of cheating. Gaviria added that in the joint supervision with the Carter Center of the process that took place in the last four days, Venezuelans had signed freely and the result has total legitimacy. The President and some parties have spoken of a megafraud, Gaviria expects that those charges are substantiated to the CNE who will value them and is the impartial referee and all have recognized this condition up to now.

While pro-Chavez leaders continue to speak of fraud, others began distancing themselves such as the Attorney General who said that the process had been “normal”. The Government claims that the opposition collected only two million signatures, half as many as the opposition is rumoured to have gathered. The Vice-President continues to call the process a virtual one, but the world was watching this time around.