Caracas Chronicles Readers' Survey

Quico says: For years, I've been wondering what kind of people actually read this blog, what y'all like about it, what y'all hate about it, and how y'all think it could be improved.

Now, you can help me find out, by taking a few minutes to fill out this Caracas Chronicles Readers' Survey!

Great Moments in Headline Writing

Britain's No. 1 quality newspaper website says:

EXCLUSIVE: Chávez Mafia Ties Exposed!

Quico says: Caracas Chronicles has obtained exclusive reports of an imminent face-to-face meeting between Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chávez and the head of one of Colombia's most notorious criminal organizations.

After an exhaustive investigation, Caracas Chronicles can now confirm that the Venezuelan government is ready to hold contacts at the very highest levels with a Colombian criminal who has strong links to paramilitary death squads, leads a major drug trafficking operation and has been linked to neo-Nazi movements in the region.

Our sources in Caracas can confirm that Chávez's new Colombian partner has actively conspired to prevent FARC from releasing hostages in the past. He is, moreover, determined to prevent any further hostage releases in the future because, our source says, he does not want peace in Colombia and lacks all respect for human life.

Our confidential source stressed the dangers of collaborating with such a figure, noting that Chávez is unwittingly building bridges with a man who "makes don Vito Corleone look like a rookie." He added that Chávez must tread carefully in enmeshing himself with figures "better suited to running a mafia."

The decision to move ahead with the talks sparked outrage among Chávez's left-wing allies, where his new negotiating partner and the criminal syndicate he leads are roundly denounced as "cowardly, lying, manipulating provocateurs."

The news surfaced on the heels of troubling new reports that the Venezuelan government has agreed to cooperate with an organization led by the world's number 1 terrorist, a genocidal drunkard and head of the notorious Equus asinus crime family that, according to our source, may actually be Beelzebub, the prince of darkness, himself.

UPDATE: Unable to sustain its blanket denials in the face of massive pressure generated by this Caracas Chronicles exclusive, the Venezuelan government is now acknowledging that President Chávez is due to meet this notorious criminal today.

Last thoughts on Hari

Quico says: So I had a fun time picking apart that appalling piece by Johann Hari the other day, and readers seemed to appreciate it, too.

As I thought more about it, though, it struck me that I gave Hari a pass on the single most ludicrous bit in the whole thing: his off-hand mention of the "whiter-skinned, anti-Chávez province of Zulia".

It sent me straight up a wall, but not, as you may think, for the for the lunatic notion that Zulia is somehow a reduct of Venezuelan Aryan extremists. Actually, it's the fact that he called Zulia State a "province" that set me off.

It may seem like a minor thing to get worked up about, but think about it. Would a British journo ever slip up and write something about the Province of Texas? The County of Ontario? The Department of Queensland? The Prefecture of Scotland? The Borough of Catalonia? Couldn't happen!

It's a SNAFU that telegraphs more than just a lazy unfamiliarity with the subject Hari's pretending to enlighten his audience on. What it shows, really, is a form of contempt for his subject. A taken-for-granted assumption that, c'mon, everybody knows you don't really have to bother yourself trying to understand the folkloric inanities of these third world people. Nobody really cares if you get these details right: they're just South Americans.

Scrupulous attention to detail is something you reserve for, y'know, people like you and me. People who live in proper Western Countries rather than some tropical ghetto to be either pitied for its dire poverty or fetishized for its way cool, vaguely retro revolutionariness.

The laziness, in other words, rests on a soft, feathery bed of unrecognized left-wing cultural imperialism. An attitude that dispenses with any sense that third world people's histories, societies and political cultures matter, that you may need to pay sustained attention to such things before you're able to write intelligently about our countries.

It's a longstanding gripe. When you get down to the nitty-gritty, what actually happens in Venezuela doesn't much matter to people like Hari. In this type of writing, countries like ours only masquerade as the subject. They act as screens needed to project a story onto.

Again and again, our countries are reduced to the status of narrative ploy: the alternatively brutalized and heroically resisting Other needed to frame the story about the only actor these people are actually interested in. Our role in the psychodrama that unfurls daily on The Independent's op-ed page is, in the end, only half-a-step above that of movie extras, mere foils for the real villain-star of the show: Uncle Sam.

Nobody expects you to know much about the lives, loves, histories and aspirations of the people inside the buildings Godzilla's smashing. They're incidental; filler needed to move along the narrative arch of the movie. When it comes down to it, you could shoot the film using an entirely different set of extras and you wouldn't even have to redo the script.

So it doesn't matter if it's Zulia State or Zulia Province or Zulia County or Zulia Refugee Camp. It's an afterthought. The single-minded obsession with US perfidy allows PSF hackdom to exempt itself from the dreary, time-consuming task of educating itself about the particulars of the places they write about.

The point is simple: George Bush is bad and American empire is awful. Once you've grasped that, why would you bother with esoterica about some godforsaken backwater where you couldn't get proper sushi if your life depended on it?

Johann Hari and the Solidarity Journalist's Pose

Quico says: Johann Hari has something to tell you. Something you need to know.

If you are a bit of a lefty, a bit skeptical of mainstream media, the kind of person minded to buy The Independent, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll buy into it. Not so much because of what he'll tell you, but because of how he'll tell it to you.

"Psst, amigo," he'll whisper, "they're lying to you. They're big and powerful and everywhere and they control what you read and they control what you hear on the news and so they control what you think. You can't trust them, you can't trust any of what they say. I'm the one you can trust. I'll give you the real story, the inside scoop that they're desperate to hide from you."

That's the Solidarity Journalist's Pose. There's something seductive about it, no question. Mr. Hari promises to lift you out of the ignorance of the grubby masses, to induct you into a select circle of the unspinnable and the wise. And the stakes are high. "The ability of democracy and freedom to spread to poor countries", he tells you, "may depend on whether we can unscramble these propaganda fictions."

You don't want to be a chump, do you?

You don't want to slow the spread of democracy and freedom to poor countries, do you?

Of course you don't.

So you'll go along, not realizing that the conceit is a kind of intellectual snare. That once you accept his framing, you find it much harder to scrutinize his assertions critically. That he's subtly priming you never to question him on the basis of information you gather elsewhere - lies! That he's trying to get you to pimp out your opinions on Venezuela entirely to him.

It helps him enormously that you grew up far away - in London, say. Or Chicago. Or Sydney. It makes everything much easier that you don't know much about Venezuelan history, or politics, or society - and, to be fair, why should you?

You have no reason to raise an eyebrow when he tells you that the United States installed a dictator in Venezuela in order to control our oil all the way back in 1908. If you were Venezuelan, a statement like that would immediately put you on your guard, make you wonder if the author had the slightest clue about what he was talking about. After all, it's roughly like arguing that foreign agents installed Bill Clinton in power in 1993 in order to control Google.

But, of course, you're not Venezuelan, so Mr. Hari is confident that you won't realize just how bizarre a claim he's making. He understands there's no reason for you to know that oil wasn't produced in Venezuela until 1914. He grasps that his readers have no idea who Cipriano Castro was, much less why he might have needed to get on a boat and go to Paris in 1908 thinking he could trust his second-in-command to run the country while he was away.

He figures he's safe, because you don't know about any of that stuff. So you'll assent.

For the same reason, he's confident that when he tells you that Chávez "increased the share of oil profits taken by the state from a pitiful one per cent to 33 per cent," you won't question him. Just the opposite: you'll shake your head in outrage at the injustice and feel glad that it has now been righted. You won't suspect that he's referring to the royalty rates (i.e., taxes on the gross value of oil lifted, not on company profits) that applied to just a handful of projects in the Faja del Orinoco, but that the normal royalty on the bulk of the oil produced in Venezuela before 2001 was 17%.

And Mr. Hari figures you don't know that even that special, 1% royalty rate for the Faja projects was temporary, designed to offset billions of dollars in capital costs it took to build the massive, high-tech upgraders needed to process the area's extra-heavy, tar-like crude. He's betting you don't realize that while Chávez did raise the normal royalty rate from 17% to 30% in 2001, he simultaneously lowered the oil sector's income tax from 67% to 50%, leaving the overall tax burden on foreign oil companies largely unchanged.

Anybody who follows the Venezuelan oil industry knows that. But Mr. Hari's banking on you not knowing it. And, when you think about it, that's a pretty safe bet.

Mr. Hari knows you want to believe he's one of the good guys, and misleading you for partisan purposes is what bad guys do. So you won't suspect Mr. Hari of using the very tactics he viciously attacks the traditional media for using. Paradoxically, the Solidarity Journalist's Pose doubles back on itself, turning into carte blanche for him to exploit your ignorance to mislead you.

You won't raise an eyebrow when he says Venezuela's media is "uncensored and in total opposition" to Chávez. Because, well, you don't know who Omar Camero is, or who Gustavo Cisneros is, or that Chávez long ago forced their stations to drop their critical coverage with the (in Venezuela, highly credible) threat of refusing to renew their broadcast licenses. He's guessing you don't know that Venezuela's private TV media barons now chum it up with Chávez at Miraflores social events. His claim will strike you as plausible only because you're unaware of the mad proliferation of propagandistic, unquestioningly sycophantic, state funded TV stations Chávez has created. After all, you don't live in Venezuela, there's no reason why acronyms like VTV, ANTV, Vive, Telesur and TVES should mean anything to you.

Mr. Hari will tell you there is no evidence that Chávez ever funded FARC, but he doesn't mention that nobody (at least nobody sane) is alleging that, because what the files on Reyes's computers detailed was an ongoing negotiation over a future loan for $300 million, not a fait accompli. He'll leave you with a strong impression that all this stuff about jungle laptops is an evident farce. Certainly, you won't learn of the Interpol forensic report on Raul Reyes's computer files from Mr. Hari.

In fact, there's a lot that's interesting about Chávez's relationship with FARC that you won't learn from his piece.

You won't learn of Rodríguez Chacín's heartfelt exhortation to FARC to "maintain their strength" (who is this Rodríguez Chacín fellow anyway?) You won't learn that Chávez ascribes to FARC "a bolivarian project that is respected here". Or that Venezuelan National Guardsmen have recently been arrested in Colombia trying to deliver ammo to FARC. Or that FARC maintains what amounts to a diplomatic mission in Caracas, and that its one-time "ambassador" went as far as to get naturalized Venezuelan and even registered to vote in Venezuelan elections. Or that their highest-profile Colombian political supporter essentially lives in a five-star hotel in Caracas, at the Venezuelan government's expense, and is Chávez's point-woman for FARC relations. Or that Venezuelan state media resolutely refuses to refer to FARC's hostages as "hostages", preferring FARC's own bizarre euphemism ("retenidos", or "retained persons") instead.

But since he didn't tell you any of that, you'll be minded to agree with Mr. Hari that this stuff about Chávez supporting FARC is just a crazy lie, a vile slander, another one of those "propaganda fictions" threatening the spread of democracy and freedom to poor countries.

You've been ensnared by the Solidarity Journalist Pose. You will assent. You will dismiss anyone who tries to rebut Mr. Hari's arguments as obviously - transparently - carrying water for the corporate elite.

The next time you go to a party, you will buttonhole anyone who expresses skepticism about Chávez. You'll try to "set them straight." You will explain to them that the US has been trying to get at Venezuela's oil since 1908, and ask them if they were even aware that, before Chávez, taxes on foreign oil companies were just 1%. You'll note, in grave tones, how absurd it is that Chávez is accused of authoritarianism even though all the media are uncensored and deeply hostile to him. And you'll denounce allegations that Chávez has a soft-spot for FARC as an outrageous slur.

You'll launch into this little rant with a furrowed brow. Perhaps you'll raise your voice. Certainly you'll deliver it with the missionary intensity of one sure he's fighting the good fight. If you are exceptionally unlucky, you'll unleash your spiel at a party I'm at. Otherwise, it's likely you'll leave with that warm feeling inside, that certainty that you are on the right side of history and that, in time, the truth - Mr. Hari's truth - is bound to impose itself.

And you'll sleep well.

Forget Ingrid - Gladys has been rescued!

Juan Cristobal says: - These past few days we've all been enthralled by the story of Ingrid Betancourt and her cinematic rescue. But you don't have to go as far as Colombia to find heartrending stories of people overcoming enormous odds and finding freedom after nearly all hope had been lost.

Last Monday night, Gladys Aguilar was walking on the side of the road in rural Zulia state when she fell three meters down into an open manhole. She spent three days down there, with broken bones, getting progressively weaker and shouting for help until, miraculously, someone walking by heard her cries for help and rescued her. Now she's telling her story.

Alcantarillaby noticias24

Notice how the manhole was still open when reporters went back with the camera crew. It wouldn't be Venezuela if it wasn't.

Ingrid Betancourt was held hostage by the FARC and nearly lost her life. Gladys was held hostage by the inefficiency and corruption of the Venezuelan State, and she almost lost hers.

Let's see if this prompts Chávez to announce Misión Saknussemm: a massive drive to cover the country's deathtrap manholes. Don't hold your breath.

López Maya's Parting Shot

Quico says: In 2004, the pro-Chávez National Assembly asked sane-lefty sociologist Margarita López Maya to give a keynote address on the key challenges facing Venezuelan society after Chavez won the Presidential Recall Referendum. This week, ahead of a sabatical that will take her out of the country, Lopez Maya produces a progress report on the 8-point agenda (in Spanish) she identified back then.

Well worth a read.

Chávez's Continental Strategy in Tatters

Quico says: A couple of weeks ago, we had a fun time trashing Jon Lee Anderson's latest Chávez piece in the New Yorker. But lets get real, Jon Lee Anderson could write a shopping list and it'd probably still be better written than 99% of what's out there on Chávez. So trawling back through it, it's no surprise to find some interesting (and ever more relevant) bits:

[After breaking the ice at the Santo Domingo regional summit in March,] Chávez had a surprise: the FARC, he said, had just informed him that it was prepared to release six more hostages. Uribe spoke in urgent whispers with his aides. Chávez asked President Fernández if protocol could be broken to allow the mother of Ingrid Betancourt to come into the hall. After some commotion, Betancourt’s mother, Yolanda Pulecio, an elegant woman in her late sixties (and a former Miss Colombia), entered. With her was Piedad Córdoba, a flamboyant left-wing Colombian senator who has worked with Chávez in negotiations with the FARC, and who was wearing a white turban. Uribe looked furious; Chávez was showing that he, not Uribe, was the one who could save the hostages’ lives.

It's an anecdote that goes a long way towards explaining why - treacly cancillería communiqués notwithstanding - the rescue yesterday of Ingrid Betancourt and the 14 others is such a disaster for Chávez's continental strategy.

Chávez's stint as a hostage mediator was an obvious ploy to leverage their plight for increased regional relevance. From day one, it was easy to see the point wasn't so much to free hostages as it was to turn Chávez into a real player in Colombia, an indispensable go-between. The long-term goal was clear enough: to install an ideological ally in Casa de Nariño, whether through the gun or the ballot box, as a stepping stone to the creation of a regional socialist bloc to challenge the US's strategic dominance of the region.

Chávez has never been shy about his continental aspirations. The very label, "bolivarianismo", broadcasts that. Having a US-ally in power in Bogotá has long been the main obstacle to realizing the dream of re-editing Gran Colombia. And if, as Jon Lee Anderson explains, keeping that dream alive means parting ways with reality, well, that's too bad for reality:

Gustavo Petro is an outspoken leftist Colombian senator who is well known for his opposition to Uribe, but last year he publicly condemned the FARC for its drug trafficking and its human-rights abuses. He attributed Chávez’s position to naïveté. “The FARC has latched on to Chávez and his good will because it is in need of political varnish,” he told me. “It behaves like an occupation force, and has abandoned attempts to win over a base of support among the civilians. It actually kills more indigenous Colombians than any other armed group in the country today. Chávez doesn’t accept any of this. He is a romantic. If he sees people he thinks are ‘revolutionaries,’ Chávez salutes them and says, ‘At your service!’ ”

In official circles in Caracas, I found a near-total disconnect with the mood in Colombia. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Nicolás Maduro, dismissed the public’s support for Uribe as the product of “a media dictatorship, with the means of communication in the hands of the most rancid, racist, retrograde oligarchy on the continent.”

So Chávez's plan, such as it was, depended on a way-out-there misreading of Colombian reality, one that resolutely refuses to accept that "Democratic Security" is now a national consensus over there, that Uribe's approval rating seldom dips below 80% (and would probably come in well above that if you took a poll this week), and that FARC-and-friends are reviled by virtually everybody.

We need to keep things in perspective: Chávez's continental project was always more desvarío than strategy. Even in its less insane variant, the whole notion that he could somehow get Colombians to elect a FARC-coddling commie like Piedad Córdoba president was about as hare-brained, in the Colombian context, as it would be in our context if Uribe somehow got it into his head that he could position Alejandro Peña Esclusa to win the 2012 election.

So it wasn't much of a plan, but it was a plan - with the emphasis on the past tense here, because the real significace of yesterday's rescue (from a Venezuelan point of view, at least) is that it has now utterly collapsed. Operación Jaque left FARC looking against the ropes, Chávez looking irrelevant and Piedad Córdoba looking more likely to end up in jail than in Casa de Nariño.

For FARC, it may only have been check, but for Chávez's Espada de Bolívar shtick, it's check mate.

An icon is born

Juan Cristobal says: - Amidst the shuffle of news following the release of the 15 hostages in Colombia, the two things that have stayed with me the most are Ingrid Betancourt's brilliant speech last night on the tarmac of CATAM Air Force Base and her words later in the day in Bogotá's Palacio de Nariño (Colombia's Miraflores).

Showing a hostage release is trickier than you might think. The hostages themselves will obviously be elated, as will be their relatives, but handle it wrong and you can send all the wrong signals. At its worst, you end up putting the hostages on a stage, manipulating them for political purposes. The last thing we needed was another "circus", to paraphrase Ingrid.

But yesterday I didn't see any of that. What I saw was an eloquent, smart woman, a survivor, and a political lioness.

Betancourt didn't miss a beat. Once an anti-establishment crusader, she now stands squarely with the Colombian military. While her mother has bad-mouthed the Uribe administration for years, Betancourt was clearly giving Uribe all of the credit for this, and signalling she is still interested in serving Colombia. Long-forgotten are the days when she accused Uribe of "tolerating murder as a way of fighting the guerrillas."

She also hinted at the indignities of her captivity, how she has felt like a pawn in the hands of FARC all of these years. And in a remarkable statement, she asked Pres. Chávez to respect Colombian democracy. She added she was happy that Alvaro Uribe, the man she was running against in 2002 when she was kidnapped, had been elected instead of her.

This was not lost on Uribe's enemies. In an incredibly-timed decision, last night Colombia's Constitutional Court decided they were not going to review the legality of Uribe's 2006 re-election.

Heartfelt, sincere, historic, and incredibly astute - it was Ingrid's "por ahora" moment.

Ingrid! [Updated]

Quico says: Much as I like to play the detached, analytical, curmudgeonly type, I can't deny the wave of relief and joy that swept through my body just now as I learned that Ingrid Betancourt has been rescued by the Colombian army after a seven year ordeal in the jungle.

Thank heaven. After following the news of her kidnapping for all these years, didn't we all feel like we got to know her a little? Who among us didn't feel invested in her case, like a bit of our humanity was being held hostage out in that jungle along with her?

Today, she's free, and we all beathe a little easier for it.

Now, then: that's as much mushy stuff as you'll get out of me all year.

On to my favorite game: Compare and Contrast, headline edition.

El Universal (Caracas): Rescatan a Ingrid Betancourt y a otros 14 rehenes de las FARC

BBC: Betancourt 'rescued in Colombia'

El Mundo (Madrid): Ingrid Betancourt y otros 14 rehenes, rescatados por el Ejército colombiano

Miami Herald: Colombia: 3 Americans, Betancourt rescued

El Tiempo (Bogotá): Rescatada Ingrid Betancourt, los 3 estadounidenses y otros 11 secuestrados de la Fuerza Pública

VTV (Venezuelan State TV): Liberada Ingrid Betancourt y otros 14 retenidos

Spot the difference?

Update: A reader sends this in...

Subject: VTV .. even worse than you think.....

I just watched the early evening news on VTV, and the treatment was, "FARC liberated Ingrid Betancourt and 14 others through a Colombian army operation..."

It didn't get any better. Every other phrase was a dig at Uribe or a snide comment of one kind or another. They clipped Ingrid's comments on Chavez/Correa's mediation being "very important" just before the "but..." that introduced the unequivocal condition that it needed to be done "respecting Colombian democracy" and the frase lapidaria .. "el pueblo colombiano elected Presidente Alvaro Uribe, it didn't elect FARC". (To its credit, ABN reported the full quote.)

...and these are the people that want to give us lessons in journalistic ethics. Even as we speak, Izarrita is telling the non-aligned nations that Telesur should be their voice.

What Primero Justicia wants, Part III: Tackling crime

Juan Cristobal says: - This is the third part in a multi-part post on the main proposals of the opposition’s political parties. The first two parts of this exclusive excerpt on Primero Justicia's platform dealt with oil and the justice system.

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Crime – the biggest problem facing Venezuela. It’s consistently been ranked voters’ top concern for quite some time. It affects everyone, everywhere, in a myriad different ways.

It’s a huge deal.

It’s also really, really difficult to solve. Why has Venezuela turned into such a violent society? It’s hard to say. Explanations are a dime a dozen, and none of them are entirely right. And while politicians may occasionally fret about how crime has soared, many of them haven’t the slightest clue about where to begin.

The following paragraphs lay out Primero Justicia’s proposals for solving the crime problem.

The diagnosis.-

Everyone has a crime story to tell. In the last few decades, we have become a nation under siege. We live behind bars while criminals roam our streets. Instead of having professional cops, we have corrupt, politicized police forces.

Poverty is not the main cause. There are many poor countries in the world that are nowhere near as violent as ours. While it is true that inequality and social exclusion undoubtedly play a role, Primero Justicia believes these simplistic explanations are a cop-out, a way for governments to convince the public that there is no short-term or medium-term solution to the problem. Blaming crime on poverty is what lazy politicians do.

It’s also ironic that poverty is singled out as the main culprit, when in fact the poor are the main victims of crime. Our newspapers are usually filled with horror stories of murder sprees in our barrios. People in poor neighborhoods live in fear, and few dare go out at night. Poor people are usually the victims of such random murders the press likes to call “confrontations between the police and gangs”, but which in fact mask the ugly truth of random human rights violations.

In the last nine years, more than 100,000 Venezuelans have been murdered. There are more than 2 million illegal firearms in our barrios. In 2006, more than 1,000 people died for “resisting the authorities.” That same year, our homicide rate stood at 45 people per 100,000 inhabitants. 200,000 people die in the world each year as a consequence of gunshot violence in non-conflict countries (i.e., countries not at war) – 1 in 17 of them died in ours.

The resulting violence is further fueled by the fact that crimes go unpunished. According to the Central University of Venezuela, only 7% of all murders end in someone being sentenced. There were 5,520 deaths at the hand of military or police personnel between 2000 and 2005, yet only 88 people have been sentenced to jail time for these crimes.

Part of the problem is that there aren’t enough prosecutors. Venezuela has roughly 5 prosecutors for 100,000 people, but other Latin American countries have many more: Costa Rica has 7.1, Colombia has 7.8, the Dominican Republic has 8 and El Salvador has 9.9.

Another part of the problem is that there aren’t enough police officers. According to the government there is a deficit of 36,000 police officers, something they are not doing much about.

The proposals.-

Primero Justicia believes the first thing that needs to be tackled is having a better, larger police force. This is easier said than done – but at least, on this topic, they can point to their hands-on experience in the municipalities they have run.

Some of the things that work at the municipal level and that they propose at the national level include: increasing the police force’s budget, improving mechanisms for selecting and evaluating officers, separating good cops from bad cops, increasing police salaries, giving police officers better preparation by signing agreements with universities and technical institutes, and giving them better equipment. The goal is to increase the number of police officers by 6,000 per year in order to erase the deficit in 6-8 years.

One of the key aspects of their proposal is to turn police corps into preventive rather than reactive forces. In order to accomplish this, they propose increasing the use of technology and assigning more officers to critical crime areas. They also propose a substantial decrease in the number of police officers assigned to serve as bodyguards to politicians. They will emphasize the education of police officers, their salary and the benefits they, and their relatives, are entitled to.

Local police forces should become “community polices.” In order to achieve that, they propose upgrading their technology so that areas where crimes are committed are quickly identified. They also propose creating a fund to distribute among states and municipalities that show the best results in tackling crime.

Primero Justicia does not appear to be dogmatic about the decentralization of police forces. It recognizes the need for an effective national police force, and at the same time, it highlights the importance of strengthening local police forces. The responsibility of the national force should be tackling organized crime, and in coordinating and working with local law enforcement. They come out in favor of civilian police forces, and of reorganizing the DISIP and CICPC so that their main focus is investigating and solving crimes.

The platform discusses the importance of giving the victims of crime better access to information. To that end, they propose a Unified System for Violence and Safety (SUIVI), where victims can follow the course of their cases with the help of law students and other trained personnel. They also propose widening the available network for tips related to criminal activity.

Any proposal for fighting crime would be incomplete if it did not include plans for disarming the population. Primero Justicia proposes decreasing the number of legal and illegal weapons in the hands of civilians with a system of rewards, and modifying legislation to increase penalties for illegally carrying a weapon. The disarmament program must include the public destruction of guns, as well as the creation of a national database to track weapons.

In some areas they are less clear. For example, they propose making it easier to register a gun, but at the same time they propose an increase in the minimum age necessary to be able to carry one. They also propose implementing testing and medical certification procedures for gun permits.

One thing they emphasize is the rescue of public spaces taken over by criminals. This includes increased patrolling in certain areas, such as schools or parks, as well as better lighting of our streets.

The platform includes specific proposals to help spread civic values and create awareness of how communities can help prevent crime. They propose coordinating with community leaders on the best ways to tackle crime and how best to create citizen networks for crime prevention. They also propose integrating communities, churches, NGOs and experts and forming a National Safety Center, to keep track of crime-tackling programs and monitor crime statistics.

A special sub-section in the platform is dedicated to domestic violence. In Caracas alone, for example, a woman dies every 10 days a victim of domestic violence. In spite of the severity of the problem, the Health Ministry and the CICPC have stopped publishing statistics on the issue.

The party’s platform proposes reversing this. Their proposals range from changes in the law to increased penalties for domestic violence. They also discuss helping raise awareness of the issue and supporting citizen networks. The goal is to increase the importance of the problem in citizens’ minds and create the mechanisms for women and children to escape violent situations.

The platform includes proposals for improving the jail system. The goal is to transform Venezuelan jails by promoting the construction of new jails, and the decentralization of their day-to-day management.

The proposals include strengthening the professional capabilities of the staff assigned to our jails, as well as the strengthening of the institutions that help reeducate convicts and ease their reinsertion into society after they have finished their sentence. In order to achieve this, they propose forcing the National Guard out of our jails and creating a special corps that specializes in jail safety.

Finally, they propose increasing mandatory jail time for specific crimes such as kidnapping. They propose a special kidnapping task force, with proper funding and increased international cooperation.

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Any proposal to fight crime has to begin with a huge dose of humility. Nobody has all the answers, because nobody understands the phenomenon comprehensively. It’s not so much a public policy challenge as it is a cultural phenomenon. Like a thousand-headed beast, it’s not something that can be tackled by a single person, by a single organization.

Which isn’t to say that we should do as chavismo does – hide our heads in the sand and simply shrug it off as an unintended consequence of “poverty”, “exclusion” and other populist left-wing gibberish. Because while solving the problem of crime is a Herculean task and requires creative thinking, it is not impossible to solve.

I don't know about you, but my grandparents used to entertain me with stories of how Venezuelans used to be able to sleep with their front doors open, and how nobody had bars on their windows. It's up to us to put the pressure on those in charge so that we may once again become that country.

Gobble gobble

Juan Cristobal says: - After last December's referendum defeat for Hugo Chávez, Venezuelans reached a consensus, something we don't typically do. Whether chavista or not, we all agreed that one of the factors that hurt the government the most was the increased scarcity in basic staples such as milk, chicken and beef.

Conscious of this Achilles' heel, the government took the problem head on. The result is that the last few months have seen scarcity decrease, although sporadic shortages still appear.

One of the first things the government did early in the year was to increase the regulated prices of many basic staples. As most of you know, the Venezuelan government controls the prices of everything from milk to salaries to apartment rents, and it has been gradually announcing price increases on many of these items.

The other thing the government has done is increase the allocation of dollars to import food. According to ODH, a local consultancy, in the first five months of 2008 food imports totaled US$4 billion, a whopping 113% increase on the same period of last year. While a portion of this can be explained by higher international prices for some food staples, most of the increase comes from higher volumes of imports.

According to their estimates, 26% of what Venezuelans spent on food last year was spent on imported food. They expect this percentage to soar to 50% by the end of this year. Needless to say, this leaves Venezuelans much more vulnerable to fluctuations in international food prices, as well as in the price of oil.

So much for "food sovereignty."

Lest you think the government is veering to the right, it is also tightening its grip on food supply. For example, it has created an extended bureaucratic web seeking to exert more control on the distribution of various food staples across the country, based on their estimates of the amounts Venezuelans should be eating. Apparently, it has begun regulating food distribution with a heavy hand, sometimes limiting truck dispatches if they don't concur with their estimates of where each staple should go to.

The government has also created a web of retail outlets called PDVAL, managed by PDVSA. These outlets are apparently causing an impact, although it's hard to tell exactly how much. Yet whatever the effect, it appears as though the growth of PDVAL has little to do with managerial efficiency and a lot to do with the enormous amount of cash the government has.

Case at hand: last year I took a lot of flack for discussing a Maracucha chain of supermarkets called En-ne. I posted a couple of pictures of people waiting in line to buy milk, and our Caraqueño-centric readers found it amusing that Maracuchos had their own chain of stores.

We'll see how long it lasts - the latest rumour in Maracaibo is that PDVAL is buying En-ne.

Increase imports, regulate distribution, raise prices to please local producers, buy supermarkets and open your own. With a government awash in cash and drunk on power, fearful of losing another election, anything goes. Expect more of the same.

sorry

Quico says: Previous post withdrawn due to devastating criticism.

Shocker of the day: Politician plays by the rules

Juan Cristobal says: - The fight to be the sole opposition candidate for Mayor of Maracaibo has been a tawdry affair. Primero Justicia's Juan Pablo Guanipa, a council-member and strong opponent of current chavista mayor Giancarlo Di Martino, seemed like the front-runner early on. But then, the current governor of Zulia, former Presidential candidate and former two-time mayor of Maracaibo Manuel Rosales decided to go from the Governorship ... back to City Hall.

The campaign threatened to get ugly fast. Until yesterday that is.

Initially, Guanipa and the entire PJ group did not take Rosales' bid very well. Accusations of Rosales' missuse of public funds began to fly, something we documented in this blog a while ago. It was interpreted as though Rosales was unwilling to pave the way for future generations and open up to other opposition groups gaining ground on what he considers his own turf. Rosales was portrayed as playing rough with the opposition unity pact signed last January, threatening its very existence.

Well, Guanipa announced yesterday he was stepping down. He stated that the unity pact called for a decision on a single candidacy to be made in early July, and that it had to be based on opinion polls. He hired Datanálisis, Rosales hired Seijas, and they both concur: Rosales is the more popular candidate. So in the spirit of unity, he announced his decision in an uncommonly graceful speech.

This gesture may seem like no big deal. After all, candidates decline and endorse rivals all the time in normal democracies.

Yet this is Venezuela, where people who lose in primaries either "pass to their party's reserve", leave their party, decide to run anyway or question the method through which the other guy (or gal) was selected. I fully expect more than one político to announce in the coming weeks that this or that polling firm was "bought" by his rival or had some other flaw.

So Guanipa's gesture should be celebrated. With little fuss, he is stepping aside in favor of unity. He played by the rules, and he accepts the verdict - end of story.

So far, the opposition has been talking a lot about unity. Now is the time for them to start putting their egos where their mouth is. Let's hope more of them begin imitating people like Guanipa (or Armando Briquet, who is reportedly stepping aside today in Baruta) and start putting the interests of the opposition before their own.

The fjords of Macuro

Juan Cristobal says: - The most developed nation on Earth. The most peaceful country on Earth. Insanely high life expectancy. The second-highest GDP per capita in the world. A near-absence of poverty and income inequality. These are some of the honors bestowed on a little country, with just over 4.4 million people, perched on a bunch of cliffs in the top of the world: Norway.

Thinking through Venezuela's problems is depressing enough, so holding ourselves up to a place like that would only add to our misery. The urge to find a role model to copy is understandable. But, surely, Norway can't be that benchmark. There are no fjords in Macuro. As much as he may like to think otherwise, the guy in Miraflores is no king, just a fat man surrounded by yes-men. And while we have plenty of blondes, let's just say they're not quite Scandinavian.

But face it: we're hard up for a good benchmark. Comparisons with Latin American countries border on useless. Venezuela has more in common with Iran, Algeria and Nigeria than with Guatemala, Peru or Uruguay. Thing is, instead of offering hope, the experiences of our fellow oil exporters serve up a deep well of despair.

It’s no wonder that people resort to near-apocalyptic terms to describe our economy. Some talk about "the devil’s excrement." A Google Academic count on “resource curse” came up with a whopping 36,900 articles. Many of them mention Venezuela.

--------

Thinking through this stuff, it's easy to end up mired in a self-flagellatory funk over our screwed-up national psyche. The conclusion seems inexorable: easy oil money has a lot to answer for. Successive petrobooms have only served up our society to one predatory, authoritarian regime after another, from Gómez to Pérez Jiménez to CAP to Chávez.

But is it is really that simple? Aren't we forgetting that many modern economies, such as Canada, Australia, and Norway, have been built on the back of natural resources? Isn't there something lazy about this blanket denunciation of the petrostate, as though we could just pass the buck to the black stuff under our feet and turn the page?

Oil wealth isn't necessarily a curse. Norway, in particular, is an example of a petrostate that works.

Norway is the world’s third-largest oil exporter, a bigger exporter than Venezuela. It is also the world’s third-largest gas exporter. In spite of this, Norway’s “curse” is nearing its end: its oil and gas reserves are very small compared to other countries, and production is expected to decrease dramatically in the coming years.

So Norwegians, in spite of having lots of oil, have managed to make a nice little country for themselves. What has worked?

A lot of things come to mind: their European mindset, their weather, their history. Yet while some of this may have played a role, it would be a mistake to believe a country's development path is so deterministic. After all, few people fifty years ago would have looked at the mindset, weather and history of Singapore and predicted it was going to become the powerhouse that it is today. It's not all in the genes, under-development is not an inescapable trap.

What has made the difference in Norway, the reason it’s no Nigeria, is that it Norwegians have not fallen into the traps of petrostates. Thanks to mechanisms put in place to isolate the country from sudden oil windfalls, the country is an exporter of diverse goods and services. Contrary to expectations, Norwegians managed to avoid the disease that plagued their Dutch neighbors and was so pervasive that it created its own little economic malaise.

How did Norway do it? One explanation frequently espoused has to do with timing. In particular, countries in which a boom in commodity exporting coincided with the formation of the modern state now exhibit bloated bureaucracies and an inefficient state apparatus, one that makes ad-hoc, arbitrary decisions on economic policy and usually gets it wrong. Norway was the opposite.

Norway discovered its oil in 1962, relatively late in its development. By then, it was an established monarchical democracy. This, however, did not prevent Norwegian politicians from spending the dough.

As documented by Stanford political scientist Terry Lynn Karl in her magnum opus, The Paradox of Plenty, public expenditure in Norway rose just as fast as income from oil exports. Norwegians went on a spending spree in the late 70s and early 80s that rivaled that of the Venezuelan ta’baratos.

Inevitably, the Norwegian economy hit the wall, just like that of other oil exporters. However, that is where the similarities end. As Karl puts it,

“Unlike all other exporters, it (the Norwegian state) established substantial control over petroleum policy on the basis of consensus, protected against the worst excesses of petrolization, and permitted voluntary and relatively rapid adjustment. In effect, its highly institutionalized state structures provided a type of “creative resistance” to the overwhelming impact of the bonanza that was simply unavailable to the developing countries.

The contrast to other exporters from the point of departure – that is, from the discovery of oil on the North Sea shelf – is telling. The structures that “received” Norway’s boom could hardly have been more different from those of the developing countries. Oil companies, especially eager to exploit resources outside OPEC’s dominion, did not encounter a poor country, a weak state, undeveloped social forces, or a predatory, authoritarian ruler… The state in Norway was, in Olsen’s words, a “typical civil servants’ state,” which came remarkably close to what Weber labeled an ideal bureaucracy operating under rational legal authority.”

Karl lists several key features of the Norwegian state structure that allowed it to absorb the oil shock in a sane, rational manner. Recruitment was based solely by merit. Civil servants were unusually insulated from and impervious to influence peddling. Advancement depended on nominations from other (higher-ranking) civil servants. The attempts by political parties and interest organizations to influence the State were frowned upon. Corruption is virtually nonexistent. As Karl depressingly puts it, “this “civil-service state” was the complete antithesis of Venezuela and the other politicized states examined previously.”

In other petrostates, the beginning of oil booms found oil companies negotiating with a rapacious, unequipped, underdeveloped bureaucracy, whose main goal was to establish a tax base. Norway’s bureaucracy had no interest in this. Their emphasis was on regulating the industry correctly, using sophisticated financial planning techniques and tools that maximized collective welfare.

One of these tools is Norway’s Petroleum Fund. This Fund is a mechanism ruled by clear guidelines through which the Norwegian state saves the money coming from extraordinary oil funds for the pensions of future generations. Very literally, it is a way for current generations to use their extraordinary good luck in order to free future ones from the burden of trying to support them.

The Fund’s shadow over Norway’s economy looms large. In 2006, Norway had a budget surplus of a whopping 25.9 percent of GPD. Venezuela, on the contrary, ran a budget deficit that year. That same year, the net assets of the general government were 1.5 times the size of the entire Norwegian economy. To put this number in context, it would equivalent to the Venezuelan government having savings worth $270 billion instead of the roughly $40 billion it has.

The rules of the Fund are simple. Most of the revenue from oil goes into the Fund, which invests the money abroad. The key rule sets the non-oil structural budget deficit of the central government to the fund’s long-term real return, 4 percent.

In other words, it sets spending limits on the government by setting a maximum amount that the government can withdraw from the fund each year, capping them to the “interest” that the Fund earns, so that the long-term value of the fund is preserved. Money goes in the Fund only when the oil market is doing well.

Although it may be tempting to simply copy and paste, it's important to keep in mind that the particular form that these rules adopt is not what is key. Some rules are designed so that the long-term value of the Fund is maximized while short-term cash disbursements are sacrificed. Other rules are more flexible as to the amount of windfall you can spend in the short run. And the rules in Norway are not always complied with to their fullest.

The important thing is that Norway’s fund, like the ones in Alaska or in Chile, is borne out of a consensus among the political classes and civil society as to the economy's medium- and long-term goals and prospects. Countries that successfully cope with resource windfalls (or shortfalls) are those with stable rules that meet some minimum requirements. It’s important to keep this in mind and to understand that consensus and stability are more important than the rules themselves.

The Norwegian example shows us that sudden oil wealth is not the root cause of a country's problems. Oil is not a curse, it's a blessing - it’s what we as a society choose to do with it that makes a difference. And much of this boils down to a series of institutional arrangements and political consensus that should be the main goal of any political party.

Norwegians are not a special race. They live in a remote country that is inaccessible in many places and, while rich in natural resources, is poor in population. Yet through clever institutional design and a little bit of luck, they have managed to do right for themselves. There’s no reason why Norway can’t serve as a guideline to future policy decisions.

So before giving up hope, thinking that we will never be like Norway and that there will never be fjords in Macuro, let's think about what is within our grasp. We would be well served to use the Norwegian benchmark and try and adapt to our own country the principles and setups that have worked for theirs.

Using Norway as a benchmark may sound crazy, but it's better than our current role-model. While the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to success is usually built on plans that may appear to some as impossible pipe dreams.

Let's face it - we can't do much worse than we've already done, so what have we got to lose?

Not that there's anything wrong with that

Quico says: I've been feeling particularly ineffective when it comes to blogging November's state and local elections. Aside from the fact that the opposition hasn't decided who it's going to back where, it sure seems like there are a lot of crazy races developing.

For once, distance really is a big handicap in trying to figure out what's happening where. But frankly, I doubt I'd do much better if I was in Caracas. There's just no substitute for micro-local knowledge when it comes to writing about the micro-líos of micro-level politics, and the Caracas press does a horrible job at covering the country outside the valley.

We all know the provinces are chavista strongholds, and the more provincial, the stronger the hold. We've discussed how important it is for the opposition to win key areas such as Guárico in order to prove they can continue broadening their base. Chavismo, on the other hand, feels safe in Guárico, so much so that a cat-fight loud enough to make out across the Atlantic has broken out there. It's the chavista mirror-image of the opposition squabble over the Chacao Municipal nomination: safe seat = lots of wannabes.

The three-way chavista feud pits the state's first lady and the secretary general of a party allied to Chávez against the government's official candidate, Willian Lara. Yup, you read that right...Chávez decided to turf Willian Lara, his former Minister of Information, out to San Juan de los Morros!

Now, um, how to put this delicately? Say you had patiquín-ish tendencies...a bit of a lisp...a fondness for the urban life...a penchant for expensive suits...a punctiliousness about diction. Say you, erm, (well, no use sugar coating it), say you flamed a lot (hey now - I'm not saying he is or he isn't cuz I have no way of knowing.) But say this was your profile. Would you want to be a candidate in Guarico?!

Is this Chávez's idea of a joke? Does he hate the guy? It's a bit like making Barney Frank run for governor of Utah.

I mean, a guy like Lara would have a hard time anywhere - and not just because of his easy-to-wonder-about sexual identity. Venezuelan society in general isn't exactly open-minded about that sort of thing, but there are certain spaces for tolerance in big cities that you don't begin to find in the countryside.

Willian Lara, Governor of Guarico. The mind boggles. And he might just win!

Extra! Extra! Nickname Felon Starts Making Sense!

Quico says: It pains me to say it - and not just because the bastard usurped my nickname and, worse yet, misspells it - but Kico Bautista's latest column makes more sense to me than 99% of what's written about Venezuelan political parties these days. Bautista notes that the November elections are not going to be like the Referendum, where all you had to do was campaign for a No: state and local elections call for organization, shrewd decision-making and political intelligence - in other words, they call for leadership.

If we had proper leadership, we would realize we're facing a Target-Rich environment, with Chávez's popularity in the dog house and chavismo in deep disarray in half a dozen states, giving us a realistic chance to make symbolically loaded gains in places like Anzoategui, Guarico, even Barinas. But the early signs are, to his mind, not encouraging.

I sometimes get the sense that Bautista's oafish, deeply annoying TV persona masks a guy of uncommon political sense. I'm too busy to translate the whole thing, but I did especially enjoy this bit:

[Opposition] politics is limited to interpreting survey results. There's no imagination, no inventiveness. In terms of organization, there's nothing new either. No new consultation formulas or mechanisms to allow citizens to participate in ways that break with tradition. With all the new digital technologies out there, Venezuela doesn't have a single channel on offer to incorporate people horizontally into the work of politics .

Ten years after MoveOn.org demonstrated the way you can use the net to mobilize people who feel strongly about politics, we still haven't caught on. Hell, the closest we've come is the clinically insane ramblings that blight the NoticieroDigital bulletin boards.

The crying game

Quico says: What follows is cut-and-pasted from a recent Skype chat:

Katy 6:25 PM: ¿estas?

Quico 6:25 PM: epa, sí, recien regresado

Katy 6:26 PM: ¿donde estabas?

Quico 6:27 PM: in what, I now realize, was The Most Boring Conference in the History of Trade Policy Conferences...

(en Bélgica)

tú, ¿qué tal?

Katy 6:30 PM: sorry to hear that.

Yo bien, era para saber si ibas a postear en los proximos dias

Quico 6:31 PM: Ummmm...doubtful...with the football and all...

Katy 6:31 PM: jeje... actually, I was wondering what the best way of changing my name is...

Quico 6:31 PM: changing your name?

Katy 6:31 PM: I guess the whole "Katy" thing, it's kind of silly at this point

Quico 6:31 PM: Ah, your blog name...I thought you wanted to become Abu-Ismael Hamza Al-Katy

Katy 6:31 PM: je je

I don't want to make a big deal about it, but I also dont want to simply start posting as Juan

And I think I owe it to the readers to start using my real name

Quico 6:31 PM: Hmmmm

Juan Cristobal 6:31 PM: maybe my initials? Or just Juan Cristobal?

Quico 6:32 PM: I think that would confuse people

Juan Cristobal 6:32 PM: Thats my name but I never, ever use the Cristobal

Quico 6:32 PM: I think what you should do is post a video of yourself but continue to sign Katy

Juan Cristobal 6:33 PM: hmm...

no, I think that would be very weird

How about you say that Katy died?

Quico 6:33 PM: WHAT?!

Juan Cristobal 6:33 PM: and that in her place, you've hired a new blogger, named Juan

Quico 6:34 PM: Is this some kind of Who Killed J.R. thing?!

Dallas online?!

Juan Cristobal 6:34 PM: and we sort of leave it at that?

Quico 6:34 PM: no, no, no, people are emotionally attached to Katy...

Juan Cristobal 6:34 PM: really?!

Quico 6:34 PM: you can't kill her - what about all the broken hearts?

Juan Cristobal 6:34 PM: see, that's what tangles me up...

Why have people formed this image of Katy?

One that has no relation to the real Katy, btw, who couldn't be LESS interested in politics.

She's right here, by the way, she says hi!

[Quico's note: In real life, Katy is Juan Cristobal's very pregnant wife...which is why, long ago, he picked that as his nom de blogue.]

Quico 6:35 PM: right

Juan Cristobal 6:35 PM: ok, I need ideas here

The video thing I don't like

Quico 6:35 PM: Hmmmm...

Juan Cristobal 6:35 PM: But I dont want to post something saying "I used to post as Katy, now Im going to use Juan... "

Quico 6:35 PM: Well, do you just want BlogYou to switch genders?

or do you want BlogYou to merge with RealYou?

Juan Cristobal 6:36 PM: Oh, these are deep metaphysical questions

Quico 6:36 PM: sin vaina!

Juan Cristobal 6:36 PM: maybe we should just post this chat

Quico 6:36 PM: lol...

Juan Cristobal 6:36 PM: maybe that would be the most non-chalant way of doing it

Quico 6:36 PM: Hey, I'm up for that...

Quico 6:36 PM: Hmmmm...

Juan C...

Juan Cristobal...

I like Cristobal better than Juan C.

or J. Cristobal

Juan C. is just a bit...

Juan Cristobal 6:38 PM: Juan Carlos-y

Quico 6:38 PM: right

I always assumed that C. was Carlos

Juan Cristobal 6:38 PM: everybody who reads Juan C. immediately assumes I'm a Juan Carlos, which I most certainly am not

Quico 6:38 PM: huff-huff

Juan Cristobal 6:38 PM: Juan Cristobal is good

I never use it, now would be a good place to start.

Quico 6:38 PM: I'm a cuttin' and a-pastin' as you type...

There it is, folks. You always suspected. Now you know...

Oil Economics 101

Katy says: - In today's class, we will discuss current events in oil markets.

- China raised fuel taxes by as much as 18 percent. Markets interpreted this as a serious move toward cooling China's ever-growing energy demand, and fuel prices duly began falling. This came on the same week that Honda unveiled the world's first commercially available hydrogen fuel cell car.

- Iraq awarded important oil contracts to US and European firms in order to ramp up production. The Iraqi government expects to increase production by 500,000 barrels per day in the next six months. Improved security in Iraq's oil fields and pipelines has Big Oil grinning.

- Saudi Arabia - the only member of OPEC with any capacity to spare and, not coincidentally, the largest and most powerful member of the cartel - announces it, too, is ramping up oil production to respond to the insanely high price of oil. They expect to increase production by 500,000 barrels per day in the next month, all this on the heels of a visit by US Pres. Bush in which he asked the Saudis to increase production. The Saudis rebuffed the President, but have seemingly changed their mind. They have also called a meeting of oil producers and consumers to discuss ways of cooling down oil markets.

- Venezuelan oil minister Ramírez, in a telling sign of the increasing strains in the cartel, announced our country will boycott the Saudi meeting. Among the stated reasons is a visit by the President of Brazil, whom he seemingly meets twice a month. A funny excuse when you consider that Ramírez's Brazilian counterpart will be ... in Saudi Arabia.

So, children, a little bit of homework. Solve the following equation:

Slowing demand + increased supply + breakdown of cartel discipline = ??

a. A perfect storm; prices will plummet.
b. A minor blip in the unstoppable march to $200 per barrel.
c. Who knows what's happening with oil markets?
d. All of the above.

Class dismissed.

Blunder of the week

Katy says: - Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín committed one of the biggest blunders I have seen recently, when he said that most murders in Venezuela were murders between gang members that did not affect the overall safety of citizens.

We all know that crime is the top concern in the minds of Venezuelans and that it has soared to unprecedented levels during the Chávez years. We also know that the government has been paying a little more attention to this issue, aware that it is really hurting them in public opinion.

So if I were a politician and heard Rodríguez Chacín, I would play this to the tilt. I would make his video the centerpiece of my campaign, and I would accompany it by something like this:

"The Minister isn't worried about murders between gang members.

But Yubiri from La Vega, a single mother who lives in a gang-infested part of the neighborhood, who waits for her kids to come home from school in the dark - she worries.

Anselmo, the father in Mariches who knows his son has fallen in the hands of a gang and is trying to get him off drugs and clean up his life - he worries.

Maritza, the grandmother in El Valle who ended up in the hospital after a stray bullet hit her while she was in her living room - she worries.

The government doesn't worry - unless the murders happen to the rich.

The government doesn't worry - as long as they can control crime in the East of Caracas.

The government doesn't worry - because they have thousands of bodyguards keeping them safe.

Minister Rodríguez Chacín is wrong. Every murder in Venezuela is important, because human life deserves respect and protection no matter what.

This November you have a choice. You can elect people who don't worry about the safety of all citizens. Or you can elect someone who will not rest until every Venezuelan, no matter where they live, no matter what they do, feels safe.

That is the choice you have."

Se las puso de bombita pues - so any of you candidates out there reading CC, you're welcome.

What Primero Justicia wants, Part II: The justice system

Katy says: - This is the second post in a series on the proposals of Venezuela’s opposition political parties. The first part (on oil policy) is here.

The translated summary that follows is an exclusive excerpt of Primero Justicia's platform. These proposals were approved last October in the party’s Ideological Congress, but the final version has not yet been made public. The original version is available from me, via email.

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The diagnosis.-

Venezuela’s Constitution says that everyone is the same in the eyes of the law. One of our inalienable rights is to have a justice system that works quickly and fairly. But to most Venezuelans these are just words on a piece of paper, nothing more.

People don’t trust the justice system, and there are many reasons why this is so.

First off, the justice system does not work well because it is poorly funded. Venezuela has fewer judges and prosecutors per capita than many other Latin American countries. Public funding for the justice system is lower than in neighboring countries in spite of record-high oil prices, and in spite of having been a major recipient of aid in recent years from multilateral organization, earmarked for improving our justice system.

It’s no surprise that people see the courts as inaccessible. The number of legal complaints filed in court as a percentage of the population is lower than in other, less violent Latin American countries. Trials tend to last forever – civil trials last on average 783 days; investigating a crime takes on average 286 days and sentencing takes a further 754 days. These figures are many times higher than the maximum length allowed by law.

The justice system is perceived as something to avoid instead of a tool to help make our lives better. Part of the reason is that most judges are susceptible to influence peddling and corruption. In 2005, 84% of our judges held temporary positions, as did 90% of the public prosecutors in the country. While these numbers have gone down in recent years, more than 50% of the remaining judges are still temporary. The few permanent positions being filled have not been open to contests, as mandated by law.

The lack of justice means that most crimes in our country go unsolved and unpunished. According to the Central University of Venezuela, only 7 out of every 100 murders in Venezuela end in sentencing. These numbers are even more out of whack when it comes to extra-judicial killings by the hands of the police or the military – only 1.4% of those servicemen accused of murder are ever convicted.

Not surprisingly, the only people who use the justice system are the rich, the powerful and the well connected. Every part of the judicial process comes with an illegal fee attached to it, which only exacerbates the exclusion of poor people from formal means of justice.

---------------

The proposals.-

Primero Justicia’s proposals for our justice system are, as the party's name would suggest, the first topic in their platform.

It's a mistake to think this ranking is merely a response to the party's name. The party sees the transformation of the justice system as the key element in the fight against poverty and exclusion, as the cornerstone of social and economic policy. They believe there can be no peace and no progress in our country unless we embark on a thorough transformation of our justice system.

Their main goal is to make the justice system accessible to people. One of the ways they plan on doing this is through the “Casas de la Justicia.”

The goal of these centers is to bring the knowledge and the tools of the justice system into communities around the country. The idea is for these centers to help spread information on formal and informal ways of solving conflict and provide free legal assistance.

These centers would also offer mediation services, as well as provide legal assistance on matters related to children and teenagers and judicial support to Justices of the Peace, among others. The party has already opened several dozens of these centers all across the country, and the experience so far has been positive.

Another way of making justice accessible is by widening the range of tools available to people for solving conflicts.

One way of doing this is by promoting university-sponsored legal clinics and making it mandatory for graduating attorneys to provide community legal services. The party also proposes legislation to include the possibility of mediation and conciliation in all legal processes, as well as expanding legislation and funding for Justices of the Peace. The goal is to ease the burden on the courts and make litigation cheaper by promoting alternative mechanisms for dispute resolution, decreasing in the process the incentives for corruption in our courts.

The party pledges to jumpstart the review and modification of current legislation in order to suppress useless formalisms. They propose expanding the use of oral procedures in different stages of the legal process, as well as the application of immediacy and concentration principles to facilitate the presentation of proof and speed the course of trials.

As far as the number of judges is concerned, the party promises to increase them by 2,000 in the first five years after being elected, with their accompanying administrative staff. They also propose expanding the number of prosecutors by 1,000, with a focus on fundamental rights and criminal law.

They pledge to increase the number of courts and redistribute their scope, as well as open double-blind contests so temporary judges can become permanent. They also pledge to find ways to incorporate civil society into the process of selecting judges.

One of the failures of our justice system is that there is no clear set of rules that anyone wishing to become a judge has to comply with. Likewise, the rules for promoting judges and other people working in the courts are not clear.

Primero Justicia wants to address this. They also propose increasing the number of criminal judges on call on nights, weekends and holidays.

As for the distribution of judicial causes, the party proposes auditing the cause assignment system. They will bring legislation forward to eliminate coordinating judges and substitute them for an office of judicial assignments that is on call, 24 hours a day.

Primero Justicia proposes the elimination of the Judicial Commission of the Supreme Tribunal. The party believes that in order to weed out good judges from bad ones, their academic and professional credentials must be made public. They propose redesigning the professional profile for judicial employees and bailiffs, and a quarterly evaluation mechanism for judges using an instrument especially designed for this.

Our courts need to become professional, accountable bodies. In order to achieve this, Primero Justicia wants to establish mandatory programs for professional improvement for those who work there. They also propose establishing efficient management models in all courts, along with social accountability programs to improve transparency. The proposals include a pledge to establish a national test as a requisite for getting a law degree

Primero Justicia is vague about the types of laws that will need to be modified. They emphasize that a new legal framework will be needed to make the law compatible with these and other policies they want to implement.

However, one of the concrete things they propose doing is reducing the number of crimes typified in the law, from 1,000 to 500. They explicitly mention the need to to update the Civil Code, the Commercial Code, the Criminal Code and the Organic Laws of the different bodies in the Moral Power.

The party proposes reviewing legislation contained in the Organic Criminal Procedures Code regarding the length of judicial proceedings, mandatory sentencing and measures intended to substitute jail time. They are explicit in saying that the goal of these changes will be to provide support for victims and their families, with harsher penalties and fewer loopholes.

With regards to the Prosecutor’s office, the party comes out in favor of purging politics out of this important institution.

One of the first things they mention is the need to make the caseload assignment independent of outside influences. They propose an objective, semi-random system for allocating cases to prosecutors. They also propose eliminating the power of the Prosecutor General to assign prosecutors to special cases, and creating special Prosecutor’s Offices for things such as organized crime, corruption and crimes against private property.

Primero Justicia proposes increasing the number of Prosecutor General’s offices and staffing them not only with lawyers but with psychologists, paramedics and social workers. They propose increasing the number of people on call tending to the public in 24-hour shifts. They include proposals for training staff on treating victims of crime and providing orientation. The party proposes incorporating a customer service hotline for the Prosecutor General’s office, in order to get first-hand anonymous accounts from the communities on how each office is doing its job.

Other measures include guaranteeing the autonomy of prosecutors and shielding them from specific instructions on how to act emanating from the Prosecutor General and others in the justice system. They also propose raising the salaries of prosecutors and implementing a system of rewards based on performance and background.

The party pledges to raise the allocation of funds for Prosecutor’s offices, define the desired profile for Prosecutors and opening public contests to fill vacant positions. Finally, they promise to invest in improving the physical infrastructure of Prosecutor’s offices.

The tired revolution

Katy says: - Lucía sends me this link to the latest New Yorker piece on Chávez, written by the legendary Jon Lee Anderson. What a disappointing read.

The article is lazy and redundant. It contains no new information, nothing we haven't heard or read before. The people he interviews - Teodoro Petkoff, Nicolás Maduro, Bill Richardson, Piedad Córdoba, Chávez himself - say little that is particularly interesting. Even the new bits he includes - such as his insider's peek at Chávez's plane, or his first-hand account of the Santo Domingo summit - manage to come across as only mildly interesting.

When a great writer with a ton of access and significant time on his hands can't write a fresh, well-written article on someone like Hugo Chávez, I can only conclude that what Anderson saw was a tired revolution. It's as if he couldn't muster up enough inspiration, he couldn't find an interesting angle to latch on to, and this can only mean that the revolution itself has stopped being interesting.

Like an old magician trying the same old tricks, the Fat Man in the Palace is out of magic, and the article reflects it.