The Devil's Excrement

Psychologist Axel Capriles says in today’s El Nacional that Venezuelans have no democratic culture and that forty years ago a political elite “invented” Venezuelan democracy when it defeated the military dictatorship but that there was no real conscience of democracy.

Well, I don’t know if Capriles’ generalization is correct but it is truly amazing to me that neither side, Government or opposition, is really trying to even follow what the Venezuelan Constitution so clearly states in Article 67, that candidates have to be selected by the members of political parties, implying that a primary needs to be held for all positions. But primaries are rare in Venezuela and until last week’s Tachira primary, none had been held since 1993 by any political party.

The Tachira primary was interesting and now there seems to be a new form of “Chavismo” that is fielding candidates independent of Chavez’ choices. Basically, these are pro-Chávez groups that are not supportive of MVR’s Candidates or the way they were chosen. This does not mean that they followed the Constitution either, while many claim to have chosen their candidates “from the bottom”, the mechanisms that were used are not transparent or clear, but they seem to be fighting for much needed democracy.

These parallel pro-Chávez groups have fielded more than 35 candidacies for Governor in 16 states and have their own candidates in about half the cities that are electing Mayors at the end of October. To eliminate confusion, the campaign command of Chávez’ MVR will distribute nationwide a list of Chavez approved candidates so as not to leave any doubt among its supporters of who the approved candidates are.

The opposition faces the same confusion and problem, with AD being the party that has apparently blocked the possibility for at least fielding alliances. The solution is somewhat half-assed, rather than using democracy, they are using polls to determine which candidate has more popularity, a remarkable approach in a country where most people don’t believe in polls.

To me the opposition blew an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that it had significant different beliefs than the Chavistas, but it failed to grab the moment, which as Capriles says is evidence of the absence of democratic culture. So, they have no different beliefs there when you come down to it.

Interestingly, the only party that has made a very concrete, democratic and selfish proposal has been Primero Justicia, which has offered to renounce to all of its candidacies in the interest of unity as long as a reasonably open proposal is made to select single candidates to all positions.

In the end, it comes down not only to a problem of whether we have a democratic culture or not, but also of the lack of independent powers and checks and balances. If the Attorney general, People’s Ombudsman or the Supreme Court suggested that those candidates not selected by democratic means according to the Constitution would be barred from running, then everything would be quite different. But then again, if there were independent powers, everything would be so different anyway.

Psychologist Axel Capriles says in today’s El Nacional that Venezuelans have no democratic culture and that forty years ago a political elite “invented” Venezuelan democracy when it defeated the military dictatorship but that there was no real conscience of democracy.

Well, I don’t know if Capriles’ generalization is correct but it is truly amazing to me that neither side, Government or opposition, is really trying to even follow what the Venezuelan Constitution so clearly states in Article 67, that candidates have to be selected by the members of political parties, implying that a primary needs to be held for all positions. But primaries are rare in Venezuela and until last week’s Tachira primary, none had been held since 1993 by any political party.

The Tachira primary was interesting and now there seems to be a new form of “Chavismo” that is fielding candidates independent of Chavez’ choices. Basically, these are pro-Chávez groups that are not supportive of MVR’s Candidates or the way they were chosen. This does not mean that they followed the Constitution either, while many claim to have chosen their candidates “from the bottom”, the mechanisms that were used are not transparent or clear, but they seem to be fighting for much needed democracy.

These parallel pro-Chávez groups have fielded more than 35 candidacies for Governor in 16 states and have their own candidates in about half the cities that are electing Mayors at the end of October. To eliminate confusion, the campaign command of Chávez’ MVR will distribute nationwide a list of Chavez approved candidates so as not to leave any doubt among its supporters of who the approved candidates are.

The opposition faces the same confusion and problem, with AD being the party that has apparently blocked the possibility for at least fielding alliances. The solution is somewhat half-assed, rather than using democracy, they are using polls to determine which candidate has more popularity, a remarkable approach in a country where most people don’t believe in polls.

To me the opposition blew an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that it had significant different beliefs than the Chavistas, but it failed to grab the moment, which as Capriles says is evidence of the absence of democratic culture. So, they have no different beliefs there when you come down to it.

Interestingly, the only party that has made a very concrete, democratic and selfish proposal has been Primero Justicia, which has offered to renounce to all of its candidacies in the interest of unity as long as a reasonably open proposal is made to select single candidates to all positions.

In the end, it comes down not only to a problem of whether we have a democratic culture or not, but also of the lack of independent powers and checks and balances. If the Attorney general, People’s Ombudsman or the Supreme Court suggested that those candidates not selected by democratic means according to the Constitution would be barred from running, then everything would be quite different. But then again, if there were independent powers, everything would be so different anyway.

Psychologist Axel Capriles says in today’s El Nacional that Venezuelans have no democratic culture and that forty years ago a political elite “invented” Venezuelan democracy when it defeated the military dictatorship but that there was no real conscience of democracy.

Well, I don’t know if Capriles’ generalization is correct but it is truly amazing to me that neither side, Government or opposition, is really trying to even follow what the Venezuelan Constitution so clearly states in Article 67, that candidates have to be selected by the members of political parties, implying that a primary needs to be held for all positions. But primaries are rare in Venezuela and until last week’s Tachira primary, none had been held since 1993 by any political party.

The Tachira primary was interesting and now there seems to be a new form of “Chavismo” that is fielding candidates independent of Chavez’ choices. Basically, these are pro-Chávez groups that are not supportive of MVR’s Candidates or the way they were chosen. This does not mean that they followed the Constitution either, while many claim to have chosen their candidates “from the bottom”, the mechanisms that were used are not transparent or clear, but they seem to be fighting for much needed democracy.

These parallel pro-Chávez groups have fielded more than 35 candidacies for Governor in 16 states and have their own candidates in about half the cities that are electing Mayors at the end of October. To eliminate confusion, the campaign command of Chávez’ MVR will distribute nationwide a list of Chavez approved candidates so as not to leave any doubt among its supporters of who the approved candidates are.

The opposition faces the same confusion and problem, with AD being the party that has apparently blocked the possibility for at least fielding alliances. The solution is somewhat half-assed, rather than using democracy, they are using polls to determine which candidate has more popularity, a remarkable approach in a country where most people don’t believe in polls.

To me the opposition blew an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that it had significant different beliefs than the Chavistas, but it failed to grab the moment, which as Capriles says is evidence of the absence of democratic culture. So, they have no different beliefs there when you come down to it.

Interestingly, the only party that has made a very concrete, democratic and selfish proposal has been Primero Justicia, which has offered to renounce to all of its candidacies in the interest of unity as long as a reasonably open proposal is made to select single candidates to all positions.

In the end, it comes down not only to a problem of whether we have a democratic culture or not, but also of the lack of independent powers and checks and balances. If the Attorney general, People’s Ombudsman or the Supreme Court suggested that those candidates not selected by democratic means according to the Constitution would be barred from running, then everything would be quite different. But then again, if there were independent powers, everything would be so different anyway.

In 1993, then AD Presidential candidate Claudio Fermin inserted in his campaign program a proposal to subsidize having all public transportation vehicles convert to natural gas as a way of removing the price of gasoline from being a political issue. Once the change had been completed, then gasoline prices would be raised to international levels and PDVSA would not be subsidizing the gasoline for those that can afford a car in Venezuela, which are not exactly the poor. At the same time, public transportation would use natural gas that is mostly burned in Venezuela and sold cheaply.

Fermin lost the election, Caldera came in as President and two years later was forced to sign an agreement with the IMF after the financial crisis, which imposed the condition that gasoline prices had to be adjusted to the FOB price periodically (I can’t remember whether it was quarterly or every six months). In this manner, every three or six months the price of a liter of gasoline was adjusted slightly and the issue disappeared from Venezuelan politics until Chavez won the election and froze gasoline prices again.

The math is fairly simple, a liter of gasoline costs 4.6 US dollar cents or 20 cents a gallon (3.5 cents and 15.4 cents at the parallel exchange rate). In terms of barrels, a barrel of gasoline goes for around US$ 48 per barrel and costs PDVSA about US$ 6.5 per barrel to produce. Since internal consumption is 240,000 barrels a day of gasoline, according to today’s El Nacional (page A-20), we are talking about a subsidy that costs PDVSA about US$ 9.96 million per day, which turns into US$ 3.6 billion subsidy per year!

I don’t know how many public transportation vehicles there are in Venezuela, but I do know there are about 2.6 million total vehicles. If I assume that one million are for public transportation of any sort, and that the conversion to natural gas costs $1,500 (it used to cost $1,000), then for half of the amount that is being subsidized yearly, the Government could pay the conversion of every single public transportation vehicle to natural gas and eliminate the subsidy. The money thus saved could be used elsewhere.

Now, this would truly be revolutionary, no?

Some encouraging signs are coming out of the CNE. First of all, it has agreed to give the opposition copies of the voting “notebooks” in which people signed that they had voted. This is important because the opposition will be able to check the consistency of the total number of voters in the notebooks versus the final tally of the electronic and manual registries.

The CNE has also agreed to allow the manual counting of up to 10% of all machines. This is an improvement, but I still do not understand what is the rationale for not counting them all. After all, the counting will be done by the volunteers manning the polling stations and it would all be done simultaneously nationwide.

What bothers me is that a precise count will be more important in the upcoming regional election that in the recall vote. There will be races for Mayor that will be decided by a few hundred votes and common sense would suggest that having a manual and electronic count that match would eliminate most sources of controversy. It would seem to me that for the CNE, the winners of the regional races, the opposition and the Government, having transparent and unquestionable results would help reduce the high level of confrontation present in Venezuela. But common sense is rare these days here, reminding me of the saying “common sense may be the least common of all of the senses”

Good discussion in the comments section of the previous post about what exactly are Sumate officials being charged for. Stig cites the correct article of the criminal code:

“Artícle 132.- Anyone that, from within or outside the national territory, conspires to destroy the republican political form that the Nation has been given will be punished with jail from eight to sixteen years.

The same punishment will be incurred by the Venezuelan that requests foreign intervention in the national politics of Venezuela, or requests its participation to alter the peace of the Republic or those that went in front of their officials or by publications made in the foreign press, promoted civil war or defamed the President or injured its diplomatic representative or the consular officials of Venezuela, because of the nature of their functions in the country where the deed was committed”

Clearly, what the prosecutor from the Attorney General’s office wants to argue is that the officers of Sumate “requested foreign intervention in the national politics of Venezuela” by asking the National Endowment for Democracy for funding. This is made quite clear in statements made by the prosecutor in today’s El Universal.

This is of course simply a narrow and vindictive interpretation aimed at getting back at Sumate leaders for what they have done against Chavez by organizing the petitions and establishing the controls that allowed the opposition to get there. The key here will likely be whether funding is or not “intervening in the national politics of Venezuela”.  After all, it was the Sumate people that did the intervention, not the NED.

The amazing thing is that the same article applies to Chavez receiving US$ 1.5 million from Spanish bank BBVA during his 1998 campaign, which was also illegal because he did not report it. But more importantly, NED has also funded a number of pro-Chavez organizations which would be guilty of the same crime.

In fact the application of this article would simply mean that no Venezuelan organization could get foreign funding for any politically related issue, whether its human rights, elections or environmental issues. Local chapters of Greenpeace, Amnesty International and the like would be threatened by this. Even religious groups could be threatened by this, if they get involved in anything that could be considered political and most activities in Venezuela today are so influenced by politics that it could be applied if the Government wanted.

In fact, this blog could be in violation of this article if it is considered to be foreign press and of defaming Chavez.

This is of course trying to make sense of something that can not make any sense whatsoever and is simply a political vendetta by Chavez against Sumate, which reflects the problems of not having independent powers. If the Attorney General were truly independent, the case would have never reached the point it has. In fact, the Attorney General’s office seems to give undue priority to these political cases, ignoring much more serious crimes involving deaths, injury and other human rights violations.

Good discussion in the comments section of the previous post about what exactly are Sumate officials being charged for. Stig cites the correct article of the criminal code:

“Artícle 132.- Anyone that, from within or outside the national territory, conspires to destroy the republican political form that the Nation has been given will be punished with jail from eight to sixteen years.

The same punishment will be incurred by the Venezuelan that requests foreign intervention in the national politics of Venezuela, or requests its participation to alter the peace of the Republic or those that went in front of their officials or by publications made in the foreign press, promoted civil war or defamed the President or injured its diplomatic representative or the consular officials of Venezuela, because of the nature of their functions in the country where the deed was committed”

Clearly, what the prosecutor from the Attorney General’s office wants to argue is that the officers of Sumate “requested foreign intervention in the national politics of Venezuela” by asking the National Endowment for Democracy for funding. This is made quite clear in statements made by the prosecutor in today’s El Universal.

This is of course simply a narrow and vindictive interpretation aimed at getting back at Sumate leaders for what they have done against Chavez by organizing the petitions and establishing the controls that allowed the opposition to get there. The key here will likely be whether funding is or not “intervening in the national politics of Venezuela”.  After all, it was the Sumate people that did the intervention, not the NED.

The amazing thing is that the same article applies to Chavez receiving US$ 1.5 million from Spanish bank BBVA during his 1998 campaign, which was also illegal because he did not report it. But more importantly, NED has also funded a number of pro-Chavez organizations which would be guilty of the same crime.

In fact the application of this article would simply mean that no Venezuelan organization could get foreign funding for any politically related issue, whether its human rights, elections or environmental issues. Local chapters of Greenpeace, Amnesty International and the like would be threatened by this. Even religious groups could be threatened by this, if they get involved in anything that could be considered political and most activities in Venezuela today are so influenced by politics that it could be applied if the Government wanted.

In fact, this blog could be in violation of this article if it is considered to be foreign press and of defaming Chavez.

This is of course trying to make sense of something that can not make any sense whatsoever and is simply a political vendetta by Chavez against Sumate, which reflects the problems of not having independent powers. If the Attorney General were truly independent, the case would have never reached the point it has. In fact, the Attorney General’s office seems to give undue priority to these political cases, ignoring much more serious crimes involving deaths, injury and other human rights violations.