The Devil's Excrement

The Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) reported that the Venezuelan economy shrank by 7.1% in the third quarter 2003. For the year the Venezuelan economy has shrank by a total of 14.7%. Quarter to quarter there was a slight improvement from -9.4% in the second quarter. The report by the central bank indicates that the oil sector shrank by 9% during the quarter, while the non-oil economy shrank by 6%, demonstrating that PDVSA’s activities are not up to full speed as the Government claims. In fact, the report by the BCV explicitly states that the oil public sector shrank by 12.2% with respect to the same quarter in 2002, but private sector oil activities increased by 30.2% through the strategic associations. Thus, it is the private oil sector that has actually saved the day in terms of oil production. In the private sector, manufacturing continued stalled at -9.9% for the quarter, while constriction (up 33.9 %) and commerce (up 10.0 %) did show some signs of revival.

The Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) reported that the Venezuelan economy shrank by 7.1% in the third quarter 2003. For the year the Venezuelan economy has shrank by a total of 14.7%. Quarter to quarter there was a slight improvement from -9.4% in the second quarter. The report by the central bank indicates that the oil sector shrank by 9% during the quarter, while the non-oil economy shrank by 6%, demonstrating that PDVSA’s activities are not up to full speed as the Government claims. In fact, the report by the BCV explicitly states that the oil public sector shrank by 12.2% with respect to the same quarter in 2002, but private sector oil activities increased by 30.2% through the strategic associations. Thus, it is the private oil sector that has actually saved the day in terms of oil production. In the private sector, manufacturing continued stalled at -9.9% for the quarter, while constriction (up 33.9 %) and commerce (up 10.0 %) did show some signs of revival.

The decisions by the Consejo Nacional Electoral are much like many of the strategies of Chavez and his Government: the Electoral body continues to walk on a fine line that divides legality with their own political bias towards Hugo Chavez. After their atrocious decision to not allow Venezuelans abroad to sign the petition drive against Hugo Chavez, the CNE continued its handiwork, this time issuing regulations on advertising during the petition drive that essentially limit severely even the right to free speech, while saying nothing of Chavez’ ability to address the nation for hours, like he did on Wednesday when he spoke twice for as long as four hours, which he used to attack the opposition and accuse it of plotting this “oligarchic” coup by calling for a recall referendum. Meanwhile, opposition parties were limited to two minutes of advertising a day, which Chavez’ MVR wanted to apply to all of the opposition. Thus, life continued in Venezuela with this amazing virtual reality in which people’s rights are being violated daily but it is all regulated by the CNE which seems to receive some form of divine inspiration from the presidential palace. As if this were not enough, the Minister of Defense announces that the voting process will be supervised by 72,000 soldiers, ten times what has ever been used in Venezuela, making us wonder whether they are there to intimidate, protect or create violence. Hugo Chavez continued in his Jekyll and Hyde act, at times sounding conciliatory, only to attack the opposition hours later with the same litany of worn out accusations against those that are only following the rules created by Chavez’ own Constitution. At times, it did seem as if Chavez really does not believe the opposition will be capable of gathering the required signatures, but the math is so simple that there is simply no way from stopping it from gathering as many as 3.5 signatures in the petition. But the CNE’s regulations say that for next month nothing can be said, published or polled on what people did on November 28th. , making the “right to know” also guaranteed by the Chavez Constitution somewhat of a sham. But so is everything surrounding this petition drive, as people are being paid to sign up in the Chavista petition drive this weekend and oil workers are being told to leave their national identity cards at work next weekend when the opposition holds its own drive. But in the end it will not matter, the opposition will get the signatures and next March, the vote will be secret, the observers will come in the thousands and Chavez will have to change his strategy. Since he and his comrades have no scruples, you can be sure it will not be a pleasant  one.

Daniel suggests (and I agree) that this cartoon by Weil applies to us Venezuelan bloggers. We feel exactly like the cartoon, which says on the left: “My life when I was not focused on politics” and on the right “my life since we are focused on politics”. That is exactly how I feel sometimes…..

Extensive article in today’s El Universal about two Venezuelan moviemakers who are making a documentary themselves showing all of the inconsistencies and manipulations of the movie: “The revolution will not be televised”. The article is divided in three parts: A description of what they have done, a summary of the main inconsistencies of the film and a reply to a writer who claimed the opposition censored the movie by pressuring Amnesty Inetrnational into withdrawing it from a film festival. (The petition did not do such a thing, it only asked that the details of what the movie purported to show be investiagted). I can not reproduce the whole thing, but here is a summary of the specific cases in which the movie distorts or manipulates the truth:

-Revolutionary populace: When it claims to be showing the presence of the populace in front of the Presidential Palace in the morning of April 11th. 2002 the movie uses images of a demonstration which took place in a different city and on a different day.

-Split Image: The moviemakers ignored the nationwide broadcast by Chavez forcing all radio and TV stations to carry his speech beteen 3:45 PM and 5:27 PM, where he spoke during more than two hours while around the Presidential Palace more than 21 Venezuelans were shot dead and more than 150 were injured, all by bullets. In the middle of this speech, private TV stations decided to divide the screen in two, to show the tragic events and then the Government shut off the broadcast by all these stations.

-Resignation: In the movie the thesis that Chavez never resigned is emphasized. However, the Cheifs of Staff, led by the Commander in Chief Lucas Rincon, issued a declaration at 3:20 AM on April 12th., saying that they had asked the President for his resignation and he had accepted. This is never shown in the movie (Retired General Lucas Rincon is currently a member of Chavez’ Cabinet as Minister of the Interior and Justice).

-Tanks: The tanks that moved towards the Presidential Palace were not going there to attack Chavez, but they were ordered to go there by Chavez himself to protect him. The film intends to show that with those tanks a traditional coup d’ etat was achieved.

-Racial war: The racial composition of Venezuela is multi-ethnic, but the film aims to show that Chavizmo is dark skinned and the opposition is white and well off. (As I have said here many times, if 70% of the people are against Chavez and Chavez says (not true) that 80% of the people are poor, something does not add up in these arguments. Moreover, racially only 20% of Venezuelans are white)

-Altered timelines: The manipulation of images, dates and wrong hours is present throughout the movie. As an example, the moviemakers took the care of using pro-Chavez images taken from Febraury 2000, when Chavez support by the people was unquestionable.

-Communicational project: The distortion of time is particularly bad in the sequences corresponding to April 11, 12 and 13th. There, the movie changes with total irresponsability the times of the events with the objective of constructing a story subordinated to its communicational project, which is to sell the idea that an “oligrachic coup backed by the US took place”.

The Consejo Nacional Electoral decided yesterday that those living abroad will not be able to particpate in the petition drive for Chavez’ recall. The excuse? That the logistics were too complex and it would be difficult to supervise. Now, since the country has dozens of Embassies and over one hundred Consulates, I still do not see what the problem is. Don’t these consulates notarized documents everyday? Are those suspect too? In fact, in all previous elections, including the union elections (They live abroad, but belong to a local union?), Venezuelans were allowed to vote at the consulates abroad, so the only real reason for this is that the Government wipes out a significant number of anti-Chavez signers with one stroke. The CNE vote was three to two, with the three pro-Chavez members voting together. What else is new? My concern is, what other tricks are awaiting for us in the future? These people have no scruples and can justify anything with legal or pseudo-legal arguments anytime they want. This implies the opposition has to gather over four million signatures to insure that they will not disqualify, lose, mutilate or misplace a sufficient number so that the recall is not succesful. So far, they have intimidated public workers, all members of the military and disqualified all Venezuelans living abroad. All of this together may be around one million signatures already……

As a trained scientist I love the power of graphs. Plinio Cabrera from El Gusano de Luz plots this one based on the figures of Venezuela’s oil production by the International Energy Agency. I think the graph is very powerful and it spekas for itself of the damage done to the country’s oil production by the Chavez administration. Remarkably, if you add the fact that more of the production comes from private companies the plot is even worse.

(When I was writing this up, I noted that I did not have El Gusano de Luz on my links to the left!! I don’t know why this happened, I was sure I had it. I know I am not perfect, but that is a big mistake, few sites such high quality contributions on our present and our future. Sorry to everyone there!!!!Hope you forgive me!!!!)

As a trained scientist I love the power of graphs. Plinio Cabrera from El Gusano de Luz plots this one based on the figures of Venezuela’s oil production by the International Energy Agency. I think the graph is very powerful and it spekas for itself of the damage done to the country’s oil production by the Chavez administration. Remarkably, if you add the fact that more of the production comes from private companies the plot is even worse.

(When I was writing this up, I noted that I did not have El Gusano de Luz on my links to the left!! I don’t know why this happened, I was sure I had it. I know I am not perfect, but that is a big mistake, few sites such high quality contributions on our present and our future. Sorry to everyone there!!!!Hope you forgive me!!!!)

Venezuela will issue a 15 year bond next week, which will be sold in local currency and be denominated in US$. The coupon will be around 7-8%. In the end, this becomes a way for those that have money to buy cheap dollars and for the Government to obtain the financing it needs. As in my comment about the banking system, simply perverse all around. But in the end Chavez gets his US$ 1 billion that he wants to throw at Venezuelan agriculture and see if anything grows (other than corruption and waste). Long live the revolution!