The Devil's Excrement

Somebody took the trouble of compiling the home and cellular phone numbers of all of Chavez’ Deputies in the National Assembly. If you have anything to say to them please call them and tell them. Here is the full table, courtesy of CEF

CELL AND HOME TELEPHONES OF MVR DEPUTIES

While the European left comes to Venezuela to “celebrate” the anniversary of last year’s events, which is obscene on its own right, the Venezuelan left held a seminar yesterday to talk about the fraud that Chavez’ revolution represents. The event was organized initially by most center-left and left wing parties in Venezuela, but the Democratic Coordinator decided to join  in the effort. Ironic how distance makes the European left think that there is something worthwhile left in Chavez’ revolution while the local left, together with the federation of unions comes together to talk about the frudulent revolution.

Interesting interview in today’s El Nacional (page A-16) with Venezuelan historian Caroline de Oteysa. Oteysa was born in France but has been living in Venezuela for the last 25 years.

On Chavez’ rural fundamentalism: I associate Chavez’ preference for things rural with the process that Iran went through with the overthrow of the Shah, because of what it has to do with reacting in the face of modernization.  Chavez’ project is conservative to the bone, reactionary, the revolution is an ornament. As an example, that country had sparks of modernization with respect to women and then it was revoked in the name of religion, of tradition. Here the same is happening when the Minister of Higher Education refers to the fact that we should go back to chalk and blackboards. This return to ruralization is very close to fundamentalism, because of what it has to do with the confrontation between oriental and occidental cultures and between modernization and traditions.

On the left wing intellectuals and Venezuela: When you hear the arguments of the admirers of the chavista process in Europe or in the American left, you discover a perception that in Latin America you can’t be white and have a decent standard of living. That is a monopoly reserved to the middle class of developed countries.  I ask myself: Who are they to come and give speeches as to whether the middle class are oligarchs or trying to stage a coup? How can they interpret this way a country that has its intellectuals and university students protesting, academics signing communiqués in the press? But it is all reduced to saying that reporters are coupsters and fascists. I ask myself which honest intellectual from those countries accepts that reporters in their countries are qualified as fascists.

On intellectual arrogance by foreign intellectuals: I would like to hear what Ignacio Ramonet would say if Chirac said the things about reporters that Chávez has said or if he decided not to receive local reporters but said CNN was wonderful. …….It is not respectful to Venezuela to arrive without speaking its language, and then they install themselves at the pool of a five star hotel, they contact the embassy and they talk about the Venezuelan oligarchy. It is a colonialist outlook “Here I come, I interpret, I explain” without having the shame of even trying to find out. They demonstrate a great intellectual arrogance

President Hugo Chavez challenged the opposition on his Sunday nationwide program saying that the opposition would have to gather the signatures required, once again, since the ones collected on Feb. 2^nd. were “chimbas” a local word signifying, fake and of bad quality at the same time. Nothing can be further from the truth, the signatures gathered at the “Firmazo” have been checked against the voters’ registry and despite the claim by Government officials and they would be valid. In fact, Vice-President Rangel had argued in February that the signatures for the referendum could not be gathered until the date it could be held half-way through Chavez’ term. However, the Supreme Court said that the signatures had to be handed in after that day, but could be collected ahead of time. As usual, with his statements Chavez was overstepping the bounds of propriety by issuing opinions on issues which are not part of the Executive branch of power. Whether the signatures are valid o not should be a decision made by the National Electoral Commission (CNE). Chavez was his usual cocky self, saying he would whip the opposition for the eight time in a row, which contradicts what all polls are currently saying about it.

And it was that Commission that Chávez and his MVR parties were fighting hard for. Under the Constitution, the members of the commission have to be approved by a two thirds majority of the National Assembly, which nobody holds. Chavez’ party has been demanding that should be able to pick three of the five members of the CNE, while the opposition argues that it should be two members chosen by each side and the fifth member somebody considered to be neutral. Chávez has reportedly ordered his MVR not to accept this which would delay the process. If the two sides do not reach an agreement, it would be the Supreme Court that would choose the members of the CNE. Since Chavez appointed the Court, he would have a very strong influence on the outcome. Thus, we come to the question that all Venezuelans are asking themselves: will Chavez allow the recall referendum to take place? While Chavez has insisted all along that this referendum was the only electoral solution possible, we have always had doubts that it will ever take place. Using legal maneuvering and controlling the CNE, Chavez and his cronies may delay, fight, distort and complicate the process sufficiently to their advantage. Clearly this appears to be their strategy going forward. .

This headline is the biggest oxymoron since Chavez was invited at Oxford to give a seminar on Human Rights:

“Rangel will propose a great unity movement in Venezuela”

Now, Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel has come to be known as the great cynic and now he pretends to call for unity? He is so disliked that in a recent nationwide poll by Mediopsa he was chosen by 19% of the people as the Government personality most disliked by those polled. This was not only the highest level of rejection of any Government official, but the one that came in second place (Iris Varela) had 11%, demonstrating the negative perception people have of the Vice-President.

Now, if one reads further, it turns out that Mr. Rangel will propose this unity movement to back the Venezuelan Armed Forces. Well, my guess is that the level of reaction within the Armed Forces against Rangel will be even higher than with the people. Rangel has become well known for his cynical statements to the press, insulting the opposition and justifying whatever needs to be justified. He was also the one that spent all of Decemebr saying everything in Venezuela was normal, but now they talk about the sabotage, the ”oil coup” and all those horrible things that they denied then. I think the only unity Rangel will get would be around his departure from the office.

Hugo Chávez on Saddam Hussein from the book “Todo Chavez” by Eleazar Diaz Rangel via Fausto Maso in today’s El Nacional page A-7:

“Hussein seemed like a man sure of himself, sure of what he is doing. He seemed to be a man convinced that what he is doing is correct. He seemed also, to have a sensibility for the reality of the world, he was thankful because in ten years no President had visited him. He appeared to be a man on the defensive, but ready to fight for what he believes in, very sure, with a solid leadership”

I wonder what it is that Saddam told him he wanted to do….or was doing……

Interesting article in Spain’ newspaper La Vanguardia on Venezuela

Venezuela at the economic abyss by Joaquim Ibarz

 Parallel with the war in Iraq which induces massive protest in the whole world expressing solidarity with an invaded nation, Venezuelans suffer their own war, not because of the attack of an enemy country, but for the violence and the destruction generated by  a president turned autocrat that, in increasing fashion, is assuming dictatorial practices.  Historians coincide that this is the most dangerous moment in the last hundred years for Venezuela, each day that the confrontation from the Miraflores palace continues instigated by President Hugo Chavez, it will become more difficult to reconstruct and reconcile a country in the midst of a paralysis which in accelerated fashion  is on its way to its ruin.

1,500 days have already gone by of a regime that was born in the hope lit by dreams and promises. After wasting and embezzling one hundred and ten billion dollars of oil income, the ship of the “Bolivarian revolution” is sinking.

From the beginning, President Hugo Chávez played the polarization hand. The only thing that he has had success with is in his policy of confrontation, carrying it to an extreme that it loses rationality. It may be that during decades the blame and causes of the current ruin will be discussed. But when you reach such a dangerous point, all sensible Governments open the dialogue, the negotiations and an electoral way out. On the contrary, in Venezuela disqualification is fueled daily, blocking any rational way out. The Presidential finger, with pretensions of divine will, decrees that the opposition is fascist, coupsters, oligarchic and, as such, has no right to exist.

Venezuela is facing the dramatic effects of a war economy without precedent in Latin America, with inflation predictions near 100% and a drop in GDP above 25% this year. The analysts of the great financial institutions of the country pick up this pessimism; Banco Provincial, property of BBVA, predicts in its last report a decline of the economy of 40% in the first quarter of 2003, while Banco de Venezuela, owned by Grupo Santander expects a decline of 42%. Previewing the consequences of the crisis, the Secretary General of the OAS, Cesar Gaviria, said that he has not been able to find “an economic contradiction of this size in any country, note even in a civil war”

Víctor Salmerón writes in the daily “El Universal” that “Venezuela suffers its worst quarter in 53 years”. And he emphasizes that from the beginning of the decade of the fifties, when the Central Bank began to monitor the economy, Venezuelans have not suffered a negative impact of such magnitude: inflation devours salaries, unemployment increases, consumption collapses, earnings at companies drops and the banking sector block credits. Meanwhile, the Government pays any price to maintain the fiscal wheels in motion. The grand scale cooling of the economy began in 2002, when the Executive applied the plan “Proposals for Consensus” (elimination of VAT exemptions, budget cuts, devaluation) while using 38% of the public budget to pay debt, recipe that must be mixed with the disappearance of private investment and the national general strike of 67 days that began on Dec. 2^nd. , which submerged the economy in a recession that has no precedent.

The Central Bank admits a contraction of GDP of 16.7% in the fourth quarter of 2002, with a drop in electricity consumption of 8.5%, a fall in the tax collection of the VAT of 48% and of the debit tax by 31%. Punished by massive capital flight and the accelerated evaporation of the international reserves, the Government implemented exchange controls that left the private sector without dollars.

Influent economic analysts warn: “Venezuela is ready to fall into an economic and social crisis without precedent” which is why they urge the Government to adopt measures that change the course in order to avoid a social explosion. They also warn that the fall in GDP will register record levels in 2003, without precedent in the history of Latina America.

According to estimates by economists, inflation will surpass 70%, unemployment will reach 30%, the informal economy will reach 70%, GDP will experiment the sharpest decline in any Latin American country, because of the exchange controls, the restriction on imports, the collapse of National and international investment, the semi-freezing of the non-oil economy and the effects of the general strike in Petroles de Venezuela, the estate company which, alter the firing of 17,000 workers, is far from having recovered its production levels.

Economist Pedro Palma points out that the Government will have few options to manage the enormous internal debt, which grew from 1.56 billion US$ to 8.13 billion at the end of 2002. According to economist Domingo Fontiveros, inflation could reach 93% this year. According to Carlos Dorado, financial analysts and President of Italcambio, the largest foreign exchange house in Venezuela, hyperinflation may follow, with the black exchange market reaching 4000 bolivars per dollar.

Economists from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB) corroborate this dramatic economic picture. According to estimates, per capita income will be cut in half with respect to 2002, below the 2,500 dollars per years. In 1990, the per capita income was 10,000 dollars per year; GDP will fall from  126 billion dollars in 2001 to 65 billion dollars in 2003, a reduction of 50% in two years.

”This is not a war economy, but an economy in civil war. Venezuela is placing all of its resources not to fight the enemy but to fight with itself” is the opinion of Jorge Salazar, Director of the Center for Economic Studies at the Florida International University (FIU).“ The drop in GDP will be the largest in Latin-American history. I have never known anything similar. This will be the record drop”, emphasizes Salazar.

The Venezuelan crisis will surpass even the worst case of economic contraction in the recent history of Latin America; in 1973 the GDP of Allende’s Chile fell 22%. Not even the Sandinista Nicaragua had a drop as large in the eighties during the war against the “contras’.

In the opinion of economist Miguel Rodriguez (Minsiter of Development during the last Presidency of Carlos Andres Perez), to think the Government executes a communist or neoliberal economic policy “is privileging too many errors from a group of inefficient people which have only stumbled under the demagoguery of the leader, Hugo Chávez. Simply, there has been a catastrophic economic policy which threatens to perpetuate itself” said Rodriguez. He adds that in Chavez’ administration there is no plausible element that rescues even the smallest possibility that anything has been planned, except to badly copy the example of Fidel Castro”

The drop in tax collection and the impact of the oil strike forced the Government to announce a drastic budget cut and to make debt swap operation with the banks to attempt to extend the due date of bonds and bills that, without taking into account interest, adds to 4 billion bolivars this year.

To avoid the collapse, the Ministry of Finance canceled its debts with contractors with notes at a rate of 14.5% the highest rate paid by any Government ever and is preparing an external debt swap that, according to analysts, will force to pay a rate of at least 16%. This year, servicing Venezuela’s external debt reaches US$ 5 billion an amount that is equal to 14% of the national budget.

The President of Fedeindustria Miguel Perez Abad, said that more than 25,000 small companies have remained closed in the First semester of 2003. Fedeindustria and Fedecamaras (the most important private group in the country) estimate that in the next few months the already very high number of unemployed will increase by one more million.

 The private sector alone has lost more than 300,000 jobs in the last two months as a consequence of three lethal elements: lack of Government, economic contraction and exchange controls. Each threat by Chávez leaves more people unemployed.

”The situation is critical”, says Carlos Fernandez, president of Fedecamaras. “We are in a war economy. There are 12.000 small shops closed and more than 5.000 companies bankrupt. The Government uses a weapon as powerful as exchange controls to attack the private productive sector of the country” he said. With exchange controls, Venezuela entered a system of distortive and inefficient regulations with a risk of great corruption.

The economy is collapsing while the desperation of the citizens increases. Chavez’ “wear out” policy to neutralize the opposition that groups together the productive sector is a dangerous game. You know how its starts, but don’t know how it ends. The message that the President repeats is that he will allow his arm to be twisted, no matter what the economic effects. That is why, two forces persist in Venezuela without any possibility of approaching each other: the chavistas, which control the Armed Forces and the lowest strata of the population. The opposition has a strong social base; not only numerical, but also it is the productive engine of the country. Neither of them can defeat the other. That is why commentators like Teodoro Petkoff warn that a forced solution (a coup) by either the Government or the opposition will prolong the conflict for many years.

Imagine this: A Lieutenant in the Venezuelan Army punishes some soldiers for disobedience by placing them in a cell. Lt. Sicat sprays thinner into the cell and lights a fire. One soldier dies and two are injured. A military Court tries the Lt., finds him guilty and condenms him to sixteen years in jail. The Supreme Court rules that the crime was a civil one and the trial should be moved to the civil justice system. The Lt. is tried and lo and behold he is found to be innocent by a vote of two to one in a novel experiment in the Venezuelan justice system in which normal citizens hold trials alongside judges. Guess what? The judge found Lt. Sicat to be guilty, while the two citizens found him innocent. So, this man walks free, he had never denied the facts, the military Court found him guilty, the only point was the senrence had to be according to civils laws, instead he is let go. This is the justice system that Chavez says does not work? Yes, but for the wrong reasons!!Impunity is rampant in Venezuela, watch out my friends!!

Last Tuesday there was a conference called “The effects of the war in Iraq in Venezuela“. The panelists were a former President of the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA, Humberto Calderon Berti and oil expert Mazhar Al Shereida. The crowd was mostly pro-Chavez, because pro-Chavez group organized it and there were maybe 300 pro-Chavez people and six that at least did not participate in the events that followed

Calderon Berti exposed his opposition to the Hussein tyranny, trying to summarize the history of the region, taking into account Arab culture. He was booed and heckled so much that the organizer of the event had to pacify the crowd in order to continue. People in the crowd were calling him “traitor”, “couspter” and other epithets.

Al Shereida spoke next and instead of talking about the war and Iraq, he proceeded to attack Calderon Berti, telling him he had learned nothing about Arab culture, that he was responsible for the oil strike and had been part of the conspiracy to overthrow Chavez. The crowd hailed Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi people, Al Shereida and Chavez. The crowd got so violent and insulting that Calderon Berti had to get up and leave. Six others accompanied him as the crowd followed screaming insults at them.

As you can see ignorance and intolerance are by now well-developed in Venezuela. While there is intolerance on both the pro-Chavez side and the opposition, I have yet to hear of similar episodes on the opposition side. God help us!

President Hugo Chávez blasted the Venezuelan Central Bank on Wednesday for allowing “savage” levels of interest rates to prevail. Chavez said: “I demand, with all due respect for the autonomy of the Central Bank …the Central Bank has to listen to the country”. For the second time in a week Chávez said that if the Central Bank does not listen to him, he would go to the Supreme Court to force it to do it. He said the structure of the Bank still was “infiltrated by neoliberal currents which serve those that want a coup”. Finally, in the most irresponsible statement, which simply describes Chavez’ tenure in the Presidency, he reminded the Directors of the Central Bank that sometimes decision have to be more political than technical. Clearly Chavez is fed up with the independence of the Central Bank, much like he has been fed up with every institution that does not follow his whims and wishes at every step. The question is what type of retaliation there will be on the Central Bank if it does not follow the President’s orders. By the way, Venezuela’s Constitution, written by a Chavez dominated Constituent Assembly (96% were from his party) grants the Central Bank independence.