The Devil's Excrement

Today, the Venezuelan Electoral Board (CNE) rejected the possibility of holding a referendum on an Amnesty Bill as requested by a group of citizens. This may represent a new all time high in terms of injustice for the revolution, as the arguments used by the CNE are simply absurd and have no legal grounds. The CNE simply makes a fake legal argument to reach its decision that makes a mockery not only of the Venezuelan legal system, but of the much ballyhooded “representative” democracy that autocrat Chavez claims to believe in.

The argument represents the pinnacle of circularity in groundless legal arguments. Let’s review the details:

The Venezuelan Constitution states quite clearly in Article 205:

“Articulo 205. La discusion de los proyectos de ley presentados por los ciudadanos y ciudadanas a lo dispuesto en el articulo anterior, se iniciara a mas tardar en el periodo de sesiones ordinarias siguientes al que se haya presentado. Si el debate no se inicia dentro de dicho lapso, el proyecto se sometera a referendo aprobatorio de conformidad con la ley.”

which can be translated as:

“Article 205. The discussion of Bills presented by citizens according to the previous article, will be initiated at the latest in the period of ordinary sessions following that in which it is presented. If the debate is not initiated during that period, the project will be submitted to referendum following the law”

This simply means that the Assembly has to bring up to debate a Bill before the next period of sessions or it just goes to referendum.

Remember, this is the Constitution, the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela, approved and proposed by Chavismo in 2000.

Well, it just so happens that a group of citizens proposed an Amnesty Bill almost two years ago and the Bill was never debated or considered by the 100% pro-Chavez National Assembly. Thus, it is very clear, the Bill as proposed, a much wider Amnesty Bill than the selective non-Amnesty approved by Chavez when his hostage rescue failed on New Year’s, has to go to referendum, no question about it, it happens to be the Constitution. Thus, the same citizens went to the Electoral Board and asked that it be held.

One of the members of that Board had already expressed publicly that the CNE had nothing to consider with that referendum, a surprising statement given that the CNE has tried to get involved with any election going on in Venezuela, except with that of my condo board.

So, today the CNE ruled with an incredibly absurd and typical miscarriage of justice that the CNE has accustomed us to.

The argument goes something like this:

Articulo 187 of the Venezuelan Constitution says that it is the competence of the Venezuelan National Assembly to decree amnesty.

So, you may ask, how did Chavez decree Amnesty?

Well, that’s the interesting thing, he did it illegally. He argued that the Enabling Bill gave him power to do. But if you inspect that Bill carefully, nothing in it even comes close to Enabling Chavez to decree Amnesty. Read it, if you don’t fall sleep you will notice that not even distant relatives of the concept of Amnesty are contemplated in it.

So, what did the CNE argue:

That the National Assembly was not constitutionally obligated to discuss the Bill because this had been delegated on the President by the Enabling Bill. Thus, they argued, it became “evident” that Art. 205 of the Venezuelan Constitution did not apply.

So, it is an extremely circular miscarriage of justice by which, the CNE, not preciselt your Venezuelan Supreme Court is ruling:

1) A decision by the National Assembly is above a Constitutional mandate and article.
2) That decision is not even “evident” in the Bill that supposedly allows the President to approve Amnesty, by which supposedly the Assembly delegated its Constitutional mandate on the President (Secretly?)
3) The CNE takes away a right of the “people” by this simple act which appears nowhere in the Enabling Bill.

Thus, Chavez’ Amnesty, which I believe is illegal, because it’s not even mentioned in the Enabling Bill, precludes the people from proposing their own, showing once again that revolutionary justice is not only circular, but very autocratic.

If human beings learn from their mistakes, you would think that by now Chavez and his buddies would have learned something about what works and what does not work in terms of economic policies. It is getting to be quite tragic that the more shortages become widespread, the more the “solutions” are borrowed from the same recipes that have failed Hugo Chavez in his last nine years of Government.

First, there is this infinite belief that the Government “can do”. Unfortunately, so far in nine years, all of the Government’s commercial projects have failed miserably. Remember the sugar revolution that was coming to Venezuela under the advise of the Cubans? When it was announced in 2001, we were told that by 2005 Venezuela would have become a net exporter of sugar. Instead, the programs have been mired in delays and corruption and it is early 2008, three years late, and none of the sugar processing plants promised, funded and started in 2001 are fully functional.

Even if they were, there would be a problem. Those that were supposed to grow the sugar cane are either gone or growing something else, either out of frustration over the delays or because the sugar cane plantations that were productive, were invaded, confiscated or abandoned by the policies of the revolutionary Government.

But they don’t ask: Do any of our commercial intiatives even work? The answer may be too painfull.

Second came the controls. Much like any Government official in any part of the world, ignorant in economic principles, the Venezuelan Government decided five years ago to freeze the prices on more than 400 products, many of which can’t now be found around, as producers simply shift to non regulated crops or stop working the land. What’s the point if you lose money? It’s called motivation, survival of the fittest, simple logic.

But instead of accepting the failure of the price controls, the solution is to continue the controls and threaten the producers like in the case of milk. The first threat, is that the Government will expropriate your farm if you export to Colombia. Thus, the autocrat can export the money of all Venezuelans at will, giving it away when it is actually needed right here, but local producers can’t try to sell their products with a gain in Colombia, because the same person fails to agree with that whim. Maybe Chavez fails to realize that he lost the referendum and economic freedoms are still in the Bolivarian Constitution.

Even worse, Chavez also threatens those that produce cheese with their milk. You see, most cheeses have no price controls (some do, curiously those are exactly the ones that are hard to find) and liquid milk is regulated, so producers, following the laws of economics, prefer to produce cheese and make a profit than sell milk and lose. Clear choice, right? Not for Chavez and the revolution.

What’s next, a decree prohibiting the production of cheese? For the people, shortages of milk or cheese are not too different, they have never had shortages like this in the terrible forty years of the IVth. Repubic and maybe Chavez has forgotten how common it is to have an arepa with cheese in the morning. It actually sells more than hamburgers in Venezuela, in case you were wondering.

Third, when you realize things are not working, start importing food yourself (back to the first mistake) and distributing it, but, here is the clincher,  at the official rate of exchange. Thus, while local producers have had to face 80-100% inflation in the last four years, your imports are still at Bs. 2.15 per US$, essentially driving local producers out of business. Throw in more labor legislation and higher labor costs just for fun.

Fourth, when nothing seems to work shoratges the rule of the day and inflation out of control, make your policies even worse. Given your recipe for assuring the destruction of your own production system, when this happens, then decide like they did yesterday to:

—Remove all taxes for the importation of foodstuffs. Locals still have to pay taxes, VAT and financial transaction tax included.

—Allow anyone, to import as much food as they want without payng taxes at the official rate of exchange of Bs. 2.15 per US$. The theory is you will lower prices, promote imports and there will be plenty for everyone. Nobody asks where the money will come from or what happens to the local producer who by now is close to bankrupt. I guess it does not matter, if he tries to make a profit or export it, we will intervene them anyway.

—Have PDVSA become a food producer. Given that the company is a farce, that production is down, management is corrupt and second class, work accidents up, the given them another responsibility so they can screw up something else and distract the company from its true purpose. Of course, blame the “hoarding, contraband and the illegal trade of products” for the problems, not your stupid economic policies or you inability to stop contraband or persecute hoarding you have “only” been in power for nine long years after all.

Thus, the recipe for disaster that has caused the shortages and the inflation, as I have been warning about for over two years, rather than being discarded or analyzed critically, is overhauled to add steroids and amphetamines to it, to insure things get worse, not better. It is sort of the world backwards, as if they were asking what does economic theory and history say, to do exactly the opposite.

And when things get even worse, they will analyze the recipe again, blame everyone but the Government for their problems and start again.

Unless the whole thing blows up…and it will…

I have been meaning to write about Chavez’ decision last Sunday to eliminate all toll booths, but have not had time to do so which is some sense was good given the developments since. This decision basically shows why things can’t function in Venezuela as long as Chavez is President and that the reason things are not worse is just the US$ 300 billion in oil revenues the country has enjoyed since Chavez became President, which cover up the mismanagement, improvisation, corruption and stupidity.

Last Sunday President Chavez announced that he was eliminating all toll roads in Venezuela because they impeded the free movement of people around the country as guaranteed by the Constitution. Of course, this was the ostensible reason from the same man that sends the National Guard to block highways to impede that same freedom whenever the opposition holds a march in Caracas.

The true reason is first, one actually mentioned by Chavez, that this is in some sense a capitalistic measure, which charges people to use infrastructure that the state should provide for them. A second reason may be that these tolls provide funds to some opposition Governors or Governors, such as the Aragua Governor, who may be in the opposition as part of Podemos, even if he has not said it openly.

But there were many reasons why this decision was improvised and even illegal and it just happened to be an idea Chavez had and announced without consulting anyone and which goes in the direction opposite to where the country should be going.

First of all, none of these toll roads are national, they were all State toll roads, so that Chavez once again goes against decentralization. Thus, it was not even his business to shut them down. Even worse, some of them were under concession to private groups whose rights and contracts were simply violated because of a whim Hugo Chavez had. Thus, the right to private property protected not only by the Constitution, but also by the rejection in December of any changes to its definition by the Venezuelan voters, was once again violated by an Hugo Chavez that has yet to understand that the voters said no to this style of running the country and his political project.

But Chavez did not even take into account the human side of shutting down these toll roads, the more than 10,000 workers that man the toll booths (as well as 1,000 “paneleros” at the Guacara toll booth) and which with one swipe were left unemployed. They protested all week, blocked roads and in the end, they got their way in at least two states, Aragua and Carabobo, where the tolls were restored for large trucks as the workers now all became part of the ranks of the civil service in a country with too many public employees.

But the worst part is that these roads are in a terrible state of disrepair for the simple reason that the repairs were funded by the proceeds from the tolls, which had remained at the same Bs. 0.1 (4.6 US$ cents at the official rate or 1.9 US$ cents at the parallel swap rate) for the last nine years, a period in which Chavez has regaled Venezuela with an increase in prices of 295%, in another proof of the incompetence of his improvised economic policies. A country can not simply be run on the back of the occurrences of the President.

In the end tolls are a very fair tax, much fairer than the inflation created by the Government with the financial transaction tax, as you only pay it if you use it. But Chavez and his cronies have their minds programmed against not only such charges, but they abhor the thought of States outsourcing the administration of the tolls to the private sector. The same state that is incapable of maintaining the same roads the cars drive on, but the limited understanding of complex matters by the autocrat that is destroying Venezuela keeps him pushing the country in the same destructive direction the country has been in for the last nine years.

The same day Chavez banned the country’s asphalt exports, despite long term export contracts being in place, the same way that today he felt like increasing the price of milk at the wholesale level by 50%, as more than 400 items remain under control. He also called for banks to be intervened if they don’t lend to agriculture while the law simply states banks will pay a hefty fine of they don’t allocate their quota to such loans. Today, he inaugurated a milk plant purchased by the Government from Parmalat, which insures that milk shortages will continue, as the inefficient Government takes it over. But as one of his first Ministers of Agriculture said today, agricultural production per capita has fallen by 11% since Chavez became President. It will never occur to Hugo Chavez that most of his ignorant occurrences and whims are responsible for it.

A few days ago Hugo Chavez, under attack for not doing anything about the Venezuelan hostages in the hands of the FARC and the ELN in Venezuela, dared to say with a straight face that there were no Venezuelans in the hands of these two terrorist groups, which he now wants us to convince us are such good and humanitarian people.

But Hugo Chavez has accustomed us Venezuelans to his lies and cynical statements, except that now he is directing them to international opinion as he tries to attack the Colombian Government. But as a friend kindly reminded me yesterday, it was Hugo Chavez who said at the Cartagena summit:

“I am a man of honor and if I were to support the guerrilla I assure you that I would not hide it. I don’t support nor have I ever supported, nor will I ever support the Colombian guerrilla. No way”. So spoke President Hugo Chavez on November 9 th, 2004 during a press conference in Cartagena.

Lies come indeed easily to the Venezuelan President who can keep a straight face in saying the above and now three years later do exactly what he claimed he would never do. But the truth is that he has always been a sympathizer of the FARC from the early days, he just hides it. The same way in which he was a sympathizer of terrorist Carlos the Jackal as clearly expressed in his letter to that terrorist  in 1999 and he sympathized with the September 11th. attacks until he realized his suggestion that the US had it coming to them did not play well anywhere else.

And it is not surprising that Chavez now named as Minister of the Interior the same man that told the guerrillas a message from Chavez that basically said: Hang in there, you can count on us.

But those kidnapped in Venezuela have families and the families did not take well to Chavez’s statements and they have been holding meetings with the press and since Chavez apparently does not care about the Venezuelan hostages, they appealed to the Colombian Government for help. Above is a partial list of some of those kidnapped, as well as the guerrilla/mercantile/terrorist group taking responsibility for it or asking for the ransom. This is a very short list of 44 names, but only in 2007 a total of 279 Venezuelans were kidnapped.

And to show the type of cynical double standard the Government has and the disdain for the suffering of its own citizens, Minister Rodriguez Chacin, the same one that tells the FARC guerrillas to hang in there and count with the support of Chavez and his Government at the moment in which the two Colombian hostages were being handed over, suggests today that the relatives of those kidnapped “may be incurring in treason” when they ask help from the Colombian Government, because nobody knows what the political objective of the kidnappers may be.

A strange statement from a man that just participated in the inverse operation of rescuing Colombian hostages in the hands of a terrorist group whose only objective is the overthrow of the Colombian Government no? Thus, Chavez was and is promoting treason on the part of Colombians when he seeks to help them and the two women released and their relatives have incurred in the same crime.

That is the logic or lack of it that Venezuelans have seen in nine years of lies, deceit and yes, treason to Venezuela on the part of Hugo Chavez and his cronies. Treason when Chavez gives money without authorization to anybody he wants to buy. Treason when he violates the Constitution and signs international agreements to give oil away to Cuba and other countries. Treason when suitcases full of cash leave Venezuela while Venezuelans go hungry or get killed by common criminals or by illnesses that were erradicated or under control in Venezuela before Chavez was elected President.

To say nothing of the fact that lying about PDVSA’s production is treason. Or the destruction of PDVSA, or the country’s industrial base, or the way US$ 300 billion in oil income has been mismanaged.

I could go on and on, but five years of writing here tell you the whole story. We know who the traitors and liars are.

And is not us.

—Flying in PDVSA jet to Villavicencio to wait for the realese of the hostages zero $

—Spending a night in Villavicencio to await the release $100

—Getting a receipt from the FARC so you can prove you have protection: Priceless!!!

(taken from today’s El Nacional, note it says annual fee, next payment in 2006)

Petkoff in today’s Tal Cual Editorial used a very similar play on words that I did two nights ago in trying to show how Chavez (Chacumbele) is either trying to play innocent or does it in bad faith in his silly defense of teh FARC and why it should be recognized as a belligerent force:

The Great Farc(e) by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

What we could call the “Chacumbele Doctrine” about the Colombian conflict is either innocent or it is ignorant or it is bad faith or it is the three things at once.

The crux of the thesis of the Great Strategists is that if you recognize the FARC as a “belligerent force, they would immediately enter the Geneva Protocol (a convention that establishes certain rules in war to “humanize” them) and they could not use kidnapping (Chacumbele dixit). Just BS. The serene little angels from the FARC do not need to be protected by the Geneva Protocol to stop kidnapping civilians.

They know what they are doing. They know perfectly well that the kidnapping of innocent civilians, divorced from the armed fight, is a monstrous practice, abominable, that denies in itself any noble purpose that could motivate those that take up arms with a political purpose and that denies the rules of war.

They kidnap with a full conscience that they are doing it because this is a financing mechanism and not because the known the “rules of war” that came out of the Geneva Convention. Our Clausewitz is wrong when he points out that the kidnappings (which he claims to reject) are part of a policy, different from that of the common criminal, because these are political kidnappings, not to kill them or torture the but for humanitarian exchanges (Chacumbele redixit). For God’s sake, how can he lie like that! Not long ago the FARC assassinated 11 members of Parliament they had in their hands.

 But the main thing is that 99% of those kidnapped by the FARC are non-political citizens, kidnapped to demand (and obtain) a monetary ransom. Bt even if the few political kidnappings had been taken to advance a humanitarian exchange, it is not possible to justify it. The jailed guerrilla members are uniformed combatants captured in combat. The ladies recently freed are civilians removed from the conflict.

To use them as an object of exchange does nothing but accentuate the monstrosity of the FARC’s procedure. The fight that claims to be revolutionary is in the end, a fight for the soul of the collective. Even with weapons in the hands, a revolutionary organization needs to again supporters not lose them. The means that it uses cannot deny the ends that it claims to pursue. To use monstrous procedures, such as kidnapping and drug trafficking, without mentioning the massacres of peasants, alienate sympathies. It is no coincidence that all of Colombia, from the rich to the poor, rejects the FARC, as demonstrated by numerous polls. Since the FARC devoted themselves to drug trafficking and kidnappings they lost all respectability and all credibility.

If kidnapping takes part of the outlaw panoply it is because it happens to be a fully conscious decision f its bosses and it is stupid to think that the Geneva Protocol would stop them from continuing with it. To stop the kidnappings the only thing the FARC needs, is to recuperate its political meaning. If they did it a small path could be opened towards peace in Colombia.

By now, it would seem as President Hugo Chavez, acting irresponsibly and in absurd fashion is simply trying to pick a fight with Colombia. After suggesting that the FARC should be taken off the terrorist list and refusing to recognize that he is  involving himself in matters which are sovereign to a nation, Chavez accused the Colombian Government of plotting with the US against him. Using claims that those that love in Venezuela are quite used to, Chavez said he had videos and tapes of meetings between the US and Colombia where such plotting took place. Of course, this non-existent “proof” is never seen much like the weapons of those that attempted so many times to kill him using bazookas that seemed to repeat and high power rifles that look oxidized.

But Chavez has to vent his frustration with his failure as President of Venezuela. Not only has he failed in making life better for the people of this country, bu he has failed to convince the people to follow his lead into XXIst. Century Socialism or to be their President indefinitely. Thus. instead of worrying about solving the problems that he has failed to solve for the last ten years, he has spent the month and a half since his loss in the referendum traveling and trying to sove Colombia’s problems as if they were his while treating the terrorist group FARC as buddies and making them out to be the good guys.

Thus, the man who can not make peace with his own people now claims Colombia does not want peace and discusses the FARC on equal footing with Colombia’s politicians and legal military forces, forgetting the horror and the terror with which the FARC have treated the innocent citizens of that country.

And it is as if Chavez not only wanted to pick a fight with Colombia, with one affront after the other and truly medling in that country’s affairs. Chavez is provoking Colombia and it seems as if he is using this as a distraction, but at the same time he wants to escalate the distraction into an irreversible conflict with that country.

Tonight the Colombian Government forcibly asked Chavez to show more respect for it and to stop meddling, as he is confusing cooperation with meddling. Unfortunately Chavez is unlikely to stay quiet and understand that he has violated the boundaries of what is proper. This is likely to lead to a break in diplomatic relations, which are already quite strained and who knows into what adventure the thoughtless autocrat wants to take the Venezuelan people, thinking that it will make us forget or ignore the problems that he ahs failed to solve in the last nine years, despite the biggest windfall in the country’s history

And just so there is no mistake as to who the FARC exactly are and the horror they subject their captives to, here is a Reuters article from today on the letters the hostages still in captivity sent their relatives with the two women that were freed:

Colombian hostages sad, ill, letters show

Chained, often weak from disease and wracked with despair, Colombian hostages in jungle camps cling to hope a deal with their Marxist rebel captors will free them, letters from the captives released on Tuesday show.

The notes and pictures from guerrilla hostages were brought by former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez who was freed last week after nearly six years in rebel captivity in a deal brokered by Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chavez.

The release of Gonzalez and fellow captive, Clara Rojas, has raised hopes for an accord to free other hostages held by Latin America’s oldest insurgency, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans.

But letters from those left behind such as Police Col. Luis Mendieta, captured nearly a decade ago, show the toll on their physical and mental health after bouts of illness, long jungle marches, and frustration after years in insect-infested camps.

“It is not the physical pain that wounds us, nor the chains on our necks that torment us or the constant sickness … it’s the mental agony of the irrationality of all this,” says one letter signed by Mendieta and others read on local radio.

“It seems that we are worthless, that we do not exist.”

Details of suffering from recent hostage letters have shocked Colombians even as violence from their four-decade conflict eases under President Alvaro Uribe, a Washington ally who has led a campaign to drive the rebels into the jungles.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, still holds several hundred hostages for ransom or political leverage. Authorities said the rebels kidnapped six Colombian tourists on Sunday from a remote Pacific beach.

Mendieta wrote that he has been chained to a pole and spends days trying to pass time playing cards and learning English and Russian in informal classes from another hostage.

Sickness has forced him to be carried several times in a hammock. Injections have eased ailments in his legs and feet, but at times he cannot walk.

“I had to drag myself to the bathroom for my necessities through the mud with just the strength of my arms because I could not get up,” he wrote in a letter read by his daughter.

Blurry photos show Mendieta with former local governor Alan Jara and ex-congressman Luis Eduardo Gechem and other police hostages who have been held for more than five years.

In one letter read by Gechem’s wife he appealed for help from Cuba, which has been host to attempts to broker a peace deal with the ELN, Colombia’s second-largest rebel group.

Gechem, who suffers from a bleeding ulcer and a heart ailment, writes he is even willing to be jailed in Cuba while he recovers his health, his wife said.

“President Fidel Castro, I ask you, beg you to make an additional gesture for humanity,” Gechem wrote. “Comandante Castro, please save this life.”

After a failed attempt at the end of the year, Chavez last week helped negotiate the release of Rojas and Gonzalez, who were held for nearly six years by the FARC, which Washington brands a drug-trafficking terrorist group.

Rojas gave birth to a child in captivity who was taken from her months after he was born. They were reunited on Sunday.

Chavez, a foe of Washington, has stirred tensions with Colombia by demanding Uribe recognize the FARC’s political status and has urged foreign governments to take the group off their lists of terrorist organizations.

Uribe’s government says that could only happen when the FARC commits to a peace process.

“This shows the horror and infamy to which the FARC submits those held in its power. For us it is clear the need for an immediate way out of this,” Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo told reporters on a visit to Costa Rica.

The rebels, who began as a peasant army fighting for socialism in the 1960s, are insisting Uribe pull troops from an big area of southwest Colombia to facilitate any hostage deal.

But Uribe, a hardliner whose father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping more than 20 years ago, has refused, saying creating such a safe haven would let the guerrillas regroup.