Another milestone for Venezuelan musicians

Juan Cristobal says: - The New York Times is reporting that Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero will perform in Barack Obama's inaugural swearing-in ceremony, alongside Yitzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma and Anthony McGill.

Wow. Make us proud, Gabriela.

The campaign is under way

Juan Cristobal says: - Here are three posters I got today related to the upcoming "No" campaign.

Petrostates for Beginners

Quico says: Cross posted from HuffoLand...

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Chavez After the Oil Boom

It's not easy being a progressive Venezuelan opposed to the Chavez Regime. A lot of my leftie friends in the US look south and see a fresh, irreverent if slightly over-the-top leader sticking it to the man and fighting for Latin America's poor...understandably, they can't help but wonder if I haven't gone all Wall Street Journal on them when I voice my rejection of his regime.

"But I heard the poor are doing much better than they were before, and they really love him," they'll say to me, struggling to grasp how an apparently sane person could fail to grasp the romance, the heady excitement of seeing a popularly elected leader fighting back against the years of Washington Consensus crap imposed on Latin America by the neoliberal elite.

I've been down this road many times before, and I know the conversation that follows won't be easy, because the misunderstandings about Venezuela are deep.

For one thing, most Americans remain under the impression that Venezuela is, basically, a Latin American country. It isn't. We are, first and foremost, a petrostate. - a place where the government gets to pump massive amounts of money more or less directly out of the ground.

Nothing about Venezuela makes sense until you've worked out the deep implications of that one, basic fact. Deep down, Venezuela has much more in common with Algeria, Iran, or Russia than with Colombia, Brazil or Cuba.

For starters, we experience the oil cycle upside down.

Take the 1970s. Folks in the US remember them as the bad times: gas shortages, inflation, unemployment and the general, society-wide funk that came to be known as the age of malaise. Your oil crisis, though, was our oil boom: we remember the 70s as the time we hit the jackpot, an age when a huge amount of free money suddenly flooded the country, setting off a collective spasm of high-intensity shopping the likes of which Venezuelans had never seen before. (Needless to say, our president was intensely popular back then, too!)

The flip side came in the 90s, when Americans enjoyed an economic boom made possible, among other things, by dirt cheap energy, which, on our end, led to a string of bank failures and a decade-long recession that left the country in the mood for radical change.

At the start of this decade, the pendulum swung again, bringing yet another oil boom which you'll recall mostly in the form of the murderous prices you were paying at the pump last summer. From our end, though, the last five years have been a time when the gods of global energy decided to smile upon Venezuela again, sending the government on a breathless spending spree, and setting off yet another country-wide consumption boom, with unemployment falling, wages rising, and smiles all around.

The twist is that, this time, the oil bonanza happened with a self-described Marxist revolutionary in power, a guy who claims to be locked in a mortal fight with global capitalism but leads a state run by a gaggle of platinum-card toting socialists.

All of which has contributed immeasurably to the weird sense of dislocation of Venezuela in the last few years, an era of revolutionary slogans painted on the sides of massive new shopping malls where the people whose job it is to administer the Revolutionary Bolivarian Socialist state think nothing of plunking down a couple of thousand dollars for a plasma-screen TV before heading off for a bit of lunch in an LA-style sushi bar where obscenely overpriced bits of fish flown in from the other side of the globe get washed down with $4 bottles of Corona.

It's this oil fueled spending boom that accounts for the popularity of the Chavez regime, and there's nothing progressive about it. All the boom-time spending ended up sloshing all around the Venezuelan economy, where it set off a dynamic the world had surely never seen before: a kind of Marxist Trickle-Down Economics. In the end, for all the rambling ideological speeches, the Chavez boom is just a tweaked rerun of the 70s for us, with vastly different ideological muzak but social and political consequences that are pretty much the same.

The irrelevance of Chavez's ideology to his popularity comes into sharpest relief when seen in international context. In fact, just about every petro-state has seen its government's popularity spike over the last five years, whether those governments are marxist (like ours), nationalist (as in Russia), Islamic (think Iran) or, even, genocidal (Sudan). The political economy of petro-spending binges doesn't actually hinge on the ideological label a governments prefers to slap on its own lapel: in the end, oil goes out, money comes in, stuff gets imported, jobs are created, people get happy, leaders get popular.

It is a fact that Chavez has been far less repressive than his hyper-radical rhetoric might lead you to fear. To me, though, the measure of Chavez's tolerance has been the scale of the oil revenue stream. Chavez grasped all along that there was no point in jailing masses of people, censoring newspapers and generally playing the highly damaging role of repressive ogre when he had enough cash on hand to co-opt the co-optable and bankrupt the rest. It's a trick the Chavez regime has mastered with chilling speed, and one that has allowed it to avoid the reputation costs of repression without really having to compromise its increasingly tight grip on society.

Now, though, the credit has crunched and the oil market's gone off a cliff. Venezuelan oil, which was selling for $129 a barrel just five months ago, fetched just $31 at the end of last week. The revolutionary elite is now having to face wrenching spending choices. Suddenly, not every labor union's wage demands can be met, not every interest group's aspirations can be underwritten, and the feel-good factor the oil boom once generated is dissipating with alarming speed.

For years now, what traditional autocrats achieved with the gun and the gallows, Chavez has been achieving with his bulging pocketbook. That's not going to be possible for much longer. The quiescent, satisfied society of the Marxist trickle-down era risks being replaced with something much more fractious, where interest groups fight one another for their share of a fast shrinking resource pie and none of the shortcuts for batting down dissent are available. It's a situation Chavez has never had to face, and the temptation to maintain control through force will be strong. Very strong.

Will Chavez resist it? Stay tuned...

Words, meet my stomach

Juan Cristobal says: - "Why no, officer, I have never had anything but complimentary things to say about Yon Goicoechea, student leader turned superstar turned member of Primero Justicia. After all, I belong to Primero Justicia and we've always been interested in Goicoechea joining us. It provides us a boost in the arm, raises our profile and helps send out the message to the younger generation that we are open to their ideas. Is there a bigger fish that an opposition party can aspire to?

What? My post tearing him down a little bit? Well, that was just a ploy to get him to join. Remember in high school when you acted aloof in front of the girl you were really interested in, just so she would notice you? Well, this was just the same. Tough love, if you will.

There really is no debate between the opposition at large and the political parties. After all, we're on the same side - always have been, always will, right? Dígalo ahí, compañerito."

In Progress

Quico says: Sorry for the hiatus everyone: Juan Cristobal and I are busy working on the soon-to-be-traditional Year in Review Post. We're having to go back over everything we've written all year, and as you can imagine, it's pretty time consuming.

I hope you'll agree it's worth it. Among other things, it'll help create a kind of usable, chronological Table of Contents to our now sprawling archive.

For now, you can amuse yourself looking back on the 2007 Year in Review post: this year's will be formatted pretty much the same way.

I want that sign for Christmas

Juan Cristobal says: - Things outgoing Metropolitan Mayor Juan Barreto left behind ...

If you want to read more about the "transition" (i.e. destruction) in the Metropolitan Mayor's office, this story from El Universal, along with this other one, are not to be missed.

Finally, here is how chavistas decorated the place to receive Ledezma. Charming.

They chant not to cry

Juan Cristobal says: - A couple of days ago, the National Assembly began "debating" Chavez's proposed amendment to the Constitution. In a refreshing moment of honesty, the entire gallery, the people's representatives, nearly all of them chavistas, began chanting Chavez's signature motto, the whole raison d'etre of his government: Uh, Ah, Chavez no se va!

It's easy feel sad about this and decry how unbelievably offensive it is. The National Assembly is the people's house, where - supposedly - all of us should have a seat at the table. And here they were, the same chavistas that once decried Primero Justicia for letting a pig loose in the debate chamber turning it into a their own little sty, complete with hysterical chants stating the obvious.

But the chanting was sad for other reasons. Deep down, a lot of these folks know they won't get reelected. Chavez will not win 100% of the Parliament's seats no matter what he says. And more and more, the odds of him winning this amendment are looking slimmer.

Hinterlaces came up with the results of a flash poll yesterday saying that support for the amendment was roughly 30%, confirming what other pollsters have been saying for months, if not years: there is simply no mood in the country for letting someone get elected indefinitely, by a two-to-one margin. Hell, the Liberator himself warned against it centuries ago!

Chavez has won a lot of elections before, surely he can turn these awful numbers around, right?

Not likely. The gap appears too big, and if the last few weeks are any indication, his message is falling flat.

It's all about Chavez, all about his power, his role in the Revolution, his essentialism. His whole shtick about him being in the hold of the people is ridiculous, and people are not buying it. Teodoro Petkoff, who has been on fire as of late, brilliantly labeled him "Hugolatra", a term that perfectly captures the mood of how a majority of voters see this latest move.

One rule of politics is that it's really hard to get elected when you only talk about yourself and not about the voters. How does this amendment solve people's day-to-day problems? How does it help us stave off the looming economic catastrophe? Good luck trying to spin that.

Indeed, Chavez isn't going anywhere. He's in your living room every few hours. He's in the supermarkets, looking out from billboards, flying his super-luxury jet to save the planet. No, he isn't going anywhere... for now. But his term has an expiration date, and there's no telling what the implications would be for his government were he to lose this referendum badly.

These people know it, and it terrifies them. So they chant.

A great Venezuelan gets a big award

Juan Cristobal says: - Loyal reader Kolya gave us a heads-up a few weeks ago and I felt it was worth spreading the word: one of the recipients of this year's TED award is our compatriota, Jose Antonio Abreu.

Now, if you're a techno-geek, you know all about the TED award. If you're not, but you have friends who are (like me), you're vaguely familiar with it. Basically, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. It's a very exclusive Annual Conference where three people are honored. They get $100,000 and are granted "one wish to change the world."

The honorees usually give lectures that are broad-ranging, visionary and revealing. Check out Bill Clinton's conference here or Bono's here. In fact, all of the conferences are available online, and they are all very interesting.

Abreu, an economist and a musician, is a man who has almost single-handedly committed himself to one project, to one idea: bringing classical musical education to hundreds of thousands of poor Venezuelan children. His star pupil is Gustavo Dudamel, current music director for the Los Angeles Philarmonic and a musical superstar.

Abreu has, literally, changed thousands of lives for the better. How many of our paisanos can we say that about?

Bravo, maestro. Well deserved.

If the shoe fits...

Juan Cristobal says: - Behold, the latest fashion trend of Venezuela's socialists, designed in the U.S.A., made in Ecuador. No report yet on whether the PSUV is paying Converse any royalties.

Going to next week's march in support of class struggle but you don't know what to wear? Look no further.

El problema es saber cómo quererlo sin que se arreche

Quico says: Once every long while, a piece in Spanish strikes me as so incisive, so well-judged, so indispensable, that I'll bit the bullet and translate the thing.

This latest one is by Laureano Márquez. The original in Spanish is here.

Chill, dude!!!
by Laureano Márquez

Could it be the water? Some medicine that's not settling with him? Is somebody checking up on that? Is he eating alright?

I'm seriously starting to think the Agency has somebody very close to him who is hurting him. Seriously. This isn't normal. Even you, my dear friends on the other side, must have realized something is happening to him. He's not ok. This "decisive victory" has really left him worse for wear. Defeat might have been better; another win like that will be the end of him.

I imagine folks on the other side are becoming aware that somebody in such a state is a danger not just to those who oppose him (who, in any case, already knew what they were in for) but fundamentally to those who care for him (who haven't realized it yet.)

The problem is figuring out how to love him without setting him off. I imagine the tortured calculus they must go through, scrutinizing his face to try to guess on which side of the bed he woke up that day: "What if he thinks I'm sucking up too much because I'm hiding something?...or that I'm not sucking up enough because I'm going dissident?...how to accept his support without being crushed by it?...am I decoding the meta-messages right?...have I gone too far, or not far enough?..."

In the end, that's no life, no matter how much cash you might be sitting on. The stress must be terrible: how would you know when he's going to fly off the handle at you? Spending your life waiting for the other shoe to drop must be simply hideous. There's no way to sleep peacefully knowing that, on any given night, he might pick up the phone and call you in the middle of a bout of creative insomnia just to chew you out, to tip the dump-truck of his failures over on you.

It might just be an ancestral hatred of Christmas. It puts some people in a bad mood. The ways of the subconscious are strange. In my case, for instance, I hate cheese because, when I was little, they used to beat me with a mozzarella stick. If I ever make it to power I will ban cheese in all its forms. Maybe this page of the calendar is just no good for him.

Those closest to him should try to lighten the load for him. Do secret santa with him. A year end office party...something, really, anything!

I know that these humble thoughts don't reach so high up, but in any case, reaching out is never wrong: calm down, daddy-o! Relax. Life is short and lovely. Christmas is a time full of wonderful things: toys for the kids, family gatherings, messages of peace and brotherhood between people. Believe it or not, people want just a bit of tranquillity over these next few weeks. Work out the transition, you don't have so long anymore. Be happy and let us be happy...but more than anything, chill, dude! And don't play dumb...

I'm talking to your, George W. Bush, did you hear?

Electoral headaches

Juan Cristobal says: - Possible scenarios, even if we win the vote on the Constitutional Amendment.

Scenario 1: As explained here, Chavez loses the Referendum. Three months later, he brings it up again. If he fails, he asks again in three months. He keeps going and going until he gets his way.

Scenario 2: Chavez loses the Referendum. He resigns. According to the Constitution, the Vice-president takes office, and in thirty days new elections for President are called. The winner finishes the current term. Chavez runs again, is elected, and he claims he can then run again in 2012 because, technically, he is in his first term of office. The TSJ agrees.

I get a migraine from just thinking about this stuff.

"Fascist" is the new "pitiyanqui"

Quico says: I sometimes think you could write a history of the Chávez era just by tracking the buzzwords Chávez has used over the years to deride his opponents. Every year or two, the guy seems to change up, fine-tuning his messaging by picking a new slur and running it into the ground like a bad SNL catchphrase.

The table of contents of that book would look something like:

Chapter 1: Puntofijistas (1998-2000)
Chapter 2: Escuálidos (2001-2002)
Chapter 3: Golpistas (2003-2004)
Chapter 4: Apátridas (2005-2007)
Chapter 5: Pitiyanquis (2008)
Chapter 6: Fascistas (2008 and beyond)

It's a progression that, in its own way, tells the story of chavismo's ideological psychopathology, an ever morphing catalogue of demons whose names change to suit the political demands of the moment.

Way back in the day, the fight was against the old Punto Fijo elite - so that was a pretty obvious one. As the opposition made its first, tentative steps towards getting organized, the target morphed, and the guy started making fun of our, at the time, paltry support. After the April Crisis in 2002, we got the most ironic slam of them all, kettle-and-pot-wise, as we became coupsters and, all of a sudden, being a coupster became the worst possible thing a human being could be. Later, as Chávez got more into the anti-imperialism shtick, the big charge became our lack of loyalty to the fatherland. By the start of this year, he figured out an even more direct way to paint us as CIA lackeys in a single word.

Each time, the enemy changes without anyone quite explicitly acknowledging it has changed, and the fight goes pretty much as before. After all, Eurasia has always been at war with the pitiyanquis.

Now, he's changing up again. Call it the Obama Effect. The guy can see that, come January 20th, linking us to the US is going to be a lot less potent than it has been, so he's throwing caution to the wind. All of a sudden, we've become Fascists.

I think we all know there's only one place he can go from here...within a year or two, the guy's bound to break the one universally recognized law he's actually sort of respected so far: Godwin's Law.

At that point, in accordance with recognized custom, the Supreme Tribunal will have no choice but to step in, declare that he's automatically lost the argument, and boot him from power for good.

When Quico met Arianna

Juan Cristobal says: - Let's give a big shout-out to our very own Quico, who is now blogging about Venezuela in The Huffington Post's new "World" section. Read his first entry here.

Fellow bloggers include Queen Noor of Jordan, John Kerry, Johann Hari and Joseph Nye, so it's going to require a massive effort on the part of the rest of us to keep Quico's ego in check.

Bits & pieces

Juan Cristobal says: - A few disjointed bits of information on the transfer of regional power from chavismo to opposition mayors and governors.

- I've been talking to people involved in several transition teams, and the stories shed a light on the nature of chavista bureaucracy. Several sources in different teams confirm many in the outgoing flock are looting laptops, desks and even staplers. Schools were closed after the election and, in some cases, the new people still can't find the keys. Vacations have been decreed without further notice. A relative of mine got a call from someone selling him a laptop belonging to the Maracaibo Mayor's office for a few hundred bucks. Add to that the fact that many of the employees have either quit or are unwilling to work for an opposition administration, and you have a pretty grim picture. Though it's not been uncooperative everywhere (apparently, things in Municipio Sucre have not been bad), it's been pretty bad overall.

- My sources in the transition for the Miranda state government asked some of the people in the outgoing administration what sorts of social programs and guidelines they had at the state level. They said they had none. When pressed about where they got their policy guidelines, they simply shrugged and said, "Alo, Presidente. What mi Comandante says, that's what we implement."

- The federal government has stripped the posts won by the opposition of many of its responsibilities at the last minute. The Caracas Mayor's office, for instance, lost most of its schools and hospitals, although I hear that may not be a bad thing because, with the schools and hospitals, the government inherits the enormous debt and payroll expenses.

- Today, I'll be on the radio, 1pm Eastern time in the US. Tune in here, or here. Chamo Times is the name of the program.

My oil minister went to Cairo, and all I got was a lousy Constitutional Amendment

Juan Cristobal says: - One has to wonder if the decision to recklessly plunge ahead with the Constitutional Amendment had anything to do with the disastrous emergency OPEC meeting held in Cairo last weekend. According to reports, the countries could not agree to reduce output amid plunging demand for oil and tanking prices.

This New York Times report talks about the group having a "frayed message," saying there are "unmistakable signs that the group was struggling to maintain unity." It goes on to say,

Signs of tensions remain. The Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, are unwilling to approve further trims before other members follow through on previous commitments to reduce output, particularly Iran and Venezuela.

Analysts said the Saudis wanted to show just how serious it was about all cartel members sharing the burden. Even as the Saudis appear ready to play hardball, OPEC is laying the groundwork for a more coordinated approach.

The US, Germany and Britain are officially in a recession, and the Saudis are not playing nice. When your cartel is in disarray and your customers are finding it tough to make ends meet, the situation is serious. Chavez realized this and came to the conclusion that, when it came to the Referendum, it was now or never. Hence, the timing of the announcement and, more importantly, the haste.

PS.- Don't miss this fantastic op-ed piece from Teodoro Petkoff. Outstanding.

The Chávez Minority

Quico says: Here's one to mull: What kind of person votes for a PSUV candidate for governor, but not on the PSUV ticket?

It's a question that'll be ever more relevant in the coming weeks because, while PSUV candidates won 52.7% of the vote for governor 10 days ago, Chávez's party ticket got just 46.7% of the vote.

We're talking about the 20% of voters in Lara who backed Henry Falcon, but not the PSUV ticket. We're talking about the 10% of voters in Monagas who backed El Gato Briceño, but not PSUV. And the 7% of Aragüeños who voted for Rafael Isea off the PSUV ticket.

Nationwide, 6% of voters backed PSUV candidates but not on the PSUV ticket. Why would you do that?

To me, it's clear: 1 out of every 9 chavista voters wanted to make a statement. They wanted to vote for Chávez's candidates, but that doesn't mean they wanted to vote for Chávez. The gap between the PSUV candidates' vote and the PSUV ticket's vote is the measure of "Chavismo Lite". These are people who made a very clear statement: they're not about to write Chávez a blank check.

So, come referendum time, what's the relevant metric for Chávez's hardcore support? 52.7%? Or 46.7%? You tell me...

Marta, my muse

"I don't believe that democratic chavismo in any way agrees with these tactics, but the important thing is that they try to prevent such attacks."

-Marta Colomina, sounding almost blasé minutes
after her home was attacked by chavista extremists.

Juan Cristobal says: - With the Regional Elections over and the adrenaline rush subsiding, I've been finding it hard to post these last few days. December is here, after all, and who wouldn't rather think about Christmas than Chávez?

But the big man is having none of it. Sounding halfway between desperate and deranged, he's hinting that the Referendum on his indefinite re-election could come as soon as January.

Another election? So soon? Do I really need to drag myself away from the Christmas decorations and blog about all the ins and outs of yet another vote to cement his quest for perpetual power again?!

I tried to find the words, but just couldn't find the will to blog. As the great Muhammad Ali said, I got nothing.

Until today, that is, when a bomb landed in Marta Colomina's front yard.

Yes, Marta Colomina is still around, ever the journalist-cum-rabble-rouser, just like she was in the super-polarized days of 2002, when she carried the flag for partisan journalism and was planted front and center in the opposition movement's hero roster.

You wouldn't know it, though, because she long ago stopped being the cultural phenomenon she once was. A lot of water has passed under the river, as my dad cheekily likes to say, but she's still there. She got fired from Televen due to government pressure, but that didn't keep her from fighting the good fight, as I guess the rest of us do in our own little ways.

Well, today Marta got a little visit from the extremist chavista gang Colectivo La Piedrita, and it wasn't sticks and stones they were throwing, but rather tear gas canisters and pamphlets declaring her a "military target."

Suddenly, somehow, it all made sense to me: What Chávez wants is to run the old 2002 playbook on us again!

What else are the Colomina attack, the ridiculous claims that Governors-elect are doing away with the Misiones, the threats against Globovisión and against people like Manuel Rosales but a transparent ploy to bring back the climate of superheated political conflict we had back in 2002?

The game-plan is pretty clear, when you think of it. Chávez figures his best chance of winning a referendum is to stir the pot heavily. Why else would he bring back the "Uh, Ah, Chávez no se va"? As far as I know, nobody is seriously asking him to leave.

That doesn't matter, though, because he knows that to win the last war all over again, he needs to provoke a "fascist" reaction from our side.

But here's the beautiful thing: it's not working!

When even an erstwhile CNR leader and know-nothing antichavista extremist like Antonio Ledezma, now mayor of Caracas, respectfully asks to meet with the President and to work with him, you know we've turned a page. When even Colomina, doyenne of the hot-head opposition, sounds cooler than the other side of the pillow as she talks about an attack on her own home, you know the opposition has finally, finally wised up to the games Chávez plays.

So he will huff and puff and channel H.G. Wells, but it takes two to do the 2002 tango, and right now Chávez just doesn't have a partner. At the rate we're going, he's going to have to pay military officers to go camp out on Plaza Altamira and declare that they're rebelling against him (don't be surprised when it happens).

Without confrontation, without that electric "us versus them" feeling in the air, without going all out and saying that his is a revolution "of rich against poor", Chávez got nothin', too. In fact, reliable sources told me today that the last time Datanálisis asked about indefinite reelection they found only 25% of respondents in favor.

That's not to say he can't pull it off, just that his chances are looking slimmer than ever. Venezuelans are exhausted with all his imaginary battles, and the opposition has learned some important lessons. We're through with the casquillo diet. 2002 is soooo six years ago.

"Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"

Quico says: Yup, they're definitely doing this...

Surprise, surprise: Chávez wants a mulligan on indefinite re-election

Quico says: Bring. It. On!


Update: The more I think about it, the more I think Chávez is caught in a trap of his own making here.

Again, it's the oil cycle, stupid! He's doing this at the end of the oil boom, with the economy already overheated, inflation pretty much out of control, and public revenue drying up.

Chávez's instincts will be to beg, borrow or print the money he needs to ramp up public spending ahead of the vote. It's the only way he knows how to get NiNis and moderate chavistas to turn out and vote for a proposal they've never been crazy about.

Trouble is, ramping up public spending in an overheated economy where inflation is already out of control doesn't actually increase people's purchasing power: it just feeds straight into higher prices!

The populist spending spree tactics of yesteryear just won't work under these conditions. NiNis and moderate chavistas are not going to support a proposal that's all about his problems, not theirs, at a time when inflation is fast clawing back all the gains they've made in the last five years.

It's a loser, this proposal. Remember where you read it first.

The Leader of the Opposition

Quico says: You thought Chávez was a handful running the government?

Just wait till you see him running the opposition.

The Urban-Rural Split in Numbers

Quico says: So I wanted to take a more systematic look at the Urban-Rural split in Sunday's elections. Here's what I did:

Using data from the 2000 Census (out of date, but the best we have) - I made a simple ranking of municipios according to the percentage of its inhabitants living in apartments. I think that's a reasonable proxy for the "urbanness" of a place - certainly, it's the best we can do with Census data.

With that list, it was easy to figure out that half of the Venezuelan population lives in 52 municipios where more than 6% of residents live in apartments, and the other half live in the remaining 286 municipios, where less than 6% of the residents call an apartment home. Lets call those first 52 municipios the Urban Half, the remaining 286 the Rural Half.

(Caveat: this is an approximation. As everyone knows, Venezuela is about 85% urban, so the "rural" half still contains places like San Juan de los Morros that a geographer would probably call urban: for our purposes, all that matters is that places like that are "less urban than the place where the average Venezuelan lives.")

Next, I made this spreadsheet looking at the results of races for mayor in the Urban Half.

First things first: the opposition won just 16 of those 52 municipios, while PSUV won 36. Overall, PSUV-backed candidates took 46.5% of the vote in the Urban Half, the main opposition candidates took 44.6%. Chavista dissidents (PPT, PCV and MEP candidates in places where they weren't backing the PSUV guy) got 1.8% and microparties got 1.7% of the vote.

But - and here's the dousy - Opposition Disunity candidates took 5.4% of the vote in the Urban Half. Enough to doom us in more than a few municipios.

Nonetheles, in the Urban Half, anti-Chávez candidates won more votes than chavista candidates.

Lump the PPTistas and commies in with PSUV, and the oppo disunity guys with the mainline oppo, and the election in the Urban Half of the country came out like this:


This next part is more approximative.

It would've been way too time-consuming to calculate another spreadsheet for 286 bumf*#k nowhere rural counties, so I cheated. I subtracted each side's urban votes from its nationwide vote for governor, and called the difference its rural vote. For comparability's sake, I also chucked out the microparties.

That yielded this rough-and-ready estimate of the Urban-Rural split:

Chavismo's entire advantage is down to a better than 3-to-2 split in the Rural Half!

Or, coming at it from a different angle, 60% of opposition votes come from the Urban Half, while just 47% of chavismo's votes nationwide come from the 52 most urban municipios.

Which, I still think, pretty much tells the story of this election.

The Battle for City Hall

Quico says: A while ago, I identified 13 urban municipios the opposition should target in this year's election. I picked out big urban municipios that fulfilled two conditions:

- The mayor elected in 2004 was chavista
- The municipality voted No in the 2007 referendum

These are places where the opposition should've expected big gains. So how did it go?

Not well. We took only four of the 13, lost eight, and one (Maracay) is still in limbo.

The silver lining is that, buoyed by big wins in Maracaibo and Petare, we did get more votes than PSUV in these 13 municipios, edging them out 1.14 million votes to 1.05 million votes. On the other hand, our guys couldn't match the No's performance in last year's referendum anywhere.

Here's the breakdown.

• Mérida City, Mérida:

AD's Lester Rodríguez won with 51.9% of the vote against the PSUV guy's 37%. The communists got 3.5% here. A win, but hardly overwhelming considering we'd gotten 66% for the No side a year ago.

• Maracaibo, Zulia:

Manuel Rosales crushed the PSUV guy 60% to 39.6%. Even so, Rosales underperformed the No vote in Maracaibo by 2.4 points.

• Petare, Miranda:

In the sweetest win of the night, Primero Justicia's Carlos Ocariz came in at 55.6% to Jesse Chacón's 43.9%. The No side had gotten 61.6%, though.

• El Tigre, Anzoátegui:

PSUV's Carlos Hernández squeaked out a win over the Podemos guy, Ernesto Paraqueima, by 48.6% to 47.0%. Disunity cost us this race: PSUV's margin of victory was 1,082 votes, while Bandera Roja ran a no-hoper who got 1,087 votes!

• Coro, Falcón:

PSUV's Oswaldo Leon had no trouble crushing a Copei lady 64% to 35%.

• Puerto La Cruz, Anzoátegui:

PSUV had its own Stalin in Puerto La Cruz, last name Fuentes, who beat out the oppo guy 52.1% to 46.3%. Last year, the No side got 55.2% out there.

• Barquisimeto, Lara:

Amalia Saez rode Henry Falcón's considerable coattails to a PSUV victory here by 55.4% to 41.2% over Causa R's Alfredo Ramos. Marisabel Rodríguz could manage just 2% of the vote in a city that voted 56.5% against letting her ex get re-elected forever.

• Barcelona, Anzoátegui:

Chavismo ran two candidates but won anyway, with PSUV's Inés Sifontes getting 46.7% of the vote, ahead of the AD guy's 43.4%, while a MEP guy took 7.1% - all in a town that voted 53.7% against constitutional reform.

• Maracay, Aragua:

Primero Justicia is asking for a re-count of paper ballots after their guy, Richard Mardo, came in just 100-some-odd votes behind the PSUV guy. Both were on 45.7%. A PPT guy took 4.6% out there. Last year, Maracay was 53.7% No.

• Cumaná, Sucre:

Cumaná was AD's gift to Chávez Sunday night. PSUV's Rafael Acuña took it with 47.8% of the vote, with Podemos's Hernán Nuñez in second on 36.5%. AD's guy got 13.6% of the vote. Buena esa, compañeritos.

• Los Teques, Miranda:

Another squeaker: PSUV's Alirio Mendoza got in on 50% of the vote, with Primero Justicia's Rómulo Herrera second on 48.7%. Los Teques voted 52.9% against constitutional reform.

• Guacara, Carabobo:

PSUV's guy won comfortably: 52.3% to Proyecto Venezuela's guy's 43.5%. The No side won the referendum last year with 51.8% here.

• Ciudad Bolívar, Bolívar:

A rare win for Causa R: Victor Fuenmayor won with 46.3% of the vote to PSUV's guy's 45.2% of the vote. PPT's María Manrique cost PSUV this one: she took 2.3% of the vote and swung Angostura to the opposition, in a place where the No side had 50.3% last year.

The long and the short of it is: we're competitive in most urban areas, but hardly dominant there. Our guys (and, sad to say, our candidates in these towns were all guys) underperformed the No in every one of these municipalities. And disunity's still costing us in places where it never should've been an issue.

The Truth About Petare

Quico says: Petare parish, (in Sucre Municipality of Miranda State) has more registered voters than any other parroquia in Venezuela: 310,430. The barrio it hosts is the biggest in Venezuela. By some accounts, it's the biggest shantytown in all of South America.

Petare is also a state-of-mind, a kind of by-word for all that afflicts urban Venezuela, a place of immense symbolic resonance.

The other day, Chávez blamed PSUV's loss in Sucre municipality on the rich, racist oligarchs that infest the district. While some other parroquias within Sucre municipality do have important middle class - though hardly rich - areas, Petare parish itself is pretty much one giant slum.

The truth is, on Sunday, Henrique Capriles beat Diosdado Cabello Petare by 102,361 votes to 79,436.

Note: (The charts that accompanied this post have gone bye-bye while I get a chance to correct them...)

The Cartogram

Quico says: Lets face it: the standard results map is depressing to look at. Just too much red. Of course, most of those red states have more cows than people. Make the size of each state proportional to its actual (human) population, and you get:

Where Distrito Capital is shown half-and-half since PSUV controls the municipality and the opposition the Alcaldía Mayor.

Isn't that better?

Here's the same thing shown on a chromatic scale linked to PSUV's vote share, ranging from rojo-rojito to a paler shade of oligarch:

[A massive hat-tip to Dónall Ó Murchadha, who put his superior GIS skills to good use making this for us!]

A massive data-trove from Sunday's election

Quico says: Longtime reader Abelardo Mieres has done it again! Over the last few days, Mieres has grabbed CNE's website by the lapels and shaken it virulently until it gave up this massive trove of election data, all in convenient Excel format.

What you get:

1. Results for Governor by Candidate At the State Level
2. Results for Governor by Candidate At the Municipal Level
3. Results for Governor by Candidate At the Parish Level
4. Results for Governor by Party At the State Level
5. Results for Governor by Party At the Municipal Level
6. Results for Governor by Party At the Parish Level
7. Results for Mayor by Candidate at the Municipal Level
8. Results for Mayor by Party at the Municipal Level
9. Results for Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas by Candidate At the Municipal Level
10. Results for Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas by Party At the Municipal Level
11. A National Overview of results in Governors' Races + the Race for Municipio Libertador in Caracas
    
12. All the associated "Fichas Técnicas" (Registered voters, total votes, valid votes, null votes, turnout, etc.)

Download the whole thing here.

One quick, interesting result from Abelardo's work: a staggering 223 parties nominated at least one person for governor somewhere, but just 10 parties got more than 1% of the nationwide popular vote:

Click to enlarge

The first thing that jumps out at you here is how fragmented party allegiances are in Venezuela. The top 10 parties account for 83.6% of the nationwide votes for governor, meaning that a still significant 16.4% of Venezuelans voted for microparties that got less than 1% of the vote nationally. A staggering 413,000 people voted for one of the 165 nanoparties that each got less than 0.1% of the nationwide vote!!

The second thing that jumps out at you is that AD is still the only opposition party with a genuinely national presence: all the other anti-Chávez parties got results in their home regions only.

And the final, belief beggaring thing, is that the Tupamaros - basically a leftwing paramilitary gang founded to carry out extrajudicial killings of neighborhood thugs in western Caracas - are now one of the main parties in Venezuela, larger than such historical parties as Causa R, MAS, MEP, etc! Crazy stuff...

Looked at in aggregate, the party breakdown looks like this:

Julio Cesar: Show me the actas!

Quico says: It wouldn't be a Venezuelan election if nobody was crying fraud. This time it's chavista dissident extraordinaire and scourge of the Chávez clan in Barinas Julio Cesar Reyes, who says that while 99% of actas (official tallies) were electronically transmitted from Barinas back to CNE headquarters in Caracas, only 90% were reported in the first official CNE bulletin. Reyes says that counting the missing 9% of actas would show him in the lead.

Thankfully, for all its many, many faults, CNE's electronic voting system does contain an auditing mechanism that would make any numerical fraud very, very evident. The system generates not one, not two, but three independent tallies: a center-by-center machine tally, a hand-counted audit tally and the central tally calculated by CNE in Caracas. Witnesses from each campaign are entitled to receive copies of the first two on a center-by-center basis; the third is made public online.

If the three sets of tallies match (triple congruence), there's really no credible way to claim fraud.

Just as a refresher, lets review how the auditing mechanism works.

(These slides are just reproduced from a post a few days after the 2D referendum...seems like I end up needing them after every election.)






Basically, it's very simple, Julio Cesar: if you can show, acta en mano, that there is no Triple Congruence between Audit Tallies, CNE Tallies, and Machine Tallies, you have a serious case to make. If you can't, you don't.

Your witnesses were entitled to copies of the Machine and Audit Tallies at each and every voting center in Barinas: if you had your act together, you have them in your possession right now.

So, no te nos vayas por la tangente. Don't tell me about the actas...show them to me. Just get on a scanner and get to it! Which specific voting machines are we talking about? From which specific voting centers? At which specific escuelitas rurales? We need specifics here, not arm waving.

If the 9% of actas not reflected in the First Bulletin really do put you in the lead, you'd better produce the goods.

A fraud allegation, acta en mano, would be absolutely devastating. Without it, it's worse than a waste of time: it's a credibility black hole. Loose talk of election fraud with no evidence to back it up has cost the anti-Chávez movement way too much in the past for us to continue to tolerate it.

Ya basta con la habladera de paja: show me the actas!!

Boy, that took work!

Quico says: It took some doing, but in the end a four-way opposition split handed Valencia's City Hall to chavismo's Edgardo Parra - and even then, by less than 2%!

Good going, guys...Operación Alegría indeed.

Guatepeor update: CNE has PSUV winning in Maracay by 151 votes...oy vey!

Carajo, No Escrutan!

Quico says: Friggin' CNE! I shouldn't be surprised by now, but after making such a big to-do about how the voting system is 100% electronic this time around, is there any reason why we're still waiting for results? And not just details...important posts like mayor of Maracay, Valencia and Parapara are still not up on their results website. Do electrons travel slower in Valencia than in Maracaibo?

Puzzle me this: if you click on Aragua State's Girardot Municipality (a.k.a., Maracay), you can get detailed results for the governor's race, but nothing at all for the mayor's race! What sense does that make? Same voting centers, same voters, same machines, same transmission...THEY OBVIOUSLY HAVE THE DATA! Why won't they give it up?!

Last year, on 2D, the delays were merely annoying - with the added bonus of feeding the conspiratorial fantasies of those so-inclined (I plead guilty, your honor). This year, though, real people all over the country are sitting around wondering if, come next year, they'll be mayor, assembly-member, or unemployed.

How many hundreds of millions of dollars did we spend on this boondoggle again?! For how many election cycles in a row can Tibisay Lucena get away with first telling us we have the best, most reliable, high-tech and fastest electoral system in the world and then sitting on results for hours (or days or weeks or months) on end after they've come in?

A post-mortem of my own

Juan Cristobal says: - Scattered thoughts on yesterday's election:

1. Four words: hard work pays off.
The victories by Ledezma, Rosales, Capriles, and especially Carlos Ocariz underline something the opposition should etch onto their foreheads: you can't win elections without talking to voters and working hard to earn their trust.

Ocariz has been kicking those hills for eight years. Ledezma worked hard for this election, as did Capriles, who last week even had the gall to campaign in Los Valles del Tuy, deep chavista territory. All of them carried a positive message, all of them placed the voters' concerns front and center, none of them made Chavez an issue in their campaign.

2. Liliana needs a day job.
As much as I dislike her, it was painful to see Liliana Hernandez come in fourth in Chacao, after Grateron, Muchacho and, get this, the PSUV candidate. That's just wrong. Finishing behind the chavista in Chacao is like a horse coming in after the ambulance.

Hernandez belongs in the National Assembly fighting with chavistas, not in some mayor's post where she actually has to feign empathy for people's concerns and solve problems. It just doesn't suit her.

3. The parties that matter.
The opposition showed that it's really UNT, PJ and the Copei/PV axis. Ledezma and Morel Rodriguez are one-man political parties, they really belong in UNT, it would make everyone's life simpler.

4. The parties that have stopped mattering.
AD, MAS, PODEMOS, La Causa R, Convergencia, PPT - all vestigial wings. Good riddance.

5. Message to chavismo: moderate or become irrelevant.
Who were the big winners in this election on the government's side? Henry Falcon, Tarek William Saab, Marcos Diaz Orellana, Rafael Isea. All moderates (insofar as a chavista can be moderate) and, except for Saab, relatively new faces.

After ten years in power, chavistas need to renew their ranks and go for moderates who can actually deliver. Because what this election was about was efficiency in providing local services, as all regional elections should be.

6. God-given vacation.
After yesterday's humiliating defeat, one has to wonder what the future holds for Diosdado Cabello. I think he's a lock for an Ambassadorship. At any rate, his slim chances of succeeding Chavez in 2012 crumbled like the hills of Baruta last week.

7-I'll trade you my Velasquez for your Mardo.
People criticized Julio Borges for not backing Andres Velasquez in Bolivar. They may have a point. I think the real reason PJ was backing Rojas in Bolivar (a Podemos guy) was as in exchange for Podemos' support in the Maracay mayor's position, a city where Podemos has solid machinery and where PJ's Richard Mardo is expected to win. Hats off to Borges for pulling this off and broadening his party's appeal beyond Miranda.

8. Re-election now.
It's clear Chavez doesn't have the votes to try and reform the Constitution so he can run again in 2012. And with the price of oil tanking, the longer he waits, the less resources he'll have to keep clients satisfied and fund his electoral machine.

Launching the reform proposal now would be absolutely crazy, but waiting would be even worse for his chances. Expect Chavez to announce it in the coming days.

9. Medvedev is Russian for "quítate-tu-pa-poneme-yo."
With inner-circle chavistas losing yesterday and chavista moderates winning, the race to succeed Hugo Chavez in 2012 just got very interesting.

It's possible Chavez will run a flunky (Willian Lara? Carrizalez? Jorge Rodriguez?) making it clear to everyone he will remain in charge. Will it work? Stay tuned.

10. You give dissidence a bad name.
Lenny Manuitt, Julio Cesar Reyes, Bella Maria Petrizzo, get the hint: there is no dissidence in chavismo. It's either his way, or our way. Not learning this lesson in time has left you as electoral roadkill, ni chicha ni limonada, just unemployed.

Tarek, Henry and The Cat

Quico says: Here's some more Excel fun.

Last night, chavistas scored 710,336 more votes for governor than non-chavistas. Fully two-thirds of that lead came from just three states: Anzoátegui, Lara and Monagas, which Chavismo won by a combined margin of 470,715 votes.

What do the three have in common? Popular chavista governors who did not want Constitutional Reform. In fact, in last year's Constitutional Reform Referendum, the pro-Government Sí side lost those three states by a combined margin of 8,148 votes.

What that means to you is that if those states had voted last night as they did a year ago, chavismo's popular vote margin would've been 2.4%, rather than 7%.

For Chávez, it means something different. There are three simple reasons he can't stand for re-election again in 2012: Tarek, Henry and The Cat.

Geeking out with Excel

Quico says: Here's another way to slice yesterday's results: how did Chavista candidates do in comparison with the "Sí" vote from a year ago ago?

Click to enlarge.

Turns out Chavista candidates outscored the government's 2007 referendum results in 12 states. They underperformed the referendum results in 10 states and Distrito Capital.

The first thing that jumps out at you is that, while we didn't win anywhere rural, we made steady gains throughout the llanos. In fact, we made up ground in Cojedes, Guarico, Barinas, Portuguesa, and Apure compared to where we were a year ago. Yaracuy - a special case, considering the Lapi family saga - is the only Plains state where we lost ground.

But what's really interesting is that three out of the four states where chavistas outperformed the Sí side by the biggest margins are places where very popular chavista candidates got re-elected: Monagas, Anzoátegui and, most of all, Lara, where Henry Falcón got a massive 24 point edge over the "Sí" tally. Why did those three do so much better yesterday than the "Sí" did a year ago? Maybe because, a year ago, all three of them campaigned for the "No" side!

What does that tell you? That if Chávez is thinking of bringing up another constitutional reform to enshrine indefinite re-election, he's going to end up facing the same problem he had last year: popular incumbent PSUV governors mobilizing their voters against him.

The Popular Vote: Chavismo Wins (Corrected)

Quico says: Working off of CNE's first bulletin, it looks like chavismo just took more votes nationwide than we did yesterday:

I've corrected this chart to include Central Caracas only (rather than Metropolitan Caracas) in order to avoid double-counting voters in Chacao, Baruta, Petare and El Hatillo. That change adds 1.1% to PSUV's nationwide total.

State by state, it becomes clear that the huge margins PSUV ran up on us in rural states overwhelmed our advantage in urban states:

Click to enlarge - all non-PSUV votes added for readability.

The state-by-state tally:

Especially noteworthy here is Henry Falcon's Lukashenkoesque margin of victory in Lara. In fact, a quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that PSUV's entire nationwide lead rests on Lara. If you reattribute Falcón's votes to the "dissident" column (where they belong!) PSUV's national share drops to 49.2%!

Obviously, that's a pretty rough way of figuring it. Of course PSUV would've gotten some votes even if Falcón had run as a dissident. But still, a massive portion of the chavistas' lead comes down to the popularity of a single guaro who doesn't really get along with the leadership in Caracas.

Disjointed Morning-After Thoughts

Quico says: I detest more-than-one-topic-per-post posts, but I'm too frazzled and sleep deprived to do better:

1. Los tres cochinitos
Meet the new leaders of the opposition. These three. Ledezma, Ocariz and Capriles: three big wins in Caracas area districts with lots of poor people. Unfair as it is, the other oppo winners from last night have a built in handicap: they just live too darn far away from the big TV studios and news rooms. So these three now become the visible heads of the opposition, the de facto leadership.

They'll have to cooperate. But don't kid yourselves, they'll also be competing. If you've ever seen The Weakest Link, you know the drill: making nice along the way may be necessary, but if you want the big prize, you just gotta knife the other guy in the back at the end. It's nothing personal. Business...just business.

So, which of these three would you rather see end up with the ring? For me, it's an absolute no-brainer...

2. It's the Parapara problem, stupid...
The standard journalistic frame about Venezuela, for the longest time, has been rich vs. poor. What last night suggests is that that's an increasingly outmoded frame. It's not rich vs. poor, it's urban vs. rural. The opposition can compete in poor urban areas. It's in the countryside where we got served again and again and again.

The Parapara Problem is still kicking our butts. In recent years, we've barely ever heard opposition figures pose the problem in City v. Country terms. The oppo leadership hasn't even seemed aware that it had a problem in the countryside. Last night's results are so stark, the urban/rural divide so obvious, you'd hope they'd realize they just can't compete nationally without a rural message and a rural organization.

Then again, our Top Leaders are now all confirmed city slickers, people who wouldn't know how to plant a yuca if their lives depended on it.

Who will lead the big oppo rural revival?! We'd hoped for Julio Cesar Reyes...it just didn't pan out.

3. Next year
2009 will be the first year since 2003 without a National Vote. (Unless Chávez manufactures one somehow...)

4. It's the oil cycle, stupid...
Last night may be remembered as the last election of the Chávez Oil Bonanza. Venezuelan oil prices ended last week just a smidgen above $40/bbl. That shock hasn't really fed through to the real economy yet. Oil markets - like all markets - are inherently unpredictable, but there's a reasonable chance that last night was Chávez's last go at High Oil Electioneering. And there's just no way to make the maths work to avoid a deep adjustment before 2010 if oil prices don't recover soon.

In Venezuela, it's foolish to interpret any election result without placing it in the context of the oil cycle: it's not that the opposition won 5 big urban states + Caracas last night, it's that we won 5 big urban states + Caracas in the boom part of the oil cycle.

5. Unity Über Alles
On this blog, we were fairly dismissive about the opposition's fixation with unity during this cycle, interpreting it as one part sound electoral tactics, two parts panicky squalid hysteria.

In the end splits really did cost us in Bolívar, Barinas and imaginably in some other places like Anzoátegui and Libertador, where we might have poached more votes from the other side if we hadn't been so disunited. The only place where Chavismo paid the price for their splits was Carabobo.

6. Who needs LL?
Juan Cristobal is a blogging GOD for starting to believe in Ledezma's chances before anyone else. (And, I gotta wonder, did Cadena-gate cost Aristóbulo?!)

7. Cosmic Payback
In a small, cosmic way, I feel that forcing Jorge Rodríguez to sit through weekly meetings flanked by Antonio Ledezma, Emilio Grateron, Gerardo Blyde, Carlos Ocariz and Miriam do Nascimento will be some tiny measure of payback for the sheer hell the man put us through back in 2003 and 2004.

8. All that is solid melts into air
What the hell happened in Sucre State?!

9. Who's afraid of the big bad turnout?
Last year, the chavista line was that they lost because turnout was down to 55%. Last night, turnout hit an unprecedentedly high (for a regional election) 65%, truly remarkable...and we still held our own.

10. The final map

Caution: Red objects on this map are smaller than they appear.

First Official Bulletín: Caracas es Caracas y el resto es monte, culebra y chavistas (with noted exceptions)

Quico says: The first official results are in. The opposition lost all the toss-ups except the one that mattered: the Metropolitan Mayor's Office in Caracas.

When all is said and done, we'll have 5 governorships, including the three most populous, as well as Metro Caracas. We still can't win anywhere rural, though.

I'm thrilled about the results in Caracas - especially Petare, where Carlos Ocariz is set to win big. But I'm desperately heartbroken about Barinas. We came so close...so close...

First Results

Quico says: We can now confirm three opposition wins:

• Pablo Perez has been elected Governor of Zulia
• Henrique Salas Feo has been elected Governor of Carabobo
• Morel Rodriguez has been re-elected Governor of Nueva Esparta

Not exactly earth-shattering news, we realize, but this is what we can say for sure at this point. We're trying to confirm other races.

It looks pretty good, but it'll be a long night.

Chigüire Forever!

Chigüire says: Any minute now we could get a bulletin with the final results from the December 2, 2007 referendum.

Plan República: Magical Realism Edition

Quico says: UnionRadio just reported that a bunch of hoods actually held up a voting center in Anzoátegui today, overpowered the Plan República soldiers, and stole two army rifles! Plop!

Super secret confidential inside info:

Quico says: I got nothin'...

Chutzpah Chronicles

Quico says: Muller Rojas denounces that the opposition is offering cash to people waiting in line to vote to go home!

Update: Teodoro says Muller Rojas sounded like he's been drinking. (Election night is so much fun!)

The Nerviest Hour

Quico says: Every election cycle, it's the same thing. The polls close. But results don't come out for another 3 or 4 hours. In the interim, we collectively go insane.

It's hit Borges. Ramos Allup too. They're peddling some weird theory about some strange fraud involving keeping voting centers open beyond the official closing time. How that works is anybody's guess.

It's hard to keep your head during the nerviest hour. The wait feels endless. Por dios.

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Update: Teodoro Petkoff tries to de-dramatize Borges's statement.