The Devil's Excrement

There
is an interview in today’s El Nacional with Chacao Mayor Leopoldo Lopez in
which he gives terrifying numbers on crime and violence in Venezuela. The
article is on the occasion of Lopez’ presentation of a plan he has been trying
to sell the Government to reduce crime in 180 days.

Among the
things Lopez says about the current conditions of crime and violence in Venezuela:

–For each
cop killed in Brazil, ten
criminals die, in Venezuela
the ratio is forty criminals per cop.

–Deaths
for “resisting the authorities” have increased 254% since 1999 in the country
and 759% in the Federal District.

–Military
investment is 80 times police investment. One Sukhoi airplane like those
purchased recently by the Government cost US$ 120 million, with that you could
properly equip all police forces in the country.

–Homicide
rates are measured by the number of corpses that go through the morgue, but
there is an additional category in public hospitals called “undetermined
violent deaths. In 2004, there were 9962 homicides reported by the morgues,
2150 for “resisting the authorities” and 4298 “undetermined violent deaths”. This
gives you 74 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, higher than Colombia’s 54,
but that country is in the midst of a civil war.

–90,027 people
have died violently since 1999 in Venezuela. This is more than the
number that have died in Afghanistan,
Chechnya and Iraq.

–Only 7%
of homicides reach the point of someone receiving a sentence for it

–Of
executions only 1.4% of the cases ends in a sentence

–The rate
of homicides in jails is 20.6 per 1,000 inmates. In Brazil,
Argentina, Mexico and Colombia combined; the rate is 0.6
per 1,000.

–There is
an estimated 6 million weapons in Venezuela floating around, of which
only 15,000 are registered.

–In the
judiciary system, there are, according to a document by the Supreme Court, 100
civil servants with a criminal record and 40 judges with a criminal record.

Horrifying
and terrorizing statistics of the reality of this poor nation. Is it time for
divisiveness or ideology, or is it time for doing something together?

And from Megaresistencia I
get these two pictures of the buses used to bring the not so
spontaneous crowd to accompany Chavez in registering his candidacy:

Who paid for it? Were they official buses? Will the CNE ask Chavez or MVR about it? Of course not…

So, yesterday, the Board of the Electoral Board (CNE) approved the use of the fingerprint capturing machines for the December elections. They defended what can not be defended using arguments that their own technical assesment has demonstrated is not correct. It turns out that Bruni’s calculation of how good the fingerprint machines was conservative and according to Board member Diaz in El Nacional “39% of the comparison between signatures failed”. Thus, US$ 105-plus million were spent on a system that is useless for what the CNE and the Government claim it does.Diaz threw even more confusion into the fary, when in the same article in El Nacional he said that “With the system only 26 attempts have been detected of people that attempted to vote twice in three elections”. Thus, the CNE has spent US$ 4.03 million per case detected, not necessarily very efficient and cost effective.(BTW, this is the third different number I hear with respect to how many people were actually caught voting twice with the system, I have heard 53, 29 and now 26)

Of course, what candidate Rosales now calls the “Chuky” of our elections, is now being justified on other grounds, which are just laughable given the fact that former CNE President Jorge Rodriguez never mentioned any of them during his tenure.

The fact is that they have now decided to use a system which:

-Is not mandated by law
-Will cost additional money to use one more time
-It has been shown to do very little of what is supposed to, thus it represents a waste of Governmnet resources , which is penalzied under the anit-corruption law.
-Instills fears in voters, thsu violating their rights.
-The detailed conditions or its used have not been decided upon. (Where it is online or not, whch makes little sense, who will have access to the data and the like)

As usual, makes you wonder where the People’s Ombudsman is. If a system instills fears in 40% of the population, it would seem he would have to say something about it. Additionally, the ineffetiveness of the system is a violation of the “Ley del Salvaguarda del Patrimonio Publico” and as such the Prosecutor and the Comptroller would have to investigate it.

I am sure the opposition will continue to bring pressure on the CNE not to use these machines. If its use is later cancelled, the only winner in all this will be Cogent and its shareholders, who have already made hundreds of millions of dollars already thanks to the generosity of the CNE and will make more money with the latest decision by the Chavista members of the Electoral Board..

Not only do Chavistas laugh at us all the time, but they really have
total disdain for people and must think Venezuelans are truly stupid. A few
weeks ago, I
showed the wonderful new toothpaste being sold at the Government’s chain of
stores Mercal, under the brand name “ten million smiles” in clear allusion to
Chavez’ campaign slogan “ten million votes”. In fact, they even have two hands as a symbol, just like Chavez’ campaign slogans.

Well, yesterday Deputy Belkis Solis, showed
up at the National Assembly with a box of tubes of this wonderful product,
claiming that it was all a just coincidence and that they were made by a co-op
called Cermanco (I have information that this is a lie too, but have yet to confirm
it) and that this co-op had a study made which said that 10 million Venezuelans
do not brush their teeth every day. Of course, she did not have a copy of the
study, but happily gave away the toothpaste tubes to the smiling Deputies.

The whole thing is so crass, that not even the pro-Chavez Director of
the Electoral Board German Yepez believed it and this was actually the example he
mentioned as a violation of the electoral rules on the part of the Government.
Of course, he first mentioned the fact that there was a banner at the Zulia Governorship
with Rosales’ slogan “Atrevete”. He failed to mention the
many ads appearing daily in the press with Chavez’ name or image or even
the fact that the “Ten million votes” logo has been on the wall of the National
Assembly for the last month or so.

Here is a another picture of the tubes of toothpaste:

Check out Bruni’s collection of Government-paid ads from only today which either promote Chavez’ name or image in them. Is that fair? Should that be legal? It is simply abusive. And the CNE? Rooting for Chavez…of course.

Well, what seemed so tough to attain, a unity candidacy, was achieved last night when Julio Borges agreed to withdraw his candidacy in favor of that of Zulia Governor Manel Rosales. Clearly, Petkoff’s withdrawal last week helped quiet a bit, but what was really important was the fact that with Petkoff and Borges openly campaigning, Rosales’ somewhat stealth candidacy propelled him to the top of the opposition preferences rather quickly. Reportedly, all of the other candidates who had registered for the primary, but barely appeared in the perefences have accepted to withdraw, leaving Rosales, Smith and Er Conde as the alternatives to Chavez.

While I am sorry that there was no primary, I really think we should start having democracy from below in Venezuela, I am quite pleased with the outcome a unity candidate led by Rosales. My initial preference for Teodoro Petkoff was quickly tempered by his terrible campaigning skills and his refusal to participate in the primary, despite initially indicating that he would participate. Since I have never been impressed by Borges or Smith, then Rosales was my preference and I hope his standing in the polls forces Er Conde to withdraw quickly.

As for Rosales, he may not have the economic knowledge of a Petkoff, but he is first of all a democrat. He has shown that he is a good campaigner and can appeal to the population at large. He woudl also try to be a President for all Venezuelans in contrast to the autocrat. He has been an efficient and effective Governor and continues to enjoy the support of the people in his state. That in itself tells you quite a bit. He has proven he can administer, has better economic know how than the top few dozen people in the Chavez Government (not too hard!) and while he has the old style campaign style, this is not a matter of style, but substance. I think he should have been more decisive about running and not worry so much about the Government forcing him to step down. In fact, they still might try it, so in the end there is little difference.

So, let’s see how the Government reacts and how they attempt to disqualify Rosales.The CNE is still a problem, but as we say in Spanish “la pelea es peleando”, something like “you have to fight your fights”.

In what is to me a surprisng decision, mostly by its how soon they announced it, the CNE has decided that Governor Manuel Rosales does not have to resign from his position in order to be a candidate in the upcoming Presidential election. No decision on the fingerprint machines was announced.

In the
best tradition of the witch hunts of
the 50’s in the US, Deputy Jose “Sherlock” Albornoz is quickly turning into Joe “Mac” Albornoz
McCarthy with his trial by headline of NGO Sumate.

In the beginning according to Joey Albornoz, it was that Sumate had violated the foreign exchange illegalities
law by changing dollars and not being registered in Cadivi (The foreign
exchange office). This was plastered all over the headlines, except there were
two problems: One, you don’t register with CADIVI to receive dollars, the
dollars are simply sent to a local bank which proceeds to exchange them to
Bolivars via teh Central Bank. Two, There is no violation of any law if you either changed it before
the law went into effect, or use alternate mechanisms such as security swaps or
CANTV ADR’s which are perfectly legal.

Well, it
turns out that Sumate actually
went through the banking system, as demonstrated by its Directors and
confirmed by the Superintendent of Banks. Separately, Sumate presented
its contributions from the National Endowment for Democracy, which are public
and listed in the website of that bi-partisan foundation, from the Canadian
Embassy (Mr. Danger’s neighbor?) and from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Sumate
also said that they had received money for a project that was returned.

Then last
week the Directors of Sumate showed up to testify on the source of the funds,
but Joey “Mac” Albornoz, did not want to talk to them, he wanted to talk to the
accountant of Sumate. Well, he had not invited him and he happens to be a
volunteer who is not even in the payroll of Sumate. A new invitation was forwarded
with the guy’s name and he showed up today to testify and said that Sumate has
no accounts in US dollars, that it all came in the form of Bolivars from
the banks. He also mentioned a project to study the Electoral registry that
never panned out because of the lack of data, which was funded by the Health
and Human Services Department of the US Government and that the money was
returned even before this investigation began.

Despite
this, Joey “Mac” Albornoz continued making his best imitation of McCarthy and
Tascon, when
he said that “Sumate did receive dollars”. Yes it did, but there was
nothing illegal about it. He made a big deal about the returned money, called
the US
Ambassador a liar. Even funnier was saying that the money was returned to a
company called “USdisburning” Office, which is nothing but the way the US
Agency for International Development disburses funds, via the US Disbursement Office, not exactly a
company.

Albornoz
even insisted that there was a “presumption” of a foreign exchange illegality, which
simply shows he can’t tell up from down or is a huge liar, so as not to use a coarser sentence. Receiving dollars to a local bank is not illegal. The bank converts them at the official rate and you have Bolivars. As long as they have a legal origin and are used for a legal purpose, nothing significant has happened. Banks do this everyday.

But we all
know this is simply a witch hunt, another one in a long string of witch hunts
from the same people who considered million dollar illegal contributions from
Spanish banks to Chavez’ 1998 Presidential campaign “unimportant” or similar
million dollar illegal contributions from
the same banks to Chavez’ 2000 Presidential campaign, while he still was
President, “insignificant”. The difference is that you can’t touch Chavez and
those contributions were actually proven to have occured in Spanish Courts. In the Venezuelan Courts,
they never got anywhere and were ignored by characters such as Joey “Mac” Albornoz.
Curiously, no sector has benefited the
most form the Chavez largesse’s and corruption than the financial system, of
which the Spanish banks are two of the three largest. Curious, no?

And Alfredo noticed that Steve Jobs and Apple are imperialistic, oligarchic institutions, probably friendly with Mr. Danger and his cohorts. (He told us little about the new machines though)