Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela:
Article 297. Jurisdiction over contentious electoral affairs shall be exercised by the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice and the other tribunals determined by laws.
[Original wording: La jurisdicción contencioso electoral será ejercida por la Sala Electoral del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia y los demás tribunales que determine la ley.]
Like anyone cares...
The bicycles are for summer
By Ibsen Martinez, Translated by FT
"Plagues are, in fact, quite common, but it's hard to believe in them when you see them about to strike. There have been in the world as many plagues as wars, and yet, plagues and wars always catch people by surprise. When a war starts, people say 'this can't last, it's too stupid.' And, without a doubt, war is obviously too stupid, but that doesn't keep it from lasting. Stupidity always insists; you would realize that if you weren't always thinking of yourself. Our countrymen, in this respect, were like everyone else. They were humanity. They didn't believe in plagues.
"The plague is not made on a human scale, and therefore men always say that the plague is unreal, a bad dream that must pass.
"But it doesn't always pass, and from one bad dream to the next, it's the men who pass, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken precautions.
"Our countrymen were no more guilty than others; they forgot their humility, that's all. They thought everything was possible for them, which meant, as a matter of course, that all plagues were impossible.
"And how could they have thought of the plague, which suppresses the future, their movements and their discussions? They thought themselves free and no one could be free so long as there were plagues."
On this Saturday, I want to call the reader's attention to a disquieting notion that Camus slides in front of us: that plagues and wars always catch people unaware. Especially civil wars, I'd add.
It bears stopping to reflect on Camus' words, right now, in the wake of a well justified protest work stoppage [Ibsen is referring to the one-day National Strike in October 2002] that some - very few, but very powerful - people would like to twist and stretch until turning it into the pretext for military intervention.
Camus, as is well-known, wasn't precisely the contemplative type, much less a coward: with daring and intelligence, he did for the French resistence what very few of his own intellectual establishment did during the nazi occupation. So Camus knew what he was talking about when he said that the first reflex you have towards the absurdity that war engenders is to tell yourself that "this can't last, it's too stupid."
"This can't last: it's too stupid," says the father in "The bicycles are for the summer," the acclaimed Spanish film by Jaime Chavarri, based on a play by the great Fernando Fernán Gómez, to the whole family gathered round the dinner table, one evening in July 1936, commenting on the news that had just come over the radio that afternoon: in a remote overseas garrisons an obscure colonel named Francisco Franco had led an uprising against the Spanish Republic.
The head of the family shrugs his shoulders and, next to him, all the characters keep on living their petty bourgeois Madrid lives, neither too rich nor too poor, neither conservative nor leftist enough to feel that what had just started could have anything to do with them, much less that any of its consequences might reach them.
But things don't turn out the way they'd imagined - "how could they have thought of the pest, which suppresses the future, their movements and their discussions? They thought themselves free and no one could be free so long as there were plagues" - and the movie ends when only the viewer knows that there will be no other summer with bicycles because that "which couldn't last, because it was too stupid" has become a frightful war that in three indelible years would leave a million dead and one of the most abhorrent and ignominious dictatorships of the last century.
It just happens that both sides made the same mistake: underestimating the other. The fascists thought it would be enough to carry off a military coup, the republican government calculated that it could put the coup down easily.
It's taken almost sixty years for the philosopher Julián Marías - the father of Javier, the novelist - to come to grips with the decisive event for three generations of Spaniards. He does it in Ser Español (To Be Spanish) a book that should be required reading for all - chavista or not - who aspire to act constructively in Venezuela's XXI century politics.
They would encounter Marías account of how it was possible to reach war, and see that, to our discomfort, the ultimate cause of the catastrophe was not "the disagreements, or the confrontations, not even the struggle, but rather the will to not get along, the determination to see the 'other' as unacceptable, intolerable, unbearable."
It's inevitable to think of today's Venezuela when Marías carefully recreates before our eyes the mechanism whereby "groups were formed that would enter into the category of the mutually irreconcileable." Or when he points out how that diabolical will to not get along brought about "the successive entry of parts of the social body into what one might call automatic opposition."
Slowly at first, but later on incredibly fast, the entire material and social life of Spain caved in to the primacy of the political, "such that every other aspect was obscured: the only thing you needed to know about a man, a woman, a book, a company, a proposal, was whether it was from 'the right' or 'the left' and your reaction was automatic. Politics eclipsed every other consideration."
These burning pages, written by a Spaniard on his own history, dissect something that many people suppose cannot happen in Venezuela "because it's too stupid." What's interesting - and alarming - is that almost every paragraph seems to refer to the current political scene in Venezuela.
The similarities are laid bare when Marías discusses the way the intellectual life and the social production of meaning in Spain went up in smoke, in what he describes as "a collective retreat from intelligence, a frightful narrowing of the mind by way of simplification: the infinite variety of reality was, for many, reduced to mere stencils or labels, designed to unleash automatic reflexes, elementary, unnuanced reflexes. This led to a tendency towards abstraction, dehumanization, a necessary condition to generalized violence. And laziness, especially, when it came to thinking, to looking for intelligent solutions to problems; to imagine the others, to imagine their point of view, to understand their reasons, their fears. And also to carry out with continuity the acts needed to solve or abate those problems, to put in place an attractive alternative. Magic was easier, verbal solutions that do away with thought.
"The war was a consequence of frivolity. This seems to me the key word. Spanish politicians, almost without exception, most of the church, a large number of those who thought of themselves as 'intellectuals' (and, of course, of the journalists), most of the economically powerful (bankers, businessmen, large landholders), trade union leaders, gave themselves over to playing with the gravest of matters without the least sense of responsibility, without imagining the consequences of what they did, said, or failed to say.
I was urged to read Ser Español by a friend who had found in it the same parallels with our current situation that I comment on today. When I closed it, I realized that if we went and asked people like Hugo Chávez, or Carlos Ortega, or Diosdado Cabello or Andrés Velásquez, or Carlos Fernández, or Willian Lara or Cecilia Sosa or Iris Varela or Marta Colomina if they want a Civil War in Venezuela they would surely answer that of course not, heaven forbid! who would wish a thing like that?
But one can only consider with infinite sadness the clear-eyed wisdom of Julián Marías, poured into words that read as though composed for us: "They didn't want a civil war, but they wanted what turned out to be a civil war: A) Dividing the country in two bands. B) Identifying the 'other' with evil. C) Not taking them into account, not even as a real danger or an efficient adversary. D) To eliminate them, get them out of the way (politically; physically if necessary.)"
And then: "Stupidity always insists. You would realize that if you weren't always thinking of yourself." Will we Venezuelans know how to prove Camus wrong, just once? There may be less than a week to go to decide.
Man is Ibsen hard to translate...
If you're still up for it, the next step is documenting each of the lies: going through the search engines to put a date and a quote to as many of them as we can. I can't possibly do that part by myself, but if you want to give a hand...
Mar 11th 2004 | CARACAS
From The Economist print edition
How does Venezuela's increasingly authoritarian president get away with it?
EVEN before the election of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela was in trouble. But in the five years since he became president, Mr Chávez has steered his country into the abyss. The economy is disintegrating; the opposition is trying to oust him through a California-style recall referendum; other leaders revile him. Yet Mr Chávez still looks safe in his job. Why?
In part, because of some old-fashioned Latin American strong-arming. The opposition groups allege that around a dozen people have been killed in the last two weeks, during street protests at the scuppering of their referendum campaign. Venezuela's electoral commission, the CNE, controversially disqualified over 1m signatures on the recall petition; its organisers will imminently decide whether to try to get some of those names reinstated—thus meeting the threshold required to trigger a referendum—or give up altogether. The chances of a referendum actually being held look slim.
The Organisation of American States reports on events in Venezuela.
Another part of the answer is Mr Chávez's judicious use of electoral bribes. During 2002 and 2003 alone, abetted by strikes and lockouts, his government presided over a drop of at least 18% in GDP. Venezuelans are now living on income levels lower than any since the 1950s. Yet by diverting resources into programmes that benefit his own constituency among the poor, Mr Chávez has retained popularity ratings of between 30% and 40%.
He can afford the bribes because he has oil. After an abortive opposition attempt to force him from office by paralysing the oil industry, Mr Chávez introduced price and exchange controls, which have proved formidable tools for keeping the rebellious private sector in check. In 2003, the average price of a barrel of Venezuelan oil ($25.65) was around 17% higher than the year before. In 2004, it has remained above $27. In theory, the windfall profits that the high prices bring to the state oil corporation, PDVSA, should go into a fund to compensate for the vicissitudes of the oil-price cycle. But Mr Chávez has raided the fund, and now argues that such revenues should pay for economic subsidies.
He has other sources of income, too. His bid to persuade the central bank, the BCV, to hand over $1 billion of its reserves—which Mr Chávez wanted to distribute in the form of agricultural loans—failed. No matter; now PDVSA is to shunt part of its income into government agriculture, housing and “social” programmes, a transfer that may well violate Venezuela's constitution. Moreover, stringent restrictions on foreign exchange have boosted the BCV's international reserves from around $13 billion in January of 2003 to over $22 billion now. In conjunction with that growth, a devaluation of the official dollar exchange rate, from 1,600 to 1,920 bolívares, has created notional bolívar “earnings” that Mr Chávez's government has grabbed.
As well as the loans and subsidies, the cash has been channelled into social programmes of doubtful durability. These should boost the vote for the president in the unlikely event of a recall referendum, and for his candidates in the mayoral and gubernatorial elections due in August. Parliamentary elections are due next year. Despite its experience with the thwarted recall campaign, the opposition is unlikely to boycott them altogether, thus lending the votes a semblance of credibility.
Oiling the revolution
These shenanigans, of course, have a price, and not just in protesters' lives. On the black market, the bolívar is plummeting. Partly as a result, inflation is the highest in the region: over 27% last year. Internal debt, which most Venezuelan banks have little choice but to keep refinancing, has spiralled. So Mr Chávez's economic populism is unsustainable; but if he manages to crush the opposition, he won't have to sustain it. Then, Venezuela's economy may come to look like look Cuba's. “It doesn't matter if we go hungry or barefoot,” Mr Chávez once said, “so long as we preserve the revolution.”
What can the rest of Latin America do about him? If (and probably when) the opposition pulls out of the rigged referendum process, or is finally defeated by the CNE's machinations, the verdict of international observers will doubtless be harsh. The Organisation of American States (OAS) may debate the imposition of sanctions. The United States would like Brazil to take the lead in punishing Mr Chávez; and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president, is himself increasingly disenchanted with his one-time ally. But even if Lula obliges, the OAS is unlikely to agree on anything much.
Quite apart from the welfare of Venezuelans, George Bush's administration has plenty of reasons for wanting to see the back of Mr Chávez. He is implacably opposed to the Free-Trade Area of the Americas, and to Plan Colombia, the campaign to defeat guerrillas and drug-trafficking in Venezuela's neighbour—two of America's most cherished regional initiatives. And he has created serious instability in a country that accounts for around 13% of American oil imports. This week, he threatened to cut the oil supply to America altogether, should Mr Bush try to dislodge him.
Given his country's dependence on the dollars that the exports to America bring in, the threat was a little outlandish (and Mr Chávez later toned it down). But, equally, Mr Bush cannot himself afford to ignore the danger of a fuel price hike, especially in an American election year. With his hands on the oil pump, and the recall campaign almost snuffed out, Mr Chávez looks set to hang on indefinitely.
What are the implications? It's not yet clear.
From a some readers who are way better informed than me:
The Electoral Chamber is made out of 3 magistrates: Martini Urdaneta, Rafael Hernandez and Luis Martinez.
Luis Martinez was (Chavista hardline assembly member) Ismael Garcia's private attorney when he was mayor of La Victoria, Aragua State. The other two I've heard are somewhat befriended to a certain Mr. Miquilena (the one-time Chavez number 2 man who turned against him in December 2001 and now supports the opposition.)
The Comando Ayacucho (the group charged by Chavez to collect signatures to recall opposition congressmen) and the CNE tried to recuse Martini and Hernandez for various reasons but mainly beacuse they suspect them of being close to the opposition. Primero Justicia, or the CD tried to reccuse Mr. Martinez for his relation to Mr. García.
It's all related to the Oppostion's request for a Constitutional injunction from the Supreme Tribunal which would make all signatures valid again and trigger a referendum. My guess is it might get through this instance but not through the Chavista majority in the more senior Constitutional Chamber. There, the 3 pro-Chavez magistrates - Rincon Urdaneta, Delgado Ocando and Cabrera - will be approached by the Government and will say it's unconstitutional and ONLY the CNE has a say on the referendum, which would put the ball back in Carrasquero's court.
Jose R. Mora | Email | 03.11.04 - 11:21 am | #
Martini had links with Copei in the past, though I'm not sure how strong.
Anyway, so typical of the government to try and disqualify Hernandez for his links with Miquilena, when that was the reason they put him there in the first place!
Any chance the case will go to the whole court? I heard this could happen when there was a conflict between the courts.
Another thing I don't understand: if the Electoral court is not there to supervise the CNE on its decisions, then what is its purpose??
Juan | Email | 03.11.04 - 12:54 pm | #
Juan,
Somewhat absurdly, the Sala Constitucional actually outranks the Sala Plena (the full court) on these matters, as I understand it. And there, it's 3-2 for the gov't. But if the Sala Constitucional overrules the Sala Electoral, there will be another huge crisis, and probably be even more violence. Can you imagine?
F. Toro
Practically no one in the country is excluded from official aggressiveness. On the one hand towards institutions and on the other towards people, groups, professional associations, etc.
It bears pointing out that as the crisis deepens and the official failure increases, official aggressiveness also increases. From this point of view, what happens does have an explanation. I mean it does have a political explanation. The government is sinking, as as happens to all who are caught in quicksand, the effort consists in thrashing about even more, which only makes you sink quicker...
Picking fights doesn't pay. Especially for governments. Because citizens elect their governments not to promote fights and waste their time in minor confrontations, but to work for all.
So, can you guess who wrote it? Click here for the awful truth.
At 1:22 pm yesterday, the Comando Ayacucho leadership was at the Supreme Tribunal trying to get two of the three judges in the electoral chamber to take themselves off the case due to excessive antichavismo. At 2:48, the CNE legal advisor was at the Tribunal for the same reason.
Charming.
The government is terrified that the electoral chamber will reverse the planas decision and order CNE to hold a recall. Their strategy to defeat this is twofold. First, pressure independent-minded Electoral Chamber magistrates to take themselves off the case so as to leave the decision fully in the hands of chavista activists. If that doesn't work, appeal the Electoral Chamber's decision to the Supreme Tribunal's higher ranking Constitutional Chamber, where the 3-2 chavista majority looks more solid. The notion of accepting a decision made by a body that does not take orders from Chavez runs so deeply counter to the bedrock ideology of the regime that it's not even been considered.
One way or another, chavismo refuses to stand in front of any judge it cannot control. The government continues to work to put the final decision in the hands of ideologically pliable cronies. It's what they've been doing for five years: why stop now?
Moreover, opposition journalists spotted CNE head Francisco Carrasquero once again meeting TSJ chief justice Ivan Rincon. The fate of the country in the hands of two chavistas maracuchos. Que desgracia.
[Note: if you're desperately curious about the Schumpeterian take on the dynamic effects of international trade on economic growth, you might want to look at this new Maastricht Chronicles post.]
"Diplomats say that a sampling of the disputed signatures, carried out by the Organisation of American States, found that 93 per cent were valid."
Now you understand why the government didn't accept the sampling methodology.
One of the most difficult points to put across to foreign readers, especially those who may be inclined to sympathize with a leftwing regime in a poor country, is the consistently, systematically, unabashedly deceptive nature of the Chavez regime. It's not that regime leaders lie now and then about this or that, or that they bend the rules beyond breaking point now or then, it's that foul-play is their default mode, standard operating procedure, on most issues most of the time. This list contains just 100 particularly public and blatant lies, deceptions, dirty tricks and abuses of power - but comes very far from exhausting the possibilities. In a proper democracy, any one of these lies would have set off a major scandal, and any two or three of them together might set off a constitutional crisis. In Venezuela, they're so common, they barely make the headlines anymore.
[Note: I am in the process of finding volunteers to help substantiate the items on this list. Items marked "TAKEN" have already found volunteers to substantiate them. Please download this Foul Play Substantiation Form and join in!]
The government has lied, in fact, at just about every turn on just about every significant aspect of policy and politics for over five years. Like his idols Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez seems to have realized that once you have enough control of the various branches of the state, truth-telling becomes superfluous, unnecessary. So please, don't believe the hype: if the Chavez government said it, it's almost certainly not true.
CARACAS, Venezuela - A man President Hugo Chavez claimed was dead begs to differ with the Venezuelan leader. ``I'm not dead. I'm alive and kicking,'' 61-year-old Emiliano Chavez Rosales said in comments published Monday by El Universal newspaper.
Chavez Rosales also said he signed a petition for a vote to recall the president, who alleged the signature was bogus during a speech to foreign ambassadors on Friday.
``I'm sure Emiliano Chavez doesn't exist,'' the president said, holding up a copy of the petition form. He pointed to an identification number accompanying the signature - No. 2,550,083 - saying it belonged to a dead woman.
There's even more...
Dear Ernesto,
I am writing you, Ernesto Ivanovich, as you were one of the pro-government witnesses during the official "itinerant" canvassing of signatures that we carried out in Los Chaguaramos (in Caracas), because writing to (the head of the national electoral council) Francisco Carrasquero or (its member) Jorge Rodriguez is a waste of time. They have shown too much loathing for Venezuelans; too much genuflection to the supreme chief (Hugo Chavez), which is something that puts them below the dignity of the undersigned. I am writing you, Ernesto Ivanovich, because during those four days when we covered so much of Los Chaguaramos together on foot, you gave every sign of being a fair person, blessed with common sense and respect to all who wanted to sign.
I am sure, Ernesto, that while Carrasquero announced to the country that 876,017 signatures had to be "repaired" because they were under suspicion of being fake, your soul must have been struck with the figure of Mr. Koschevnikov who, though confined to a walker and his house due to a stroke, signed and, despite his severe difficulties with language, had the courtesy of offering you a glass of orange juice in the intimacy of his kitchen.
You'll remember also Mrs. Mujica, over 90 years old, who waited for us with three pairs of eyeglasses on the table in case they went missing and each and every national ID card (cédula) that she has owned during her long life just to leave no doubt of her identity. And Mrs. Romana, 97, whose cédula number you dictated to me to speed up the progress of the work at hand. Or Mrs. Morales who, due to alzheimer's, did not sign but stamped her thumbprint twice and bid you goodbye from her apartment with a hug and a cat-call about your nice eyes.
These people, Ernesto, Venezuelans like you, are being treated like criminals by a government, which minute by minute exposes more aggressively its dictatorial fang.
I have no other comfort, no other way of processing this, other than to write you because I know that among the people who follow Chavez there are many like you, Ernesto Ivanovich, who can still see the measure of humanity, in whom I still want to trust, and who will raise their voices to stop this country from getting swallowed up by blood.
Yours,
Nelly Arenas
Foreign readers often write in to say they wish there was more they could do about the situation in Venezuela. Here are ten things you could do today to make a difference:
1. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper decrying its lack of Venezuela coverage and explaining briefly what is at stake with the Recall Referendum.
2. Bring up the Venezuelan crisis in casual conversation to with 3 people who you wouldn't normally talk about it with. Point them to independent sources of information like VenezuelaToday.net, Devil's Exrement, Vcrisis.com and this blog.
3. Write a letter to your President/Prime Minister expressing your concern with the human rights and democracy situation in Venezuela and urge him to back the OAS/Carter Center mission.
4. Explain the way Chavez has embraced and praised Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro, and point out that he is now copying some of their tactics (arrest-torture-and-release, purge-and-pack-the-courts, bait-the-US.)
5. Look for an internet chat-room where Venezuela is being discussed. Put in your two cents and guide other readers to independent sources of news and analysis about Venezuela.
6. Get into an argument with a philochavista in your neighborhood. Listen respectfully, and argue back in a calm and reasonable way. If you find yourself getting angry, excuse yourself, walk outside, count to twenty and return.
7. Learn the stories and memorize the names of two or three torture or murder victims from the last week. Use those specific names in your letters and arguments.
8. Write to Amesty International, Human Rights Watch, Reporters without Borders, or ISHR, to congratulate them for staying on top of the Human Rights situation in Venezuela and to ask them to keep up the pressure.
9. Write to the Coordinadora Democratica in Venezuela and insist that all anti-Chavez protests be kept peaceful, explaining the damage the opposition does to its international position when it embraces even minor violence.
10. Email this list to every contact in your address book you think might be interested in helping out.
Cellist Carlos Eduardo Izcaray should have been directing the Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra yesterday in a performance of works by Sibelius and Dvorak's 8th symphony. Instead, he was recovering in a Caracas clinic after being brutally tortured and threatened with death by the national guard.
Izcaray's crime was to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. His testimony, and that of dozens of other victims in recent days, highlights the ethical dilemma that helped bring about the resignation Thursday of his country's ambassador to the UN, Milos Alcalay, who - as it happens - is a friend of Carlos Eduardo's father, Felipe Izcaray.
Alcalay, a career diplomat with over 30 years experience, said the past week's repression of opposition demonstrators revealed a pattern, "which closely resembles those totalitarian or authoritarian regimes . rejected by the peoples of Latin America in the 1980s".
In a letter to foreign minister Jesús Pérez, he said he could no longer represent a government which denied human rights, rejected dialogue and destabilized democracy.
Ironically, his friend's son was a mere bystander Monday night, during clashes between the national guard and demonstrators protesting the refusal of electoral authorities to schedule a recall referendum against President Hugo Chávez.
"People were throwing stones," he said. "And a molotov cocktail landed almost on top of me. So I was just leaving for home (he lives nearby) when the national guard made their move."
Since he was not part of the demonstration - he is not even an opposition sympathiser - Izcaray did not run from the guard, who caught up with him, grabbed him and began giving him a beating that went on for over 20 hours.
After hitting him with everything they had to hand, including their night-sticks, they forced him into a truck, where the torture intensified. One guardsman, "put a 9mm pistol in my mouth and said he would kill me then and there," Izcaray said.
The next step was to take the contents of a teargas canister and smear it over the faces of the four prisoners in the truck. "They even made me smear it on the other guys," the cellist recalled. "That was particularly humiliating."
All this was accompanied by taunts and insults. Their faces burning from the effects of the chemical, the four men were then forced to inhale the same substance from a burning rag. Then they were shut in the truck, with all exits and windows closed, and a teargas bomb was thrown in.
"I thought I was going to die," said Izcaray, who came close to passing out. Taken to the headquarters of the guard's 51st Detachment, he was placed with a dozen others in a corner, while the beatings continued, although at no point was any of the prisoners questioned individually.
Several were under-age - around 15 or 16 years old - but they received the same treatment as the others.
"The guard forced us to sing pro-government songs," he continued. "Then they made us sit in line with our heads bowed, and a guy came along with some kind of electric-shock apparatus - I couldn't see what it was, but they gave us shocks on the neck, hands and arms."
Izcaray was left with severe bruising and damage to muscles and nerves. He is now preparing to take legal action against his torturers, but admits to fearing reprisals. "An officer threatened me with death if I talked to the media," he said.
"Torture? No, chico!" said defense minister Gen. Jorge Luis García Carneiro in response to a Herald query. Meanwhile, vice-president José Vicente Rangel said yesterday there had been "not a single case of torture" and that security forces had acted in an "absolutely controlled and rational" fashion.
