The Devil's Excrement

Trick Number 1:

Yesterday Governor of Yaracuy Lapi claimed one of the great achievements of the negotiations with the CNE, besides having the results be printed first (yeah!, yeah!), was the fact that the position of Coordinator for each voting center had been eliminated. Well, this achievement lasted less than twenty four hours with these statements from CNE alternate Director Carlos Castillo:

“Despite the need to giving backing to a significant portion of Venezuelans, there exist conditions that the CNE in an incomprehensible manner refuses to modify, as an example, that of the coordinators. Apparently, they were eliminated, but what it did was to change their name, these coordinators are all of the political commissars for officialdom”

Adding:

”the CNE belongs to all Venezuelans, it can not continue being the executive arm of the policies of the official sector”

Trick Number 2:

The Venezuelan Supreme Court rejected the injunction against the Electoral Registry introduced by the Primero Justicia party. The reason was not illegality, but: “it should be an ordinary request and not an injunction’. Oh, I see when the law is right; you invoke procedural matters, because they know that the current registry is simply illegal. Oh Well! What else is new?

Trick Number Three:

The CNE generated the 118 random machine that will be audited in the upcoming regional elections, making us all wonder about how the number of audited machines tends to zero with time. 199 in the “hot” audit on August 15^th. 150 in the ”live” audit August 18^th. and now 118 in the “hot audit” on the 31^st. We are talking none in the Presidential election in 2006!

Trick Number Four:

CNE Director Jorge Rodriguez meekly “insisted” that President Chavez “violated” the regulations for electoral advertising last Sunday “insisted” he should follow them.

“It is not possible for the President to violate the regulations like he did on Sunday’

Come on Jorge! Relax! You violate the law weekly, what is an electoral regulation for the almighty Chavez? You never stopped him before, you will not stop him now! Stop the grandstanding, he is your idol!

Trick Number 1:

Yesterday Governor of Yaracuy Lapi claimed one of the great achievements of the negotiations with the CNE, besides having the results be printed first (yeah!, yeah!), was the fact that the position of Coordinator for each voting center had been eliminated. Well, this achievement lasted less than twenty four hours with these statements from CNE alternate Director Carlos Castillo:

“Despite the need to giving backing to a significant portion of Venezuelans, there exist conditions that the CNE in an incomprehensible manner refuses to modify, as an example, that of the coordinators. Apparently, they were eliminated, but what it did was to change their name, these coordinators are all of the political commissars for officialdom”

Adding:

”the CNE belongs to all Venezuelans, it can not continue being the executive arm of the policies of the official sector”

Trick Number 2:

The Venezuelan Supreme Court rejected the injunction against the Electoral Registry introduced by the Primero Justicia party. The reason was not illegality, but: “it should be an ordinary request and not an injunction’. Oh, I see when the law is right; you invoke procedural matters, because they know that the current registry is simply illegal. Oh Well! What else is new?

Trick Number Three:

The CNE generated the 118 random machine that will be audited in the upcoming regional elections, making us all wonder about how the number of audited machines tends to zero with time. 199 in the “hot” audit on August 15^th. 150 in the ”live” audit August 18^th. and now 118 in the “hot audit” on the 31^st. We are talking none in the Presidential election in 2006!

Trick Number Four:

CNE Director Jorge Rodriguez meekly “insisted” that President Chavez “violated” the regulations for electoral advertising last Sunday “insisted” he should follow them.

“It is not possible for the President to violate the regulations like he did on Sunday’

Come on Jorge! Relax! You violate the law weekly, what is an electoral regulation for the almighty Chavez? You never stopped him before, you will not stop him now! Stop the grandstanding, he is your idol!

Trick Number 1:

Yesterday Governor of Yaracuy Lapi claimed one of the great achievements of the negotiations with the CNE, besides having the results be printed first (yeah!, yeah!), was the fact that the position of Coordinator for each voting center had been eliminated. Well, this achievement lasted less than twenty four hours with these statements from CNE alternate Director Carlos Castillo:

“Despite the need to giving backing to a significant portion of Venezuelans, there exist conditions that the CNE in an incomprehensible manner refuses to modify, as an example, that of the coordinators. Apparently, they were eliminated, but what it did was to change their name, these coordinators are all of the political commissars for officialdom”

Adding:

”the CNE belongs to all Venezuelans, it can not continue being the executive arm of the policies of the official sector”

Trick Number 2:

The Venezuelan Supreme Court rejected the injunction against the Electoral Registry introduced by the Primero Justicia party. The reason was not illegality, but: “it should be an ordinary request and not an injunction’. Oh, I see when the law is right; you invoke procedural matters, because they know that the current registry is simply illegal. Oh Well! What else is new?

Trick Number Three:

The CNE generated the 118 random machine that will be audited in the upcoming regional elections, making us all wonder about how the number of audited machines tends to zero with time. 199 in the “hot” audit on August 15^th. 150 in the ”live” audit August 18^th. and now 118 in the “hot audit” on the 31^st. We are talking none in the Presidential election in 2006!

Trick Number Four:

CNE Director Jorge Rodriguez meekly “insisted” that President Chavez “violated” the regulations for electoral advertising last Sunday “insisted” he should follow them.

“It is not possible for the President to violate the regulations like he did on Sunday’

Come on Jorge! Relax! You violate the law weekly, what is an electoral regulation for the almighty Chavez? You never stopped him before, you will not stop him now! Stop the grandstanding, he is your idol!

The Cynical Electoral Board continues its magic act, this time telling the Governor of Yaracuy Lapi, that not to worry, that this time around the transmission will not take place until after the votes have been added. Of course, there is no mention of how this will be monitored or guaranteed, maybe in a month I will be showing again plots of data transmitted before the votes were added arguing that there was fraud and somebody will make a comment that this was not data but handshaking between machines. As somebody said (Yogi Berra?,Bush?) this is Déjà vu all over again!

But let’s see how our well meaning and fair authorities have been behaving in the last few weeks to see whether something may be up or not:

-The CNE has promised (Notice the difference, it has promised, not approved!) that one box will be audited at each center. Now, if you are trying to be transparent and fair, what is the difference between opening one or three boxes? The answer is simply none. So, why the reluctance to count all of the ballots? Think about it, all of those statistical arguments that worked so well in the recall vote will be irrelevant for hundreds of local races where “coincidentally” the audited box will favor the opposition by “only” a one or two percent difference over the other two or three boxes. But add it up, and tampering with two will be as effective as tampering with all of them.

It takes maybe fifteen to twenty minutes to add up all of the ballots in a box. This can be done in parallel by the witnesses and people who show up. Why object it? We have never heard any argument for this absurdity. This from the man that when it came time to test the signatures by the opposition actually said that perfectly valid statistical tests could not be trusted.

-It used to be in the “old days” right after the Supreme Court named the new Electoral Board, that there was supposed to be a two to two balance with “oil digger” Carrasquero the deciding vote if things got too partisan. In time, Carrasquero showed his true colors and it was a clear pro-Chavze majority of three to two. About a month ago, CNE Director Zamora resigned, which should have been no problem since he had an alternate named by the Supreme Court. Mysteriously, the alternate has never been invited to a Board meeting and has been given no official responsibilities, just when a big vote is coming up. Do I hear fair play?

-The Electoral Hall of the Supreme Court, now purified and in the hands of the revolution, “Loaizad” the injunction against the Electoral Registry by arguing that those asking for the injunction had not provided any proof of illegalities in the registry, but had simply provided lists of voters of their own without any addresses or any other data required to register.

Of course, lawyers for the CNE diligently argued against the granting of the injunction using words like “preclusive”, “prima facie” and “illusiority” , some of which are not even in any legal dictionary, least of all in that of the Spanish language but sound good when trying to make a case. Curiously, to this blogger turned amateur lawyer, the CNE did not provide the equivalent list of voters with addresses or other data that would have Perry Masoned the case out of the Electoral Hall in a flash. But what do I know.

-But no other mystery is larger than the functionality of the Cynical Electoral Board than the fact that there have been few and precious meetings of its Board in the last three weeks. Meeting after meeting is cancelled, despite the fact that they could approve the agenda in second by a three to one vote. Nothing is discussed. In the best style of Saddam Hussein’s Electoral Board, everything is decided in informal meeting in the halls of the Electoral Board, where CNE Director Rodriguez tells Carrasquero and Battaglini what the messages in the t-motions (RIMM’s in the US) from the Presidential Palace are telling them to do.

Thus, despite charge to the contrary, the CNE is not run like the totalitarian Government but by the totalitarian Government itself. But maybe I am just caught in the “illusiority” of the moment.

-But some believe there is still hope as more evidence was handed in to the Constitutional Hall of the Supreme Court asking to postpone the regional elections. That same Hall who got rid of the Justice that declared the signatures valid. The same one that said the Electoral Hall was not in charge of Electoral decisions. The same one that delivered the illustrious nose picking Carrasquero to preside over our electoral processes. The same one that failed to defend the rights of those that signed the petition to recall Hugo Chavez. The same one that has failed to look into the fraud on August 15^th. The President of which promised Linda Loaiza a “quick” solution to her case. The same one that declared the session of the National Assembly outside Congress and without a quorum valid.

Oh yeah, there is hope, I can really see it coming this time on the side of justice…it is indeed electoral Déjà vu all over again!

Good articles today in the paper by people who know what they are talking about:

-Luis Pedro España in El Universal speaks about his perceptions about the poor. España is a Professor from the Catholic University in Caracas who ahs devoted his whole life to study the problem of poverty. He is a co-author of a recent book called “Detras de la Pobreza” (Behind poverty) about what Venezuelans think and how they act about poverty. He actually brings up something I discussed a few days ago in the comments, how half the budgets of Universities goes to pension payments. He argues that the early and easy pension is a benefit, since Universities pay so little they have to give you benefits like that. I just don’t buy that, it simply makes no sense to me.

España thinks that the days of social peace in venezuela are finite, making the analogy with the iron country in which people used to say “They fake that they are paying us, we fake that we are working” España thinks in a populist regime it is not the poor that make money. He thinks that it is those that are not productive who have the most to lose from a modern country.

-Heinz Sonntag in El Nacional (by subscription). The former Director of CENDES lucidly speaks about what has happened and may happen in the future. He thinks that a victory by the Chavismo in the regional elections will simply bring out more the contradictions between the different groups of that movement. He says Chavez has woken up the conscience of the poor, but has done nothing for them. He says Chavez is not a leftist unless being messianic and militaristic is being a leftist. He suggests that the European left likes Chavez because he is anti-American, without understanding that he is not leftists.

-Domingo Maza Zavala in El Universal is quite tough on the Government. From asking for accountability on the fund spent on the “Misiones”, to saying there is little coordination on economic matters, the Central Bank Director and “father” of modern and leftists economics is quite blunt as usual. From calling the Central bank’s policy “too risky”, to saying that using the bank’s earnings from foreign exchange is dangerous, to pensions and the lack of investments, Maza Zavala is a must read for those interested in Venezuelan economic affairs.

It was only eight months ago that he CNE Directors invented the concept of “reasonable doubt” in reference to the same calligraphy signatures in the petition to request a recall referendum against Hugo Chavez’ Mandate. Reasonable doubt for some 1.4 million signatures gathered in plain daylight in a process organized and coordinated by the CNE itself. Reasonable doubt for signatures that were gathered under the careful watch of international observers, all of which saw how attendants wrote down the data for each person, as instructed in the regulations, and then the person signed and stamped his/her fingerprint.

Despite this, the CNE stuck to its reasonable doubt argument and thus began a long path for the opposition to prove the veracity of those signatures in the so called “Reparo” process. In the middle, we saw every manipulation possible, when the Electoral Hall of the Supreme Court ruled the signatures valid; the Constitutional Hall actually said that it could not rule on it making everyone wonder what it was good for if it could not rule on Electoral matters. The President of the Electoral Hall was not only retired because of his decision, but the immoral members of the so called “Moral Powers” asked that he be tried for objecting to the reasonable doubt charges and ruling all of the signatures valid. The opposition was forced to go through the long process and more than 700,000 people did show up to say they had signed, in some sense proving the absurdity of the charges of reasonable doubt.

The opposition and even CNE Director Sobella Mejias are now attempting to make the same charges with respect to the Electoral Registry, except that they have a much stronger case. To begin with, there is the matter of the Electoral Law that simply sates that the Electoral registry can only be changed up to ninety days before an election. This alone would imply that an election could take place until early December.

But then there is the very reasonable doubt about the registry itself. Opposition Mayors have identified thousands of registered voters with no address or unknown within their municipality, taking the case from reasonable doubt to absolute certainty. The best known and “controlled” case is the municipality of Chacao in the East of Caracas, where over 22 thousand votes have no known address and are simply not in any records of a municipality that provides free medical care to its inhabitants as long as you are registered with it. Thus, this 22 thousand “phantoms” who the CNE must be poor do not even register to obtain medical care.

I had heard on TV interviews with the Mayor of Mara in Zulia State, but had not seen his case printed anywhere, but the numbers are simply staggering. In 2000, Mara had 57,031 registered voters. It now has 78,698 an increase of 21,556 (37.99%). Of these 16,114 do not have an address and 3,825 were recently given the Venezuelan nationality. The Mayor has found that many of those registered in his district actually live in the other side of the border in Colombia. Since the CNE has done nothing about these irregularities, what he is doing is to simply go and campaign in Colombia!

What is remarkable is that this is not longer the case of possible violations of the law, but these are definitely and certain violations of the law, which states that you have to provide your address in order to vote. Actually, the reason for requiring an address is simple: It is done in part to protect the candidates also, so that voters do not try to vote in other municipalities where they don’t live for political reasons!

For CNE Director Mejias, there is certainly reasonable doubt and lack of transparency in the Electoral Registry, more so, when she is a member of the Committee (She presides it!) that is supposed to oversee the Registry and she says there has been no meeting in the last month and the Registry is just as it was before challenges to it were brought forward. Not even the involuntary migrations have been processed.

Thus, any hope of any action on this certainty of irregularities is now in the hands of the Constitutional Hall of the Venezuelan Supreme Court. Sumate and Primero Justicia are basing their hopes on such a possibility. But it is hard to believe that a Court that acted in such partisan fashion in the Reparos could actually stop this election in order to defend the law. This is simply part of the process and who cares about what the law says. Even worse, despite verbal agreements between the opposition and CNE Director Jorge Rodriguez on audits and the transmission of data after counting the votes on October 31^st., the electoral material distributed nationwide this week says exactly the opposite of what was agreed.

Clearly, the certainty of fraud is in the air, everything is all set for next Sunday; I have no hope that the Court will say much. I have no hope that all of the fraudulent tactics of the recall vote will not be repeated next Sunday. Agreements will be broken, laws will be violated, and results will be fixed. Long live the revolution!

For all of these reasons, the blogger has decided to go away on October 31^st. I will report a little bit, but it certainly will not be the hands on reporting of August 15^th. I just can’t go through this farce again.

It was only eight months ago that he CNE Directors invented the concept of “reasonable doubt” in reference to the same calligraphy signatures in the petition to request a recall referendum against Hugo Chavez’ Mandate. Reasonable doubt for some 1.4 million signatures gathered in plain daylight in a process organized and coordinated by the CNE itself. Reasonable doubt for signatures that were gathered under the careful watch of international observers, all of which saw how attendants wrote down the data for each person, as instructed in the regulations, and then the person signed and stamped his/her fingerprint.

Despite this, the CNE stuck to its reasonable doubt argument and thus began a long path for the opposition to prove the veracity of those signatures in the so called “Reparo” process. In the middle, we saw every manipulation possible, when the Electoral Hall of the Supreme Court ruled the signatures valid; the Constitutional Hall actually said that it could not rule on it making everyone wonder what it was good for if it could not rule on Electoral matters. The President of the Electoral Hall was not only retired because of his decision, but the immoral members of the so called “Moral Powers” asked that he be tried for objecting to the reasonable doubt charges and ruling all of the signatures valid. The opposition was forced to go through the long process and more than 700,000 people did show up to say they had signed, in some sense proving the absurdity of the charges of reasonable doubt.

The opposition and even CNE Director Sobella Mejias are now attempting to make the same charges with respect to the Electoral Registry, except that they have a much stronger case. To begin with, there is the matter of the Electoral Law that simply sates that the Electoral registry can only be changed up to ninety days before an election. This alone would imply that an election could take place until early December.

But then there is the very reasonable doubt about the registry itself. Opposition Mayors have identified thousands of registered voters with no address or unknown within their municipality, taking the case from reasonable doubt to absolute certainty. The best known and “controlled” case is the municipality of Chacao in the East of Caracas, where over 22 thousand votes have no known address and are simply not in any records of a municipality that provides free medical care to its inhabitants as long as you are registered with it. Thus, this 22 thousand “phantoms” who the CNE must be poor do not even register to obtain medical care.

I had heard on TV interviews with the Mayor of Mara in Zulia State, but had not seen his case printed anywhere, but the numbers are simply staggering. In 2000, Mara had 57,031 registered voters. It now has 78,698 an increase of 21,556 (37.99%). Of these 16,114 do not have an address and 3,825 were recently given the Venezuelan nationality. The Mayor has found that many of those registered in his district actually live in the other side of the border in Colombia. Since the CNE has done nothing about these irregularities, what he is doing is to simply go and campaign in Colombia!

What is remarkable is that this is not longer the case of possible violations of the law, but these are definitely and certain violations of the law, which states that you have to provide your address in order to vote. Actually, the reason for requiring an address is simple: It is done in part to protect the candidates also, so that voters do not try to vote in other municipalities where they don’t live for political reasons!

For CNE Director Mejias, there is certainly reasonable doubt and lack of transparency in the Electoral Registry, more so, when she is a member of the Committee (She presides it!) that is supposed to oversee the Registry and she says there has been no meeting in the last month and the Registry is just as it was before challenges to it were brought forward. Not even the involuntary migrations have been processed.

Thus, any hope of any action on this certainty of irregularities is now in the hands of the Constitutional Hall of the Venezuelan Supreme Court. Sumate and Primero Justicia are basing their hopes on such a possibility. But it is hard to believe that a Court that acted in such partisan fashion in the Reparos could actually stop this election in order to defend the law. This is simply part of the process and who cares about what the law says. Even worse, despite verbal agreements between the opposition and CNE Director Jorge Rodriguez on audits and the transmission of data after counting the votes on October 31^st., the electoral material distributed nationwide this week says exactly the opposite of what was agreed.

Clearly, the certainty of fraud is in the air, everything is all set for next Sunday; I have no hope that the Court will say much. I have no hope that all of the fraudulent tactics of the recall vote will not be repeated next Sunday. Agreements will be broken, laws will be violated, and results will be fixed. Long live the revolution!

For all of these reasons, the blogger has decided to go away on October 31^st. I will report a little bit, but it certainly will not be the hands on reporting of August 15^th. I just can’t go through this farce again.

It was only eight months ago that he CNE Directors invented the concept of “reasonable doubt” in reference to the same calligraphy signatures in the petition to request a recall referendum against Hugo Chavez’ Mandate. Reasonable doubt for some 1.4 million signatures gathered in plain daylight in a process organized and coordinated by the CNE itself. Reasonable doubt for signatures that were gathered under the careful watch of international observers, all of which saw how attendants wrote down the data for each person, as instructed in the regulations, and then the person signed and stamped his/her fingerprint.

Despite this, the CNE stuck to its reasonable doubt argument and thus began a long path for the opposition to prove the veracity of those signatures in the so called “Reparo” process. In the middle, we saw every manipulation possible, when the Electoral Hall of the Supreme Court ruled the signatures valid; the Constitutional Hall actually said that it could not rule on it making everyone wonder what it was good for if it could not rule on Electoral matters. The President of the Electoral Hall was not only retired because of his decision, but the immoral members of the so called “Moral Powers” asked that he be tried for objecting to the reasonable doubt charges and ruling all of the signatures valid. The opposition was forced to go through the long process and more than 700,000 people did show up to say they had signed, in some sense proving the absurdity of the charges of reasonable doubt.

The opposition and even CNE Director Sobella Mejias are now attempting to make the same charges with respect to the Electoral Registry, except that they have a much stronger case. To begin with, there is the matter of the Electoral Law that simply sates that the Electoral registry can only be changed up to ninety days before an election. This alone would imply that an election could take place until early December.

But then there is the very reasonable doubt about the registry itself. Opposition Mayors have identified thousands of registered voters with no address or unknown within their municipality, taking the case from reasonable doubt to absolute certainty. The best known and “controlled” case is the municipality of Chacao in the East of Caracas, where over 22 thousand votes have no known address and are simply not in any records of a municipality that provides free medical care to its inhabitants as long as you are registered with it. Thus, this 22 thousand “phantoms” who the CNE must be poor do not even register to obtain medical care.

I had heard on TV interviews with the Mayor of Mara in Zulia State, but had not seen his case printed anywhere, but the numbers are simply staggering. In 2000, Mara had 57,031 registered voters. It now has 78,698 an increase of 21,556 (37.99%). Of these 16,114 do not have an address and 3,825 were recently given the Venezuelan nationality. The Mayor has found that many of those registered in his district actually live in the other side of the border in Colombia. Since the CNE has done nothing about these irregularities, what he is doing is to simply go and campaign in Colombia!

What is remarkable is that this is not longer the case of possible violations of the law, but these are definitely and certain violations of the law, which states that you have to provide your address in order to vote. Actually, the reason for requiring an address is simple: It is done in part to protect the candidates also, so that voters do not try to vote in other municipalities where they don’t live for political reasons!

For CNE Director Mejias, there is certainly reasonable doubt and lack of transparency in the Electoral Registry, more so, when she is a member of the Committee (She presides it!) that is supposed to oversee the Registry and she says there has been no meeting in the last month and the Registry is just as it was before challenges to it were brought forward. Not even the involuntary migrations have been processed.

Thus, any hope of any action on this certainty of irregularities is now in the hands of the Constitutional Hall of the Venezuelan Supreme Court. Sumate and Primero Justicia are basing their hopes on such a possibility. But it is hard to believe that a Court that acted in such partisan fashion in the Reparos could actually stop this election in order to defend the law. This is simply part of the process and who cares about what the law says. Even worse, despite verbal agreements between the opposition and CNE Director Jorge Rodriguez on audits and the transmission of data after counting the votes on October 31^st., the electoral material distributed nationwide this week says exactly the opposite of what was agreed.

Clearly, the certainty of fraud is in the air, everything is all set for next Sunday; I have no hope that the Court will say much. I have no hope that all of the fraudulent tactics of the recall vote will not be repeated next Sunday. Agreements will be broken, laws will be violated, and results will be fixed. Long live the revolution!

For all of these reasons, the blogger has decided to go away on October 31^st. I will report a little bit, but it certainly will not be the hands on reporting of August 15^th. I just can’t go through this farce again.

CNE President Carrasquero