The Devil's Excrement

Maria seems to be a source of wealth for REP curiosities and oddities, how about these! Nobody absolutely nobody uses four initials!

Too shy? Too dumb? Too simple minded? William Lara’s relatives?

There may be Gonzalez’ 2,000 born on the same date or with no first names or 150 year olds in the Electoral Registry known as REP, but I must say I think we have a winner here with the person with ID number C.I. 25214345, his/her name is simply XX, no first name, no last name, simply XX.

Houston! Houston! We have a winner! Hard to beat this for oddity. Of course, William Lara, Minister of Information and Miscommunications would say: “There is nothing wrong with the REP”.

You can check it out for your self at the CNE website. I guess this person could bring anybody’s Cedula and vote!

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–It turns
out that the reason why former Governor Lapi was ostensibly jailed for was not
following the law and not opening for bids for a highway contract. Well, the
President’s father has done this repeatedly and denounced for it, but hey! He
is the father of Hugo Chavez the autocrat, thus he has not even been
investigated for it! Chavez’ father is also accused of naming Chavez’ brother
Argenis as “pro-tempore Governor” allowing him to essentially run the state.
That position does not exist in Venezuela’s
legislation.

–And how
about the Milan
family. Oly Millan is the Minister for the Popular Economy and before that she
was the President of the fund for agricultural development Fondafa. Fondafa has
been formally charged with financing more hectares for planting that there are
available in Yaracuy state. Well, the Minister’s
brother went to the Prosecutor’s office yesterday to accuse his own brother
in law, for asking for a Bs. 1 billion commission if he wants to obtain a Bs. 7
billion loan from Fondafa. Oly Millan’s husband now works at Fondafa where his
brother in law says he wields and enormous amount of power, given that his wife
is a Minister. He also accused his brother in law with threatening to kill him.
I guess it is all in the family with the Millans.

–Former
Causa R leader and supposedly now Presidential Candidate Pablo Medina showed up at the
Prosecutor’s General’s office to denounce the Minister of Interior and
Justice and his brother for influence peddling. The case was reported here long ago, but
Justice Velasquez Alvaray mentioned it when he was charged by the moral
council. Chacon’s brother Arne was a lowly employee of the tax office in 2002
but now has purchased milks pants and owns an investment bank. Moreover, the Superintendence
of Banks had to approve the purchase and the basic requirement for purchasing a
bank is having banking experience which Chacon lacks. You also have to prove
the source of funds. These are the miracles of corruption in the revolution.

–There
was an interesting
interview with former Minister of Finance under Chavez General Francisco
Uson. Uson is the only person jailed for the case of the burnt soldiers of Fort Mara
because…imagine! He said that the burns were caused by a flamethrower on a TV program. Those
who caused the deaths are at large, they have not even been charged, but this was
a good excuse to jail Uson, a true political prisoner in Chavez’ Venezuela. Nothing has been done about the human rights
violations that day or who killed the soldiers, but Uson has been jailed since last summer for his crime of sying what he thought.  It is all a huge cover-up by the
military. And nothing happens.

Amazingly, Uson was quite quiet after resigning
on April 11^th. 2002 because he blamed Chavez for the deaths that day. In
the interview Uson says that Chavez acts like a gangster head of an organized
crime family. He says literally with reference to the Generals in power “He
(Chavez) places them where there is (money) and let’s them steal with full
hands”. What impressed me about the interview, besides the fact that Uson has
always been a very serious character, was the fact that in many questions he answers
by saying that all he knows about a topic is what he has read in the media and says nothing more. Uson
was convicted for a “crime of opinion”, a crime that does not exist in Venezuela’s
legislation.

These four cases show that contrary to the
Vice-President’s statements Justice has progressed little in the robolution.
In fact, most of these corruption cases are simply too obvious and blatant and
nothing happens. Somebody should explain to him that except for the Velasquez
Alvaray case, few Chavistas have been investigated or charged, despite the many
cases of corruptions denounced in the media with evidence.

Without giving any explanation, Chavez’ MVR rejects the audit of the electoral registry proposed by three universities. What are they afraid of?

1- Could it be that it does not make sense that 65% of the Venezuelan population is now registered to vote, for which they have to be over 18? Does this correlate with the census?

2.- I had placed three ID cards here with teh same picture. I was told a magazine reported this guy was caught with thrree ID’s with different ages and names. I tried to track it down today but coudln’t. The point is and was that thousands of people got ID cards that allow them to register to vote without anyone checking the validity of the card. I will post again if I get the copy promised to me.

In any case the point is that there are a huge number of irregularities that justify audting and making the electoral registry better. For example, I placed this in the comments:
By the way, if yo go to the INE webpage (www.ine.org.ve) it extrapolates using the data from the 2001 census
that in 2006 the population would be 27,030,656 persons. Of these,
11,037,506 would be 19 or below. One can estimate from this that some 360,000
turned new voters were eligble that year to vote, so the total 18 or
below is 11,001,000 approximately. That would say that 16,029,500 would
be eligible to vote IF YOU REGISTERED THEM ALL TO VOTE. The CNE says there will
be 17 million regsitered to vote in the December presidential election.
Efficient no, one million more registered than people avaialable? This is the type of inconsistencies that USB, UCV and
UCAB want to look at.This is the reason why there is no justification for MVR opposing the audit.But they coudl care less about logic, technology and the like.

3.- Or, as seen in Noticiero Digital , there are eight Gonzalez in Venezuela who have no first name, no second last name, but hey, they can vote as seen below as taken straight out of the electoral registry. This is illegal by the way, your name has to be exactly as in your ID. These are the same people who invalidated half a million signatures from the recall petition for simple smudges. Can Mr. Lara explain this curioisty to us? Are they part of the amazing Gonzalez family since they are also from Maracaibo? How many other last names show this? (You can try these at the CNE website www.cne.gov.ve)

The Miami Herald is
reporting that in the draft of the final resolution of the OAS meeting in Dominican Republic, Venezuela indicated that the
Internet was a “valuable contribution” it “lamented” that it could be used to
promote negative stereotypes of individuals and vulnerable groups. I guess they
mean Chavez and his movement and us bloggers in reverse order.

As to
calling the Internet just a “valuable contribution”, this shows what the
revolution thinks of technology, the Internet is a bigger revolution than Chavez’,
but they find the lack of control counter to Chavez’ autocratic style. They
would love to control people like me that tell you the truth and their lies,
but, for now, they simply can’t….Hopefully, this will remain that way.

We will
keep an eye for more information on the details of Venezuela’s position.

The three
leading opposition candidates in the polls Julio Borges, Teodoro Petkoff and
Manuel Rosales (who has yet to announce), announced
today that they will find a way of choosing one of the three as a united opposition
candidate before July 31^st. If they don’t, they will all participate
in the Sumate primary. They will create an independent commission to try to
find this consensus going forward. At the same time, they will integrate all
three campaign commands to create a joint proposal and a “governability” agreement
for the new Government. They said that they do not reject a primary offhand,
but would prefer a mechanism that shows there is indeed unit of purpose in
their goals.

They also
announced that they will not accept any conditions for the December election that
in any way worsens the conditions for the vote used in December 2005. This
means that the use of fingerprint machines is unacceptable. They also asked for
the CNE to consider both proposals to audit the electoral registry.

I believe
this is a positive announcement in the sense that it shows that their conversations
have indeed have been focused in leading to a consensus and unity. I still feel
that primaries would get the people excited and get them out of their doldrums,
which is badly needed at this time. At the same time, it does show a lot of
goodwill and maturity to attempt to reach that difficult decision by a consensual
mechanism, so they can spend their time showing the people what a mess this
country is in.

So Peru
has made its choice. Given the possibility of picking between a leftist, militaristic,
autocratic and nationalistic populist and a leftist, populist, charismatic, incompetent
manager, they chose the latter. In some sense, they chose democracy and
stability over the lack of freedom and instability. Garcia was responsible for
pushing Peru
over the economic brink in the 80’s. He saved his party from oblivion then and
he did it again yesterday. Humala on the
other hand offered an unknown economic path and the shadow of Cha¡vez and
Morales hung over his election.

Both Garcia and Humala have many similarities to Hugo Chávez. Both are
populists who have little idea about economics and both lack a true economic
plan. Where Garcia has Chavez’ charisma and ability to mobilize crowds, Humala
has Chavez’ militaristic-nationalist and autocratic streak. Thus, the two
together would be almost be a Chavez clone, which shows that people like some of
the same features that I find so undesirable.

The main question now is whether Garcia learned anything from his first
Presidency. This will be very important in determining his success. In his
first presidency Garcia appointed a good first team to his Cabinet, who quickly
were replaced by part apparatchik and friends over time. This team was the one
that innovated time and time again on economic policy, leading to the well
known disaster in Peru’s
economy.

Can it be different this time? It is very hard to tell. While Garci­a is
likely to try to be different, there will be lots of pressure from his party
APRA to involve party people in the Government. If Garcia can limit this, he
will have a higher probability of success. In some sense, both Fujimori and Toledo were more
successful, precisely because having no political parties behind them they had
to staff the Government with professionals, which have run ministries and other
offices much more efficiently than ever before. Maybe Garcia will do like
Carlos Andres Perez did in 1989 and do a complete turnaround from his first
presidency.

In terms of the region, Garcia represents a huge counterbalance to
Chavez. Chavez is unlikely to stop picking fights with him, which in turn will
make Garcia more popular with his countrymen. This will put Humala in a tough
position, since it will force him not to participate in the controversies to keep his distance to Chavez, but
at the same time he needs to keep a high profile. Peruvians will also look towards Bolivia to
judge whether they made a mistake or not in leaning towards Garcia. The
performance of Morales will be key to a possible Humala charge in the future.
If Morales’ Government encounters problems, it will reflect badly on Humala, as
long as Garci­a is not doing even worse.

For now, Peruvians made a choice between a rock and a hard place.
Hopefully Garcia will do what is best, will surround himself with competent
people and push his country forward both economically and socially. That is all
we can hope for now.

With 77% of the vote counted, ONPE, the Peruvian Electoral Board is saying that Allan Garcia is leading Ollanta Humala by 55.48% to 44.58% according to one of my favorite Peruvian bloggers Inka. You have to love bloggers, Inka gave us the story before the conventional news sources!

I was away at a company training course outisde Caracas, at a beautiful place with no Internet connection, this weekend and just as I was about to post this Editorial from the Washington Post in its entirety, Pedro sends its text, indicating I had the right idea. It speaks for itself:

A Latin Backlash from the Washington Post

Hugo Chavez has managed to replace George W. Bush as the imperialist specter.

For years Hugo Chavez’s steady dismantlement of Venezuela’s democracy and
his embrace of dictators and terrorists around the world — from Fidel
Castro to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — prompted next to no reaction from
Latin America’s democratic governments. The silence was shameful,
partly because Venezuela’s former leaders fought for human rights in
countries such as Chile, Peru and Argentina during the 1980s and ’90s,
but also because the quiet was in part purchased by Mr. Chavez, who
lavished subsidized oil and lucrative trade deals on governments around
the region.

Now at last, Mr. Chavez is the object of a growing
backlash from leaders around Latin America — from Brazil, Peru,
Colombia, Mexico and Nicaragua, among other countries. In part, the
politicians are responding to foolish overreaching by Mr. Chavez, who
has been busy trying to turn Bolivia into a satellite state while
suggesting he has similar plans for much of the rest of the continent.
Latin Americans don’t like imperialism, whether it comes from
Washington or Caracas. And even leftist leaders, like those who rule in
Brazil and elsewhere in South America, find it hard to imagine
themselves prospering in a Venezuela-led economic bloc that includes
Cuba but shuns the United States.

The other reason Latins have
found their anti-Chavez tongues is delightfully pragmatic: It’s a
proven vote-getter. Elections are taking place or are on the way in a
host of Central and South American countries — and politicians in most
of them are finding that linking their opponents to Venezuela’s
demagogue works wonders. The biggest beneficiary may be Peru’s Alan
Garcia, who is the front-runner in Sunday’s presidential election
runoff. Mr. Garcia is himself a leftist populist who two decades ago
presided over one of the most disastrously incompetent governments in
Peruvian history. But his opponent, a former military coup-plotter
named Ollanta Humala, has been endorsed by Mr. Chavez, and Mr. Garcia
has focused his campaign on that point, saying only he can prevent Peru
from becoming “a colony of Venezuela.” It’s a logical strategy: Mr.
Chavez’s approval rating in Peru is 17 percent.<!–
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In Mexico,\ncommentators concluded several months ago that the poll lead of leftist\nAndres Manuel Lopez Obrador in July\’s presidential election could not\nbe overcome. But that was before Mr. Lopez Obrador\’s right-wing\nchallenger, Felipe Calderon, began running television advertisements\nconnecting Mr. Chavez to his opponent; the polls now show that Mr.\nCalderon has taken the lead. In neighboring Nicaragua, Sandinista\nleader and presidential candidate Daniel Ortega is also suffering from\nMr. Chavez\’s poisoned kiss.

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The Bush administration, which has\nhaplessly allowed Mr. Chavez to exploit the U.S. president as a\npolitical foil for years, has hit on just the right response as it has\nwatched Peruvians and Mexicans turn the tables on the Venezuelan: It\nhas kept quiet. The sight of Latin Americans rising up in defense of\ndemocratic values, and against the attempt of a would-be regional\nhegemonist to subvert them, is inspiring — and it requires nothing\nfrom Washington save discreet applause.

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