The Devil's Excrement

Strange (and long!) decision by the administrative Hall of the Venezuelan Supreme Court admitting the case of RCTV but refusing to grant an injunction because they have not studied the details of the administrative procedure which Conatel followed in 2000. I thought it was precisely in such cases that an injunction was warranted: Courts grant injunctions to protect your rights while the details of the case are being studied. In a very circular and convoluted argument the Court says that nothing guarantees RCTV the right to have a concession thus until they look at the case, it is just tough, but you will be shutdown next Sunday.

Thus, the stage is set for the autocrat’s decision to become reality. It all seems so carefully staged. First the Constitutional Hall refuses to look at the case the week before the shutdown, saying that this is an administrative case and that they could not find anything in the case file saying their rights had been violated. I guess the members of that Hall don’t watch TV where Hugo Chavez has been announcing the closure without giving the right to RCTV of either defending itself or following the the path established in Venezuela’s legislation. I guess RCTV should have sent some videos along.

Unfortunately my intuition that nothing would stop Chavez from this blatant violations of the rights of RCTV and our rights to choose will be consummated on Sunday. I could care less for RCTV’s programming, but I do care less for VTV’s or the pablum we will be fed by this contraption that is being given the concession this Sunday. What I do know is that there will be fewer outlets for opposing views to the Government. I have seen dissenting voices being quieted down slowly over the last few years, we now get this giant act of suppression of dissent. It is now a matter of who is next, whether Globovision, the Internet or whatever the autocrat decides bothers him.

Whatever happened to Chavez calling private broadcasting station the Four Horseman of Apocalypse? How come only one horseman is being sent to the slaughterhouse? Easy, some of them have become very docile, so that they can keep making money. Others are protected by the fact that shutting more than one TV channel at once would be too obvious. But the “legal” case, if it exists against RCTV, would apply to all the stations, a point to often forgotten and obviated by the fanatics that claim the procedure is legal.

So the noose gets tighter all over. People are looking into moving their phone and Internet service away from CANTV and the Government’s prying eyes, getting more cable channels which the poor have little access to, just as protests are not carried by the rsurviving media. It will be word of mouth or maybe as in Petkoff’s Editorial, we will begin using smoke signals or maybe the old Dixie cups tied with strings. Fortunately technology is different these days. Hopefully somebody will take the time to write a guide and tell us how to protect our rights and privacy in the future from this Government, from browsing, to email to contacting each other it looks like we will need a lot of help in the future. Are there any takers? I would glad to translate any useful material and post it.

Thus, alea jacta est, in another remarkable step by Hugo Chavez, the man who some claim is a Democrat but discusses nothing and talks to nobody, a man who claims to support participative democracy, but has reduced the levels of participation, a man who true to his military origins is closer to Pinochet and Fujimori in both ideology and practice that anyone thought possible. However, the institutional and legal destruction in Venezuela has been much higher and the factors that led to the demise and self-destruction of those Dictators seems remote in our country. It is indeed a sad moment in our country’s history, one that I would have never thought I would see in my lifetime.

Mision CANTV by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

The topic of nationalizations is not for us Venezuelans and ideological one. It is more of a practical matter.

We have lived too many years of our lives with a State owning hundreds of companies so as to feel now any form of vindication of our patriotic fiber with the nationalizations of CANTV and the Electricidad de Caracas. The only ones here who believe that we are taking a revolutionary step are the usual ultra leftists and the new ideological priests of the “process”, who operate from the Anauco Hilton Hotel.

CANTV was part of the State until 1991 and it was a piece of garbage. You had to wait ten minutes to get a dial tone and one day to make an international long distance call. In the whole country, with the exception of Margarita, Valencia, Barquisimeto and Ciudad Bolívar, the distribution of electricity is in the hands of CADAFE and it is impossible to have worse service than that. They live from one bright period to another. Sidor was in the hands of the state until 1997 and it survived thanks to the mouth to mouth resuscitation that public finances gave it. The same with the aluminum companies, that have never stopped being part of the State and whose losses are covered by state funds. We had here state airlines living off state funds; the State was also a hotel chain owner, owner of sugar processing plants, radio stations, banks (let us not mention that poor Banco Industrial, eternally looted by its Directors), etc., etc. Thus, we have absolutely no reason to feel ourselves facing a sort of great novelty when we someone talks to us about nationalizations.

We are too accustomed to state companies and their terrible service, as well as the frequent corruption scandals.

The only state company that has worked well is PDVSA, but Chavismo is already finishing it off. Only the extremely high oil prices dissimulate a chaotic situation. And you can not blame the strike for the current disaster. And this is the crux of the question. If these Government leaders (who deserve the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, because everything they touch turns to shit), have managed to unravel PDVSA, what can you expect from CANTV and Elecar, now in the same hands? Will we also start living in Caracas from brightness to brightness? Will they be able to manage the advanced technology that we have today, the same incompetent that failed in their efforts to build a new viaduct of the La Guaira highway with the resources of the Minister of Infrastructure and had to go and hire a private company to get them out of the tight spot? The matter is thus not an ideological one. One listens to “I the Supreme being” offering wonderful telephone things and hopes it will be that way, but it is enough to remember the street kids, the La Carlota Park, the road to Macuro, the 200 thousand homes a year, the parties, the Zamoran estates, the implacable fight against corruption, the Vargas reconstruction and so many other swindles of that type, to realize that it is the same usual BS. Let us pray to God that will be not be communicating with each other via smoke signals soon.

No, this is not a brand new refrigerator. This is the meat display at the supermarket I go to. This is a daily occurrence as they have not had meat for quite a while, as a matter of fact since at least April 20th. they have received meat twice, both times selling it in less than two hours. This had never happened in the country’s history, but between land being taken over and left unused and price controls, supply has simply disappeared. There you have it, a true, real accomplishment by the revolution!

Ironically, below the fridge is a row of dog food bags, some of the imported. No comments!

Somehow, I am always surprised by the lack of scruples of the revolution and its leaders. Maybe I am naive, maybe I would really like in an ideal world, or maybe I was raised by my family and my profession to have high ethical standards. But I can’t help but be surprised by statements from the autocrat like the one last weekend when he said:

“The only way that RCTV’s concession will not end on Sunday the 27th. is for Hugo Chavez not to be President of Venezuela”

There it is, in plain words: I am the law, the king, the autocrat and the Dictator. You disagree with me, either you overthrow me or else. As simple as that.

But then, we also have that apprentice of Dictator, the man who did such a good job as “impartial” Head and Director of the Electoral Board, that he was rewarded now with being Vice-President. No ethical conflict or debate there for the revolution: He was a fanatic serving the revolution in his earlier role, he is now second in command and clearly learning the ropes as mini-Dictator in training, a role that always served VP Jorge Rodriguez well:

“There is nothing to talk about (closing RCTV)…there is nothing more to be said”

Was there ever something to discuss with a Government that barely even talks even among its members? They all play at the rhythm of Chavez says and follow their leader. There are no “legal attributions” that the state is using. The regulator CONATEL initiated one process against RCTV which has not been completed. The Prosecutor initiated another process against RCTV that has barely even been initiated. There is no legality involved. On the day in which the so called “coup” took place, the autocrat actually tried to stop Venezuelans and the world from watching the carnage going on outside. If it were not that the networks decided to split the screen Chavez calmly on one side, bloody carnage on the other, we would have never known how cynical and without scruples Chavez and his cohorts are. That was murder, wholesale murder, but the fanatics that support Chavez could care less about the blood of Venezuelans, as they support and administration that murdered that day and allows without care the daily murders of hundreds of Venezuelans.

This is a Government with no compassion towards its own supporters, least of all the blind daughter of a former President who is denied her passport out of the lowest and cruelest form of spite. Human Rights are secondary in the revolution . RCTV is being closed out of spite, as much as all of the other cruel and negative policies of the autocrat are carried out. Other TV stations complied with Chavez’ desire to silence them, RCTV did not. Unfortunately for the others, one day Chavez will wake up and decide to shut them down too. Then they will remember this week.

Meanwhile, human rights organizations have come out en force to declare the reality of the Chavez administration’s lack of democratic credentials and how they are simply punishing RCTV because it is too critical of its actions. From Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch today, the cry is in unison: Chavez is politically motivated to squash its enemies and is using incorrectly his total control of the state. For once, the left is split unevenly, much like Venezuela’s left has been split over the years. The appearance of democracy has fallen down, only those with pseudo fascist tendencies still support the autocrat who looks more and more like their old nemesis’ Fujimori and Pinochet. They can no longer support the unsupportable.

It is now up to Venezuelans to do something about it.

I guess I can’t pass up the comments today by President Chavez that he would cut both fixed line and cellular prices by 20%. He also announced that he would cut taxes on phone service for those living in “poor” areas, as well as cutting interconnection fees by 30%. Thus, in one swipe, the Government has set the course to ruin CANTV much faster that I ever believed possible.

When I first heard that the Government was taking CANTV over, I thought that given the company’s financial health, it would take sometime for the inefficiency, politicking and indecision to start affecting the company. But given that in the December quarter the company’s margins were 27%, the 20% cut in these three very significant revenue streams will be a large hit.

Some people think that these price cuts will drive customers towards CANTV, but in fixed line, CANTV is essentially the only game in town and in wireless it has come back from a distant second place thanks to good service and smart marketing, neither of which are guaranteed now. In fact, I understand that the company’s advertising agency has already been fired in favor PDVSA’s company, so we will see red colors a lot in CANTV’s advertising going forward.

But even worse were Chavez’ comments about wireless (can’t find the quote I heard), saying that wireless communications was an invention of capitalism. This comment shows the President’s ignorance and superficial understanding of communications. In saying that the “new” CANTV will emphasize fixed line, he ignores or seems to be ignorant about the impact and importance of wireless for Venezuela’s poor. The cost of wiring homes which will generate low ARPU’s was the problem of most underdeveloped countries for years. With wireless communications, penetration of communications soared as the home by home investment was replaced by the building of cells which were shared by all users in the area. In 1991, when CANTV was privatized, Venezuela had 1.7 million telephone lines under a mismanaged Government telecom company. Today, CANTV has 3 million fixed lines, but between the three wireless operators, there are some 15 million cellphones in the country, a staggering number that nobody, either from the Government or from the telecom industry ever thought could even happen and so fast. That is real results for everyone, particularly the poor. It would simply be very expensive for anyone, Government or private to undertake the wiring of 5-6 milion homes to achieve a similar penetration with fixed line.

To compound matters, the people named to run the company have little telecom experience or in running large organizations. People are already resigning en masse, as they have been asked to do, if they are not with the “process”. The President of CANTV comes from PDVSA, a former SAP specialist who had a fairly gray career until she pledged allegiance to Chavez. The new President of the wireless company Movilnet, is the former Minister of the Environment, who did not precisely leave a great track record there. I am surprised by the absence of anyone from the military telecom area, one of the few areas in which the military is strong relative to the rest of the country. Even more, I can’t help but mention the presence in the Board of the academic “expert” who advised the CNE so “impartially” on random number generators when the recall vote took place. The revolution certainly rewards those that claiming to be impartial, participate without ethical values in biased processes to favor the Autocrat/Dictator.

Those are the values of the revolution.

I am away, so I have
not been able to post at all, but did not want the recent decision about
RCTV by the Supreme Court to pass without a comment.

I am no lawyer,
but basically the Court seems to be saying, we can’t say anything because
your rights haven’t been violated (yet!) and what you are arguing about is
that the correct procedure has not been followed and that is not for the
Constitutional Hall to decide, but for the Administrative Hall Thus,
the Constitutional Hall is saying that what RCTV argues is that it is not
for the Executive Branch to decide but for CONATEL and thus the other Hall
should decide.

The Court also skirts the Constitutional issues of
freedom of speech and the like. Thus, the Court seems to be saying “Tienes
razon, pero vas preso” (You are right but you go to jail), that is they
skirt the important issue and tell the other Hall to look into the
administrative procedures of the case, i.e. it should be CONATEL that
decides or not.

Meanwhile, Chavez acts like the Dictator he is, saying: “The only way that RCTV will not have the concession removed is for
me not to be President”

Which in the face of the opinion, is spoken
like a true Dctator/Autocrat

It is ironic how Chavez’s ideological theorists have all come from abroad. From that militaristic fascist named Ceresole, a revisionist of the worst kind, through the now discarded theories of Dieterich, the autocrat now chooses as his ideological guru a Spaniard who much like a grandiose PSF, a super-PSF, comes to tell us we should do things differently because we are somewhat more “backwards” than he is. Thus, much like the weird ideas of the revolution, which seem to ignore the realities of the psyche and culture of Venezuelans, these theorists arrive, all expenses paid by the revolution, ready to solve all of our problems, much like the PSF’s in the comments sections believe they understand Venezuela and Venezuelans and their “honest” politicians and come and tells us how this undemocratic, fascist, militaristic robolution is precisely what the doctor ordered for what is, in their eyes, a primitive society.

But much like Monedero below, they ignore our not so distant history of accomplishments. How Venezuelan science, architecture, urban planning and public works and democracy flourished, while they were almost invisible in Spain for decades. But now they want to come and prescribe for us the same recipes that gave rise to the political movements they represent.

These arrogant politicians would have come to America with pieces of glass five centuries ago, looking to trade them for valuable assets. Today they come with cheap ideas and theories, ready to test them and experiment them on us. Ideas that in their own countries would be impossible to implement because they would wake up the most basic instincts in order to defend freedom and democracy, which people have grown to appreciate and respect because they had to fight to get them back over decades, in what was a very dark period for the basic rights of Spaniards.

Petkoff’s essay is brilliant, because he unmasks the arrogance, sham and paternalistic style of the new theorist of the robolution. Monedero comes to Venezuela to obtain the attention, wealth and recognition that he can’t get at home. He is one of many, but right now he is in the spotlight of attention as he tries to define for us what XXIst. Century Socialism is supposed to be about. A “great” Guru trying to define content to go along with the charisma of the Lt. Colonel, which after eight years of trial and error and the biggest oil windfall in the country’s history, has yet to achieve anything concrete beyond the consolidation of his personal power and the most corrupt period in the country’s history.

The Great Guru by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual (My Subtitle: The Supreme PSF)

A young man whose last name is Monedero, who belongs to a left-wing Spanish political group, Izquierda Unida, that never gets more than 5% of the votes in that country, appears to be the new ideologue of the “process”.

He succeeds in that Chair both Norberto Ceresole and Heinz Dieterich, that pair of charlatans, already dismissed by Chávez from his ideological collection of mummies. In the interview by Alejandro Botia, published in Tal Cual last Monday, Monedero instructed us on the impossibility of repeating the social democratic models of Europe in Latin America: “The European system of well being, as I have been explaining, functions with some prior elements that are not replicable in Latin America”.

There is in this a supremacist concept, and ethnocentric arrogance, Eurocentric, an imperial and discriminatory vision, that, as most of the ultra left from those lands, Monedero just can’t manage to hide. Democracy, a mixed economy, the combination of State and markets, social security, social democracy, summing up—Monedero tells us –, is something for us white people, the educated ones, the heirs of two thousand years of Judeo-Christian civilization, but not to you, the mixed race of Latin America, Venezuelans, Caribbeans, loudmouths, precariously educated, the heirs of caudillos and their commoner wives who, on top of that did not have to endure two world wars, what they get is Chavez. The problem is that the guy does not even try to hide it.

In another part of the interview, which we will publish soon, there is a Homeric suck up, when he releases this pearl about indefinite reelection: “ Can we, through something which is correct from a theoretical point of view, which is to limit terms, sacrifice the possibilities that the people have, today, of getting out of the XIXth. Century and which is called Hugo Chavez?” How about that? Limiting terms is a “correct theory” for us politically sophisticated Europeans, but you, shitty Latin Americans, have to accept your lifetime caudillos or you will never get out of your nineteenth Century backwardness. Monedero adds: “The President knows that he is an essential factor and the people read it that way, to get out of the XIXth. Century and truly belong to the XXIst. one. Someone around him should tell him that with this type of theatrical stupidity Vallenilla Lanz validated Gomez’ tyranny, the “necessary gendarme”. Impossible to be more reactionary than that.

But there is more. Speaking about decentralization he places himself within the attitude of the Spanish Popular Party, the same as another guy from the Jurassic era, this time Aznar, and once again he denies it to us. The “regional autonomies” are for us, the civilized Spaniards; “you”, Venezuelans, “ it’s going to be very difficult that you understand what is happening now if don’t realize where you are coming from”. And immediately, placing the eye patch on his eye and the wooden leg and parrot on his shoulder, he informs us where we came from: “You come from a political model where in the name of decentralization, what was generated was a fragmentation of the country and you abandoned a large fraction of the population in the name of that democratic principle of decentralization”. What do you think of this my dear readers?

One thinks one is listening to Aznar auguring all of the calamities for Spain which would follow its autonomic “decentralization” that was advanced in 1989—after almost a century of hypercentralism—which would have “fragmented” starting that year, when they began electing Governors and Mayors.

In how many fragments, my dear lad?

Venezuelan poverty and inequality have something to do with decentralization?

Franco’s centralization, Monedero would say, is unacceptable, but Chavez’, Ahh! That is something else. It is revolutionary, and on top of that, part of the third world. And we all know that when an ultra leftist European discovers guerrillas or colonels who are “anti-imperialists” in the Third World, they have an orgasm. And they come flying to teach us the secrets of the revolution.

Am I imagining it or is Chavez starting to back down from some of his most important autocratic decisions of the last few months:

—Chavez threatened to shut down broadcastin TV station RCTV and said “nothing” could stop him.

Now Chavez last weekend and the President of the National Assembly say they will abide by any decision by the Chavez controlled Supreme Court on the matter…ummm….

—Chavez announced that Venezuela would withdraw from the International Monetary Fund, which had some serious and expensive implications for the country.

Today Minister of Planning Giordani says that decision is in Chavez’ hands. Hold it! Wasn’t Chavez the one that already announced it? Who took it away from his hands in such a way that it is now back into his hands?….ummm…

—Chavez threatens to nationalize steel company Sidor, majority owned by Argentinean consortiuum Ternium.

Buenos Aires newspapers report Presidenty Kirchner saying that he told Chavez that he was tired of finding out about his problems reading the papers, but the problem had been resolved and there would be no nationalization….ummm…

The question is: Why the change of mind? Just too many impulses by the autocrat that have been restrained or decisions that have been reversed due to their extremenly negative impact on the image of the autocrat and his ineffective Government?

Today all of the local media reported
that the Minister of Health had said that the Government was going to propose a
Bill within the Enabling Law, which would “progressively prohibit the
production of tobacco”. Today, the Minister came out on TV saying he was quoted
“out of context” and that as Minister of Health he did not even have to deal
with such a proposal.

Well, this may be true, but he was not quoted out of context
as his words were part of an interview in union radio, where not only he was
not quoted out of context, but the Minister actually said one of the most
stupid things I have ever heard when he stated “Anyone that wants to smoke
would have to impost cigarettes”. He followed this by talking about the
consequences of smoking, but obviously his idea cannot be more moronic, as
“imported” cigarettes cause as much cancer as local ones, and banning local
production destroys jobs.

While the Ministers goal of reducing cancer are quote
commendable and he has actually done a few things about it, he clearly caught
in the intensity of the moment and his revolutionary spirit goy carried away.
But then, he made a fool of himself saying he was taking out of context, as his
words were carefully recorded by union radio.

But you know the revolution, they think that they can lie
themselves out of any situation, no matter how many times they have said it. In
fact, the Minister was trying to be so candid and amiable during his interview
that he actually said that he had never “kissed anyone that smoked”. I guess
they must not have been that attractive, he could have always convinced them of
quitting smoking afterwards, no?