Article 182: To convoke a referendum the following requirements must be met:
1. The question must be phrased clearly and precisely, in the exact terms implied by the matter being cunsulted, and in such a way that it can be answered with a "Yes" or a "No"...
2. A brief statement setting out the justification and purpose of the consultation.
June 5, 2004
Multiple choice?
Framework Law on Suffrage and Political Participation:
Notes for an effective Recall campaign
Over the last few months, the opposition has shown a remarkable unity of purpose in seeking the Recall Referendum. But the real fight remains ahead. A cash-flush government has already pledged, in the voice of the vicepresident, "to use all the resources of the state" to outspend its opponents. In a proper country, doing so would land you in jail for misappropriation of public property for party-political purposes. In Venezuela it just raises the bar for the opposition.
Believe it or not, the vote is just over two months away, so the opposition needs to get cracking right away. What is to be done?
First, a metaphore I've shamelessly ripped off from the GQR researchers: Chavez as your jolly, drunk uncle. Polling last year, the US firm was shocked by a strange inconsistency. Asked "do you personally like Chavez?" they would get over 40% of the voters saying yes. Asked "has the government done anything to improve your life, only a few percent would answer yes. Less than 10% give Chavez positive marks for improving health, education, street security, the economy, the whole gamut of issues.
The GQR conclusion was simple enough: to many of his supporters, Chavez is family. His supporters relate to him in familial terms. He is the nation's lovable-rogue uncle, the Tio Gonzalo who is a barrel of fun but has a bit of trouble holding down a job, or restraining his drinking, or whatever. Every family seems to have one of those. Like your lovable rogue uncle, you wouldn't stand for people attacking him in front of you. You would be personally offended. You would feel affronted. You demand respect for him.
The opposition's strategy so far has been to get outraged at Tio Gonzalo's behavior. We cried ourselves hoarse denouncing Tio's all night drinking binges, we've laughed ourselves to sleep mocking his inability to hold down a job, etc. We have, in other words, offended him. And to many of the president's supporters, a slight on Chavez is a slight on family, and for that reason, an attack on them. Personally.
The opposition needs to stop this rhetorical line. For one thing, the constituency that was liable to react favorably to this rhetoric is already on our side, already mobilized and not in need of convincing. All we achieve with the frontal attack strategy at this point is to further entrench chavistas, even chavistas who may be harboring doubts about Chavez's abilities to lead the country. Each time we call Chavez a castrocomunista extremista narciso cdm populista, we push voters away instead of attracting them.
The question is NOT whether you love your Tio Gonzalo. Of course you love him, he's your uncle! Nothing is going to make you stop loving him. This is a given. The real question, then, is whether you think Tio Gonzalo should run the family business.
Once you put the question in these terms, matters change. You can love your Tio Gonzalo to bits and still not think he is qualified to be running the family business. Convincing you to hand over the family business to someone better qualified does not require you to hate Tio Gonzalo, which you'll never do, it just requires you to accept the evident: that he isn't very good at the job he has now.
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. This is why the opposition campaign needs to be militantly positive, bright, optimistic, future oriented, and 100% angry-rhetoric free. I've heard GQR's advice to Granier was to simply stop using the word "Chavez" on air - because 99% of the time the word is heard on RCTV it's preceded or followed by a mocking, angry attack, and those attacks became counterproductive a long long time ago.
The opposition does not need to be reminded again and again of the things Chavez has done. We'll remember. But just the hard-core opposition on its own cannot win a RR. We need to reach out to hundreds of thousands of anti-Chavez leaning NiNis, we need the votes of people who still like Chavez, who are still emotionally attached to him, but who no longer believe he's up to fixing the country's problems. To the extent we can attract those votes, we can bulk-up our totals from the current, too-tight-for-comfort projections of 3.5-4 million votes, into real trouncing territory.
Just imagine the morning of Aug. 9th, imagine the newspaper reporting 4,632,913 votes to recall Chavez. Picture it, pictre what that will do to the future of the country. Like that thought? Then lets get smart about targeting the swing voters!
June 4, 2004
Narcissist Rage
From Narcissism 101
by Stephen McDonnell
The narcissist who is frustrated, who is publicly humiliated, who can't get what he wants, usually will react with anger and rage. They are like frustrated children throwing a fit. Most adults can handle frustration, but narcissists have a low tolerance for denial. A narcissist is always boiling, always thinks others are conspiring against him. Narcissists are always conspiring against others, they tend to think other people are like them.
Paranoia is a problem with narcissists. They want it their way, they want their dream to come true and any deviation or anyone stepping on their toes sparks immediate anger. If they are in seduction mode, they will forgive for the moment, but years later the anger will come back in spades. They never forget a slight or an insult. They plan revenge. Or at least some of them do.
Other narcissists will act as though above the fray, not deigning to be upset. But they remember.
Think of a 6 year old child, think tantrum, remember how kids can say something terrible to you and then forget they said it, but if you reprimand them, they break into tears or they start breaking things.
For a narcissist, rage is the ultimate response to loss of control, and they use it to gain back control over the situation and others. They can be physically abusive and hurtful. If all their words of seduction and gifts do not work, then they will physically intimidate you. Rage can either be feigned or real. As long as it works.
Is it real? Is it a game? Even the narcissist doesn't know. He is playing out his life out of touch with his real self, so who knows what he's really feeling.
I have watched narcissists use rage to get their way, to vent their frustration on someone, then I have watched them walk away, cool as a cucumber, as if nothing happened. Other times, I have seen them break things. No doubt the prisons of the world are filled with narcissists who let their rage get the upper hand. The murderers and rapists with narcissistic disorders learned to like the rush of adrenaline, the loss of control that gave them more control over their victims in the end. If someone dies when a narcissist is angry, he blames the victim for "provoking him." Remember, the narcissist is never wrong, never remembers his own mistakes, and is always in control.
If you want to see them enraged, disagree with them, make fun of them or their opinions, fight back when they attack you. If they feel they're loosing, they will fly off the handle, in a desperate attempt at control. Or they will break down in tears and try to get attention that way; beware, they are experts at manipulation.
What is wrong with Narcissists?
"When people are driving themselves crazy, they have neuroses or psychosis. When they drive other people crazy, they have personality disorders. but Though there is plenty of narcissim without greatness, there is no greatness without narcissism." Albert Bernstein
From Narcissism 101
Now you may ask yourself what is wrong with being a Narcissist?
In fact most of them are fascinating, amusing, successful and a few are even famous. (And sometimes they are pure fakes and liars, so be careful.) They are fun to be around at parties, they dominate the conversation and will tell amusing stories, give their opinion on everything in the world as if it is the only one, until you get to know them. Then you are at risk of becoming one of their victims. They need you, they need what you can give them. Attention! They are spoiled children. They need some one to admire their image. If you become involved with one, because you are related to them, or you are a friend, or a business partner, or lover, you will suffer. And you will not know why.
Because they are actors playing a part, they can not tell the difference between the truth and a falsehood. They lie to themselves first of all; they modify their inner reality to fit their idea, their vision of themselves and then they will transform outer reality with their lies. They will take the past and re-arrange it to make themselves look good. They will never admit fault, they will never say they are sorry. If something goes wrong, they will play the victim. They will blame others.
They can not love, for they do not love themselves, they only love their image, an idealized person who does not exist. They cannot face themselves. If you ever see one fail, make a mistake, watch their faces; you will see a look of terror on it. Because you have seen behind the curtain, you have seen the real person who feels inferior and inadequate. They always have to be in control. They can not love normally. For them love is a loss of control, which they can ill afford. They can fake it, they can simulate it and even declare it effusively, but they can never make the sacrifices that true love demands. Love demands, even needs, truth to exist. A commodity in short supply in a narcissist who is looking for ideal, the perfect love or lover.
They do not think normally. They have a disorder that makes them process reality differently. Do not be fooled, they can function and pass for normal. That is what is so frightening, they are incredible mimics of human beings. Of human feelings. It is not even hypocrisy, for to them, they do not see any difference in their actions; as long as it works.
Many mental disorders have a chemical cause; such as a seratonin malfunction. In Narcissist, no chemical cause has been found. Yet. It seems to be a cognitive malady. I would even say a cultural one. For women, narcissistic display is almost natural if not encouraged. For men, certain societies demand that men put up a macho image. From that kind of behavior to a full blown NPD is not that far.
In the end, they want to own you. You must be their storm troopers, their faithful worshipers who never criticize them, never disagree with them. Never look behind their mask, you may see the wizard of Oz behind the curtain. If they do evil, you must approve, if they hate, you must hate as well. You cease to exist as you. You become just a projection of their image. You become a clone, a mindless puppet, with no idea of what they are thinking because you are under their charm.
You give up your self, your soul, to them. It is not violent. It can be so gentile, so subtile, so unseen. They can use the legitimacy of established institutions to achieve their goal; the office of the church, of parental authority, of a political party or of a garden club. They love having authority, it makes the job of co-opting you so much easier. You have to obey authority, you are brought up to follow, to love, your parents without question. The father or mother figure is used in their quest for hegemony. Or they may use sex, love, beauty, intelligence as a tool. Whatever it takes to get you in their grasp. Mesmerized.
In the larger sense, we are programed to follow such people. They use the voice of authority. Or social pressure, and eventually physical force if necessary to get their way - think nasty spoiled child. We are constantly bombarded by images in advertising and politics that sell us people, products, political messages. It is the packaging, the medium is the message; images are powerful, not the content. Historically, narcissists have tried and even succeeded in having millions of people follow them, like lemmings, to death and destruction.
The nadir of the comecandelas...
Today, I woke up peeved at all the radical opposition talking-heads who have been laughing at us comeflores for months for thinking there will be a recall vote. If you're a comeflor, you've doubtlessly met the haughty, "sobrao", style of people who stand around and scoff "por eso es que la oposicion nunca logra nada, está llena de gente comiendo florecitas...así no vamos a ninguna parte - es que acaso no te has fijado que Chavez es un totalitario neonazi barriga-verde asesino? Entonces? Que referendum ni que referendum? Bajate de esa nube!"
If I had Bs.100 for each time I've heard some variant on that little speech over the last few years...I'd have a few thousand Bs, anyway. It has been a leitmotif of comecandela thinking for years now...
It's particularly entertaining, in this regard, to read today's editorial page in El Universal. Obviously, the pieces were written a few days back, and María Sol Pérez Schael, Carlos Zubillaga and Carlos Raúl Hernández all unanimously and confidently predict that CNE will not acknowledge there are enough signatures. They then proceed to heap abuse on the "culprits" of a crime that was never committed. Wonder how they're feeling this morning. Only Gerardo Blyde, happily, gets it right - insisting on the importance of the secret ballot on Aug. 8th.
And the comecandela leaders, where are they now? Where's Salas? How about Weil, who I love but who kept editorializing that a referendum was a pipe-dream? Where did Robert Alonso scurry off to? How about Nitu Perez, and Ibeyise and Boccaranda and their ilk? And Rafael Marín, well, we know where he is (in hospital, after being badly attacked by chavista cabilleros last night) - but once he gets near a microphone, what is he going to say? "Sorry I pushed you towards an insurrectional strategy bound to lead to civil war when democratic means worked just fine"? It's the least we could hope for.
What last night shows, folks, is that comeflorismo is not just an ethical position. It's also, just as importantly, a pragmatic stance - one you adopt because it is more likely to actually work than any of the alternatives. We've learned since April 2002...well, some of us have learned...
There are lots of obstacles ahead - but over the last few days we've seen why the moderates had it right all along.
June 3, 2004
Elections Council Speaks: There are enough signatures for a Chavez Recall
Union Radio:
The President of the National Electoral Board, Jorge Rodriguez, announced at 4:15 p.m. today the preliminary results "which show a clear tendency" on the signature verification process to convene a vote to recall the president. He said there are 2,451,821 valid signatures to demand a recall, and 2,436,083 were required.
The President of the National Electoral Board, Jorge Rodriguez, announced at 4:15 p.m. today the preliminary results "which show a clear tendency" on the signature verification process to convene a vote to recall the president. He said there are 2,451,821 valid signatures to demand a recall, and 2,436,083 were required.
If this is so, there has to be a referendum: article 21 of the rules explicitly rule out any further verifications after this point. Chavez will give a speech within the next hour - think of it as a campaign launch.
Pro-Chavez Radicals Lash Out Against the Media
The situation at El Nacional is, for some reason, not being reported anywhere. Sources inside the newspaper's headquarters say journalists are trapped in their offices while aggressive chavista groups roam around freely inside the building. A truck was burned just outside, and the fire department has just arrived on the scene. There is also an unconfirmed report that the newspaper's printing press has been set on fire. (We'll know if it was true tomorrow morning!)
Globovision has just reported on the situation at El Nacional but says it is now "under control."
Earlier this afternoon, Pro-Chavez gunmen attacked the opposition-controlled Greater Caracas City Hall, downtown, using an submachine gun at one point.
A similar situation was reported at RCTV, the opposition controlled channel 2.
The anti-independent media incitement in the pro-government stations has been particularly intense over the last few days.
Gaviria remains convinced a recall will happen, but for now, the nation just awaits Chavez's speech on hooks ant tenters.
The government hardliners were never going to go down without a fight. But how far will it spread?
Update
Globovision has just reported on the situation at El Nacional but says it is now "under control."
Mixed signals
It's too confusing trying to read the decision process inside the government, there are too many mixed signals. Perhaps the debate inside Chavismo is swinging back against allowing a referendum. The police raids at CNE last night and the on-going novela with the Signators From The Other Side of The Grave all point that way, as do many of the caveats in government statements. Today, there is violence by chavista gangs reported at several locations in Caracas, including an assault against the opposition-controlled Greater Caracas City Hall where sub-machine guns were reportedly used to shoot up the building.
Radio Nacional de Venezuela is still sounding dovish, preparing its audience for a referendum, but VTV has reverted to Taliban form.
Chavez will speak to the nation in a little under three hours. At a public rally in front of his supporters. It's not the kind of platform one chooses to make retractions or concessions...is it?
One thing's for sure: the boss will set the line, and his underlings will follow it...
What Zapata knows
Juan Carlos Zapata, the guy who runs Descifrado, has been leaking priceless information from a high-up chavista source for three days now. If Zapata has it more or less right - which he certainly seems to - his version is a firm anchor for cautious but real optimism.
Zapata, a Tal Cual co-founder, is a kind of Venezuelan Drudge (minus the sleaze) - well-connected, agressive about posting everything he knows, and very often, the first with key stories too hot for others to publish.
His latest essay on the reparos drama inside the government (read it in the original Spanish or translated to English) again feeds my perception that the referendum is a reality. In Zapata's retelling, the reparos results have split the government badly, setting off what he calls "a political earthquake" within chavismo.
For the first time since 1999, Chavez faces a major political decision he cannot control - or not without very high costs. For the first time in recent memory, there appears to be an actual, living, breathing debate inside the government camp. There are factions and disagreements and discussions and scapegoat hunts. This is in complete contrast with the tradition of "democratic centralism" in the Chavez era - where all decisions are made personally by The Leader and communicated down the chain of command.
This is all good news. But there is still a huge amount of fear and rage among government supporters - aporrea.org's priceless foros make that quite clear. Bringing the extremists around may not be possible, but lessening their impact on society is.
One key fear on the chavista side is that the day after a referendum the "misiones" - the Chavez-led emergency social programs - will be dismantled. This is a source of real dismay to millions of honest Chavez followers.
It's time for the opposition to be magnanimous - to treat their opponents with the respect we have demanded from them for years. Enrique Mendoza should come forward and say that the opposition does not intend to dismantle the misiones if it takes power, and that instead, it will improve them. A statement like that could go a long ways in building bridges with honest people on the other side.
However much we dislike the government, we have to remind ourselves that it's crucial for rank and file chavistas to perceive that there is a future for them in an opposition-led future. If, like Garcia Carneiro, Diosdado, and the hardliners, they feel their entirely livelihood and even their lives are at stake, they'll fight. Who can blame them?
Over the last few months, the opposition has demonstrated uncommon coherence and single-mindedness in pursuing the recall option. But today, the best thing we can do to help bring about a referendum is to explain, very clearly, that we are a movement for National Reconciliation, not just a ploy to take back power.
June 2, 2004
Venezuela Edges Closer to a Chavez Recall Election
Venezuela is at an extraordinary juncture. After 30 months of intense political crisis, the nation waits anxiously for an announcement on whether or not there will be a recall referendum against President Chavez. After a contentious 6 month signature-gathering process marked by delays and unexplained rule changes, the National Electoral Council has started verifying hundreds of thousands of contested signatures that were reaffirmed by citizens this weekend. If more than 540,000 signatures are added to the total, the council must call a recall vote.
At their joint press conference at CNE yesterday, President Carter and OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria made all of this very clear. Gaviria said the main difference between this process and the original signature collection drive and this weekend's validation is that the checks built into this latest event will make it extremely clear if anyone cheats. President Carter said that while the observation mission has no legal authority, they reserve the right to comment on any discrepancy between the totals they've calculated and the ones CNE eventually announces. President Carter said he had firm commitments from CNE's board and President Chavez himself that no more surprises are in the horizon.
So far, the opposition's electoral strategy has been an amazing success. Never has the opposition enjoyed the international credibility it now has. While the government continues to scream bloody murder and label all opponents "coup-mongers" and "terrorists", hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan citizens have chosen to face down the regime in the civilized, legal way: by standing in line, again and again, under the rain and despite the intimidation, to sign their names on a petition.
Though they have not yet been officially announced, the signature verification totals are an open secret. In accordance with regulations agreed in advance by the government and the opposition, the elections' authorities distributed copies of verification tallies at each of the 2700 signing centers in the process at the end of each of the three days of signing to all sides. The government, the opposition and international observers all have access to the raw data that CNE is charged with tallying. And since CNE's role at this stage is limited to adding together those daily tallies, with further verifications explicitly banned, it's difficult to imagine what the government could do at this point to wiggle out of reporting the real results.
Carter's touch
At their joint press conference at CNE yesterday, President Carter and OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria made all of this very clear. Gaviria said the main difference between this process and the original signature collection drive and this weekend's validation is that the checks built into this latest event will make it extremely clear if anyone cheats. President Carter said that while the observation mission has no legal authority, they reserve the right to comment on any discrepancy between the totals they've calculated and the ones CNE eventually announces. President Carter said he had firm commitments from CNE's board and President Chavez himself that no more surprises are in the horizon.
Since CNE has not yet announced official results, the media are barred from talking openly about signature tallies, a rule both sides have sporadically broken. Leaks are inevitable in a situation like this, and while the sides report different tallies, even the government appears to understands that enough signatures were collected. Chavez knows he will pay a heavy price if it tampers with them.
Descifrado, the well-connected opposition-minded gossip site, has been leaking like a Venezuelan schoolroof since Sunday. Juan Carlos Zapata, a TalCual co-founder who now runs Descifrado, reports confidently that the government has accepted it must allow a recall go ahead.
President Chavez himself hinted as much during a spot of afternoon baseball at Fuerte Tiuna, where he acknowledged the possibility that the opposition might just have snuck by with enough signatures. At dinner the previous night, across from President Carter, he had apparently made the pledge directly.
So Venezuela, remarkably, appears headed for a recall vote after all. The possibility, which seemed distant just a week ago, now seems likely. Opposition distrust of the authorities now runs so deep that it's almost impossible for many of us to believe it, and many will certainly refuse to believe it until they see CNE head Francisco Carrasquero announcing it on an all-channel TV broadcast. Even then, Venezuela is "territorio de lo posible," it is still posible that the government will work to stop or sabotage the vote later on.
The Day of the Doves
So far, the opposition's electoral strategy has been an amazing success. Never has the opposition enjoyed the international credibility it now has. While the government continues to scream bloody murder and label all opponents "coup-mongers" and "terrorists", hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan citizens have chosen to face down the regime in the civilized, legal way: by standing in line, again and again, under the rain and despite the intimidation, to sign their names on a petition.
The cornerstone of the government's rhetoric - that they are poor beleaguered democrats holding off a conspiratorial cabal of rich businessmen and media barons with US-backing - looks ever more incongruous in light of the weekend's events. Venezuela, the government wants to convince us, is the only place on earth where the fascist terrorist coup-mongers stand in line, in the rain, to sign petitions, while the belleaguered democrats work tirelessly to keep them away from the ballot box. It makes less than no sense. It had some usefulness as a propaganda tool, but more and more the message is only believed by a hard-core of zealots.
The Venezuelan opposition has always been a grab bag of groups of all sorts of different sizes, attitudes and ideologies. The "dove" faction that urged a legal, electoral solution has not always been in control of things. Both on April 11th and during the two month National Strike of Dec-Jan 2002-03, opposition hardliners took control of the movement and made very bad blunders that have cost the opposition dearly in terms of credibility. It took perseverance, hard work, and real effort for the dove wing to impose its slogan - without violence, within the law.
Paradoxically, a government that had always urged the opposition to behave in this way now finds itself terribly outflanked and devoid of a clear target. Whereas it was easy to dismiss coup leader Carmona or strike leader Carlos Ortega as dangerous reactionaries, the line loses all meaning in an opposition led by people like Pompeyo Marquez, Chuo Torrealba and Felipe Mujica. The government, which has always thrived on picking a fight with hothead opponents, had no idea how to handle their approach: Negotiate continuously. Don't rise to provocations. Keep your eye on the ball. Don't let the government distract attention from the RR.
Today, that simple strategy, together with the invaluable work of the Carter Center/OAS observation mission, has put Venezuela closer to finding an peaceful, democratic, electoral and constitutional solution to its governance crisis than many opposition hawks ever dreamed possible.
The strategy could still collapse. The government could still choose confrontation over civilization. It could still all be for naught. But right here, right now, we know the opposition has gone the extra mile, and then some, to make viable a solution to the crisis that doesn't lead to civil war. And I think that's a very great achievement on its own.
June 1, 2004
Cátedra Carter
At his press conference today, Jimmy Carter showed what you eat "international pressure" with. His statement: plain, direct, devastatingly straightforward shows that the Descifrado leaks from yesterday were basically on the money. The government looked at its options, and decided to face the voters. I know it's hard to believe just now, but all the evidence points to that direction.
Carter oozed confidence as he announced that he had held long meetings with all the players over the last few days, that everyone knows what the tallies show, and that the international community awaits a CNE announcement of the real numbers, the ones all sides have. He made it plain, between the lines, that CNE and the government are quite clear on what's at stake, and has made a clear commitment to play ball.
The great thing is that when you are Jimmy Carter, you can tell it like it is, and people look very foolish if they get angry at you. Today, Carter very clearly and straightforwardly recalled the changing verification criteria in the previous round of signature checks, made it clear such nonsense was not acceptable, and emphasize again and again that the basic difference between the reafirmazo and the reparos is that this time around "any discrepancy" between the totals observers already have and any CNE announcement would be plainly evident. He stresses strongly that he has strong pledges from both CNE and President Chavez himself that the announced results match the information already available to all sides.
I should have a poll about which prominent Caracas street we'll eventually have to rename Avenida Presidente Carter...
*Now* I have time to blog!
My research proposal is signed, sealed and delivered.
If you want to print it, download this version (PDF).
If you want to print it, download this version (PDF).
May 31, 2004
Email from my country-girl former co-worker...
From: "Julia"
To: "Francisco"
Date: Fri, 30 May 2004 11:11 PM
Subject: para tu disfrute
Just wanted to share a little story you might like. Hey, I didn't hear it on Marta Colomina's show, it's a personal story.
One of my sisters, who still lives in the little sea-side town where I grew up, was persuaded by the people of another near-by town to help them out by working as a teacher for Misión Ribas, the government scheme to get poor people high school diplomas. She agreed because she visits this town often, and she knows nobody else in the town is really prepared to be a teacher, and they would really appreciate her help. Plus, she isn't a university graduate; she did only some semesters in the history faculty at the Universidad Central, and well, she doesn't have a job right now.
She sent in her resume, went to several Mision Ribas meetings in La Guaira, but she warned the people in town and later to the Mision Ribas Coordinator in La Guaira, that she had signed for a referendum on Chavez. The coordinator told her that it didn't matter because they couldn't find any other volunteer who wanted to go to such a remote place for the Mision. So they agreed she would start teaching high school out there.
A few years ago, she had a son who has spina bifida (he's in a wheel chair), she had asked for help from the Fondo Unico Social - another Chavez-controlled agency - to help fund an operation for her kid, which she never got.
This week, we find out the chavistas have been investigating her, finding out personal details about her, that she has three kids and no husband and one of the kids is in a wheelchair. On Saturday the 29th she got a call from the Regional Coordinator for Mision Ribas to ask her whether she would withdraw her signature, arguing that someone who is against the president cannot be accepted for a job with the Mision.
My sister replied that she had warned them and they had not posed objections. Five minutes later she got a call from the Army Captain in charge of coordinating Mision Ribas in the region. He told her that they could get her a good job with her CV, help for her sick kid and scholarships for her other two kids, but that she must withdraw her signature.
My sister said no, that if she did it she wouldn't know what face to show to her children, he kept insisting and asked her to call again. This Sunday, he called her again to insist and offer her a face-to-face meeting with him this Tuesday to give her a "direct donation" from PDVSA for her kids as well as a job, of course all provided she withdrew her signature. She told them no again. He called a third time and she decided not to pick up the phone, and asked her kids to say she was not home.
It sounds like a Marta Colomina story, but no, it's my sister!
un beso,
Julia
Square this circle...
It's a replay of last November! In so many ways! First the opposition exceeds its needed tally, and goes euphoric. The government, as soon as it notices the opposition has the signatures (but not earlier, never earlier) starts to allege a sophisticated fraud. Last time, it was the infamous planillas planas, this time, they're alleging "ID card cloning centers" running out of Sumate's voter ID centers. The opposition charges DISIP with seeking to plant this evidence in Sumate facilities all over the place.
I asked my Sumate volunteer sister about this last night and we had a good laugh about it. "So, Mari, did you hide the cloned cedulas well?" "Yes, of course Quico, we at Sumate are very proud of our organizational know-how - of course, it was hard to hide the masses and masses of fake cedulas, but we managed it..." [sarcasm alert: she was of course laughing her head off at the notion - once again, only someone who's never been to Sumate could believe an accusation so plainly contrary to the spirit of the organization.]
So yesterday, among these dark mutterings of cloned cedulas, someone actually asked Alberto Quiroz about the possibility of a further round of "reparos" to repair the repairs...suggesting the possibility of an endlessly regressing set of further verifications that would only, logically, be stopped by the laws of sequential halving: eventually your sample would be reduced to one single reparante and you could not subdivide him any further, barring mutilation or something extreme like that. Quiroz just smiled and said that such a "nightmare" is simply not in the cards.
Here's what the rules say about this latest bit of tropical kafkaism:
CONSEJO NACIONAL ELECTORAL
RESOLUCIÓN N° 040420-563
Caracas, 20 de abril de 2004
Capítulo VII: De la Totalización
Artículo 21. Órgano competente. La Junta Nacional Electoral totalizará el conjunto de actas originales recibidas diariamente de la totalidad de las Mesas de Reparo, en un lapso no mayor de tres (3) días continuos siguientes al último día de del evento de reparo correspondiente y procederá a hacer públicos los resultados definitivos.
[...]
Asimismo, luego de la totalización definitiva de los reparos queda excluida cualquier actividad de verificación posterior.
CNE Regulations
National Electoral Concil
Resolution No. 040420-563
Caracas, April 20, 2004
Chapter VII: On Tallying
Article 21: Relevant agency. The National Electoral Junta shall tally the set of original actas received daily from all of the Reparo Tables, in a period no longer than three (3) consecutive days after the last day of the corresponding reparo event and will proceed to publish the results.
[...]
After the definitive tally of the reparos, any further verification activity is ruled out.
Call me a romantic, but I don't see how they can cheat here. The Junta Nacional Electoral - the operational arm of CNE - is a mere arithmetic body here, a "counting instance", a glorified abacus. And after the tally, any further verification is explicitly ruled out. Not that I doubt their creativity in bending the rules, just that this rule is particularly straightforward and lacking in ambiguity - so the Creative Jurisprudence Squad will have to work extra hard this time around.
May 30, 2004
Ineffectual Authoritarianism
This weekend, we've seen that the press has been unfair in its treatment of CNE. I realize opinions are so hardened on this subject by now, I'm most unlikely to convince anyone, but think about it: the entire chavista drive to screw up the reparos this weekend happened outside CNE. Whether it's the military or civilian supporter groups, in the vast majority of cases the trouble was outside the CNE jurisdictional line. If the government was so confident it could order CNE around, why would it have gone through all the trouble, all the bad publicity, all the grief of violently attacking the signing centers, when an inside job would've been so much smoother and less evident?
The reparos have underlined once again just how ineffectual Chavez is as an authoritarian. Watching the news yesterday, it seemed quite clear that someone high up in Miraflores had given the order to go out and screw up the reparo centers. And they tried. They even managed to mobilize a few groups which managed to get to a few centers and make life extremely unpleasant for a few people, including Globo's Marta Palma. But the Chavistas simply did not come down like a great locust swarm to erase the referendum from the face of history, like some feared (and others apparently hoped.)
The government once again flubbed it. They thought they had enough popular support to cause a very serious problem in signing centers throughout the country. But when the order was given, they found out that they actually only control a fairly limited number of chavista extremists.
Worst of all, from their perspective, the attempts at intimidation or obstruction failed. Faced with the obdurate determination of the oppo signators, the chavista intimidation attempts barely scored above flash-in-the-pan status. Probably the most remarkable element of watching Globovision yesterday was seeing the way that the small lines of people waiting to sign simply never give up! Even when dozens of government activists came by on motorcycles firing roman candles into voting centers and shouting Viva Chavez, people simply stayed put, waited for them to leave, and hung on to their places in line! Gente arrecha!
Which, frankly, makes me proud to be Venezuelan. There's something wonderfully irreverent and rebellious about this attitude, a kind of principled stubborness in the face of intimidation that has and will continue to serve the nation well. It's the story of the grandmother in Los Palos Grandes who saved Rosendo all over again.
But if I'm proud of the bravery of grassroots antichavez signators, I'm also proud of the rank-and-file chavistas. Because, folks, Chavez's 30%, the vast bulk of the normal, decent, honest, hard-working Venezuelans who support Chavez did NOT heed the call for violence. (Believe me, if one in three Venezuelans had poured out onto the streets to rip things up, we would've noticed!) Instead, many of them were inside the reparo centers serving as witnesses, collaborating without any problems with the opposition witnesses as well as the CNE personnel and the soldiers. The dirty little secret here is that the bulk of rank-and-file chavistas don't want a war any more than we do.
It's not the first time. In late 2002, after TSJ refused to try the April generals, we saw chavistas calling their supporters out on the street. Only a handful did.
Poor Chavez. Now he knows what it is to be isolated. Alone in Guadalajara. Alone in the streets of Venezuela. Able to raise a raucus in 20 or 30 signing centers, but just not powerful enough to put serious obstacles in the way of the remaining 99% of them. His power is crumbling visibly around him. In the end, my feeling is he'll fall not because of how authoritarian he is, but because of how sadly ineffectual he is at it, how oddly unable to translate his personal magnetism and his hold on his supporters' imaginations into the real acts of day-to-day brutality that keep authoritarians in place.
May 29, 2004
Donde ronca Carter no hay chavista con reumatismo
From a certain point of view, the opposition should be thrilled: needing to mobilize just 45% of the reparable signators (540,000 out of over 1.2 million) to convene a recall - their task is like shooting a fish in the proverbial barrel. Its supporters are nothing if not committed, and the 1.2 million signature universe must be heavily weighted to committed antichavista - people, at any rate, willing to go out and put their name on the line to support the RR last November.
With unofficial descifrado-obtained estimates suggesting 30% of the reparables turned up before noon on the first day, the oppo should be sitting pretty just now. Since CNE has banned premature results, Mendoza must be seen to be talking in code when he calls today's operation an "Operación Ñapa" - or "Operation Safety-Margin", in the very clunky English translation. Without violence, and with only scattered impediments to repairing, it shouldn't even be controversial that the opposition can mobilize 540,000 antichavistas in a situation like this - it should be a tiro al suelo...
So this should be a time of real opposition optimism. And in a way it is. My unscientific little poll here shows that at least my readers are feeling quietly hopeful. The 540,000 figure will not be a major problem.
As the comeflor inteligentsia has argued for months, we now have the chavistas just where we want them: backed into an impossible corner. To win, they have to cheat, and to cheat, they have to cheat big, cheat bold, cheat openly and blatantly under the noses of the international community and the media.
Yet much of the opposition remains ambivalent. The reason, to my mind, is the repeated government appeals for opposition leaders to declare right now that they will accept any decision the National Electoral Council reaches.
Once bitten, twice shy, the saying goes, and the opposition feels it's been bitten more than once by this CNE. With experience fresh of the council's dadaist freestyle interpretations of the constitution's article 72 and of its own regulations' articles 28, 29 and (especially) 31, the opposition is in no mood to be writing CNE blank checks at this point. Understandably so, I hasten to add...
The government senses the tactical advantage on this point and has decided to press it. In his WashPost opinion piece, Chavez made much of the oppo's reluctance to make the CNE pledge. With characteristic discipline, his underlings hammer away at it each time they get near a microphone.
The harder they press, though, the more the opposition becomes convinced that the fix must be in: the government wouldn't dream of pursuing such a high-risk strategy unless they were quite sure that CNE would eventually rule against the referendum.
As a result, the antichavistas, who have the most to gain from a fully transparent process, continus to squirm away from affirming faith in the only organization that can hand us victory.
This odd situation is typical of our hyperpolarized age, where seemingly unquestionable propositions like "we will abide by CNE reults" get aggressively politicized, problematized, stuffed through the revolutionary looking glass until they come out the other side entirely transmogrified. What should be a common sense position comes to look like an a priori endorsement of a planned fraud.
And yet, if the opposition does manage to top, say, the 700,000 repaired signature threshold - which seems entirely plausible - even a CNE as creative and resourceful as this one will have a very hard time falsifying the results. And, certainly, an impossible time doing so credibly.
Which brings us around to the other reason the government's line on the opposition's refusal to pledge to accept CNE-results rings hollow. The demand usually comes side-by-side with bold government attacks on the Carter Center/OAS Observation mission. Often, these attacks are couched in shrill language about mission heads Fernando Jaramillo (OAS) and Francisco Diez (CC) being paid opposition supporters.
In a sense, it's not surprising: twice now the Carter Center/OAS mission has publicly expressed its dissent with CNE decisions, explaining that CNE has applied criteria that fall foul of international standards. Chavistas interpret these criticisms as "proof" that the observers favor the opposition, never stopping to consider the much more straightforward possibility that the statments show that CNE decisions have not always been consistent with international standards. The telenovela surrounding Article 31 on the reparos is the obvious instance of this dynamic.
Chavez nos tiene locos, pero el maniqueismo tiene loco a los chavistas. When you only recognize two possibilities - you're a chavista or you're a coupster - it becomes impossible to accept any criticisms coming from foreign observers (or, indeed, anyone at all.) Disagreement with the chavista party line is taken as prima facie evidence of coupsterism. I find it worrying that this attitude now extends not just to Venezuelans, but also of Fernando Jaramillo and Francisco Diez.
Government supporters seem not to realize that with their ad hominem attacks on Diez and Jaramillo, they confirm to the observation mission what the opposition has been saying all along: that they are ideologically rigid, minded to equate disagreement with treason and fundamentally intolerant of opposing or diverging viewpoints. You're either with us or against us, is the underlying chavista sentiment. We are on the side of justice, truth, and history; which side are you on? Within such absolutist belief system, disagreement can only be interpreted as evidence of conspiracy, or terrorism, or coupsterism - pick your favorite term of abuse.
When you start from the assumption that your side is both righteous and infallible, you inevitably end up mired in such intolerant and autocratic thought.
Such discourse has no sense of its own boundries. It does not limit itself to keep from holding ridiculous or laughable opinions. It is, if nothing else, consistent. If Kerry is an antichavista, vote for Nader! If Francisco Diez says something that falls outside the chavista cannon, he's a conspirator. Simple.
There's just one glitch: the international observation mission, and particularly the Carter Center, and most particularly Jimmy Carter himself, have way too much credibility to simply dismiss. In fact, Carter may be the only human being alive who is almost universally respected by both chavistas and opositores.
For this reason, President Carter's visit to Caracas this weekend will be crucial to the unfolding of the crisis. CNE can be sure that the observation mission will not stand by silently in the face of fraud. And they must worry when they realize that when the observation mission's statement on the reparos process goes on TV, it will not be McCoy or Jaramillo or Diez they'll have to contend with, it'll be Cesar Gaviria sitting next to Jimmy Carter.
So what can we conclude from all of this?
- That the much maligned opposition's negotiators with CNE, Felipe Mujica and Alberto Quiroz Corradi, cut us a much better deal on the reparos than they're usually given credit for.
- That the even more universally derided long-term, pisa-pasito, softly-softly approach of the Carter Center and the OAS was far-sighted.
- That the government is now in a very uncomfortable position - hemmed in on all side the the sheer numbers of opposition signators, by the Carter Center/OAS mission, and by its own constitutional norms. If the reparos continue to go well, Chavez's options will be reduced to two: kick the gameboard or face the voters.
A final thought. Everybody loves to hate the CNE board members. This is understandable, given their penchant for applying the Incredible Metamorphosing Legal Standard. But anger is one thing, considered analysis another.
Up until this point, CNE has been friendly to the government, but it hasn't been a complete tool. Jorge Rodriguez is not German Mundarain, Carrasquero is not Willian Lara. So far, CNE has shown a clear reluctance to kick the playing board. As Kico Bautista once put it, Carrasquero's message to Chavez has always been "yes, I'm on your side, yes, I want to help, but no, I'm not going to stage an outright coup on your behalf."
Of course, right this second Carrasquero and his colleagues are almost certainly under a level of political pressure few of us are likely ever to face, and fewer of us still could really imagine. It's an extreme situation, that's for sure. What might come out of it remains a matter of total speculation.
May 28, 2004
Ecco Rubicon
We're on it, folks. It's a long crossing, it'll take five days to get to the other bank, at least. But this is it.
Another detail CNE forgot to disclose...
From Today's Miami Herald
The Venezuelan government has a 28 percent ownership of the company it will use to help deliver voting results in future elections.
Venezuela Has Stake In Ballots
The Venezuelan government has a 28 percent ownership of the company it will use to help deliver voting results in future elections.
BY RICHARD BRAND AND ALFONSO CHARDY
CARACAS -- A large and powerful investor in the software company that will design electronic ballots and record votes for Venezuela's new and much criticized election system is the Venezuelan government itself, The Herald has learned.
Venezuela's investment in Bizta Corp., the ballot software firm, gives the government 28 percent ownership of the company it will use to help deliver voting results in future elections, including the possible recall referendum against President Hugo Chávez, according to records obtained by The Herald.
The deal to scrap the country's 6-year-old machines -- for a $91 million system to be built by two fledgling companies that have never been used in an election before -- was already controversial among Chávez opponents who claimed it was a maneuver to manipulate votes amid growing political turmoil.
Chávez opponents told The Herald on Thursday they were stunned to learn the government has a proprietary stake in a company critical to the election process.
''The Venezuelan state? Are you kidding?,'' said Jesús Torrealba, an official in the Democratic Coordinator opposition group. ``It impugns the credibility of the process. That is shocking.''
Government officials insist the investment is an effort to help support private enterprise and its interest in a ballot software company is merely coincidental, one of a dozen such investments made to help struggling companies.
''The whole process led to a decision that was best for Venezuela,'' said Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's ambassador in Washington.
But Venezuela is a nation bitterly polarized by Chávez's leftist populist rule. Nearly every move by the government is scrutinized by opponents who accuse Chávez of trying to impose an authoritarian regime.
GOVERNMENT FUNDS
Until a year ago, the Bizta Corp. was a struggling Venezuelan software company with barely a sales deal to its name, records show. Then, the Venezuelan government -- through a venture capital fund -- invested about $200,000 and bought 28 percent of it.
The government's investment in Bizta made Venezuela Bizta's largest single shareholder and, ultimately, its most important client.
The decision to replace the $120 million system built by Omaha-based Election Systems & Software was made Feb. 16 under unusual circumstances. Two of the five National Electoral Council members sympathetic to the opposition complained that they had been largely shut out of the process.
''The selection process was secret and it didn't allow us to get any information about the bidders and their products,'' board member Sobella Mejías said after the decision.
Other members knew about the government's investment, according to one member who asked not to be identified.
The new system is to be built by the Smartmatic Corp., which is incorporated in Florida, and programmed by Bizta, which also is registered in Florida and Venezuela.
Pro-Chávez government officials and company executives interviewed by The Herald say the Smartmatic-Bizta machines are among the most secure in the world, and that the government's investment in Bizta was unrelated to Bizta's bid for the voting machine contract.
''The companies that were chosen have the highest technical capacity,'' said Alvarez, the ambassador. ``In Venezuela there have been many fair elections and there will be many more fair elections.''
But the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which has observed every major Venezuelan electoral process since Chávez's election in 1998, said the disclosure of the government's role in Bizta reinforces the need for independent election audits.
''What we look at in any electoral process is whether each of the components is transparent and auditable. In this case, we would include these new machines,'' said Jennifer McCoy, who is leading the Carter Center's mission in Venezuela. She said she was unaware of the government's investment in Bizta.
Even without the political implications, the use of electronic voting machines has been widely debated since the United States' 2000 presidential election. Stanford University Professor David Dill, who has studied voting machines but is not specifically knowledgeable about the new Venezuelan system, said almost any programmed electronic machine is subject to possible manipulation.
'People just don't understand how easily these machines could fail to record votes accurately -- even by being `fixed,' '' he said.
PAPER TRAIL
Smartmatic does produce a paper trail of votes as well, but Venezuelan government critics claim it will be useless since an election recount would be supervised by the Electoral Council, perceived as pro-Chávez.
The National Electoral Council members have hailed Bizta's software-writing role as contributing to Venezuelan ''sovereignty'' over their voting system, which replaces American-designed machines. Chávez, an outspoken critic of U.S. policy, is viewed as leftist and anti-American.
According to Bizta's 2002 financial statement, the most recent one filed by the company in Venezuela, it was then a dormant firm that had no sales and was slowly losing money.
In June 2003, however, a venture capital company called Sociedad de Capital de Riesgo (SCR) invested about $200,000 in Bizta. The SCR is owned by the Venezuelan government's Industrial Credit Fund.
In January, a top official in Venezuela's science ministry, Omar Montilla, joined Bizta's board of directors to represent the government's three million shares, records show.
Montilla, who is one of five directors, canceled a meeting with The Herald and did not reply to repeated Herald queries.
One month after Montilla joined the board, the National Electoral Council awarded Bizta and partners Smartmatic and CANTV the $91 million contract to develop new voting machines. Bizta was hired to write the electronic code that configured the names and parties of candidates on the touch screens. Smartmatic would build and design the machines. CANTV, the publicly held phone company, would provide the phone lines for the system and election-day technical support.
The venture is largely the work of two little-known Venezuelan engineers: Antonio Mugica Rivero and Alfredo Anzola Jaumotte, childhood friends and recent engineering school graduates.
Mugica, 30, is the president of Smartmatic and a founder of Bizta. Anzola, 30, is the president of Bizta and the vice president of Smartmatic, corporate records from Venezuela show.
NO CONNECTIONS
Both executives say they have no political allegiances. Neither signed a petition drive seeking Chávez's recall.
Anzola initially told The Herald that one of the reasons the electoral council selected the group was that it had no connection to either the government or the opposition.
When told in a subsequent interview in Caracas that Bizta papers showed the government had an investment in his company through SCR, Anzola and Mugica said they viewed the investment as a loan.
''We really don't want to be involved in politics,'' said Wladimir Serrano, head of the governments venture capital fund. ``Our role is strictly financial and technical.''
Bizta ''remains a private company, with some government shares but without any say on our part on its day to day activities or its strategic programs and policies,'' Serrano said.
SUBSTANTIAL POWER
But Harvard Professor Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan official who also has worked as the chief economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, said any investor holding a 28 percent stake in a company would likely have substantial power to make decisions.
''For example, Verizon is the largest shareholder in CANTV, holding 28 percent, and it has control of the company's management,'' said Hausmann, who sits on the CANTV board. With Bizta, ``The government's influence will depend on the arrangement between the government and other shareholders.''
SCR's stock purchase in Bizta was part of a broader effort to help start-up companies that could bring Venezuela international prestige in a wide range of industries, Serrano said.
He provided a list of a dozen other companies in which SCR has invested.
Most of the 20,000 Smartmatic-Bizta machines will be delivered over the summer from the factory in Italy, officials say.
Reparos roundup
BBC: Chavez bristles amid fresh attack
Agence France Presse: Venezuela's political impasse nears an end
State Dept: US Urges Chavez to Support 'Fair' Process in Resolving Venezuela Recall Dispute
Reuters: Chavez Blasts U.S. for Venezuela Referendum Pressure
AP: As Venezuela heads into recall vote count, Chavez seeks ``dark-skinned utopia'' in Mexico
May 27, 2004
A considered fisking of VIO's rebuttal...
...of the WashPost's rebuttal of Chavez's rebuttal of their Editorial from a few weeks back - so a rebuttal of a rebuttal of a rebuttal of a rebuttal...zowee, bless the internet age!
"The Post's editorial expresses concern about " intimidation by government goon squads" during the signature confirmation period this weekend. In fact, there has been no systematic intimidation of voters or petition signers since Hugo Chávez took office in 1999."
My considered reply:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! BWAHAHAHA-HAAAHAAHAA!!!
...oh man! Good one! Heee! How do you guys come up with stuff like this?!
Oh man, VIO...sheesh...how much of our tax money is funding the near-lobotomized idiocy these guys are peddling?! How much of our public money are we spending to stroke Chavez's ego with disinformation so aggressively detatched from reality that only if you know absolutely nothing about Venezuela or if you're clinically insane could you believe it!? 600,000 bucks, did they say?! To hire lobbyists who subscribe to the four-year-olds-at-the-playground school of denial?
Think about it, that's exactly what this is: a four year old at a playground gets caught hitting another kid. You confront him. What does he say? "I didn't do it." Lamely. Every time. Never fails.
It doesn't matter to him that you were sitting ten feet away, that you saw him sock the other little kid in the mouth, that you have all the evidence you need and more. "I didn't do it," that's what he's always gonna say.
OK, it's pathetic yes, but normally the 4-year-old in question isn't getting paid half a million dollars to come up with it!
Estimados VIOistas, please! Earn your six figure budgets! Dear Nathan, we know about the government's intimidation campaign because nearly all of us have a cousin, or a friend, or a son, or an old schoolmate who has been put under pressure by the government. Stories of signators trying to obtain a National ID card or a passport and being refused merely because they signed are a dime a dozen in Caracas these days. The intimidation is not subtle, it's open, and thousands of people have experienced it in person. So please don't insult us, or clutter up the historical record, with positions that are blatantly false and can easily be demonstrated to be patently false.
It may be hard for you, Nathan, sitting in a nice DC office, to picture yourself in the shoes of a Venezuelan public employee earning $200/month and needing to feed a family on that. It may be hard for you to quite fathom the terror of having that income threatened in a country with 20% unemployment and where, out of those working, more than half having only "informal employment" - odd jobs for cash. I suspect it will be very, very hard for you, Nathan, to empathize with the prospect of being dumped out of work in a job market like that with no unemployment insurance, no proper medical insurance, no welfare, no foodstamps, nothing to stave off complete penury, simply as a consequence of having expressed dissidence openly. And so you will not know, Nathan, what Roger Capella's words meant, how they impacted Venezuela's opposition-minded public employees.
And how could you? Such intimidation is simply not a part of your normal experience...but it sure is part of the day-to-day lives of God only knows how many Venezuelan public employees who chose to register their disgust with the autocratic regime that pays your salary.
May 26, 2004
The Washington Post minus the gloves
El Washington Post puede que coma flores, pero no mierda...
Mr. Chavez's Claim
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A26
IN A COLUMN on the opposite page Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez makes the remarkable assertion that he hopes his opponents will succeed in triggering a recall referendum that could cut short his term in office. Remarkable, because polls consistently show that Mr. Chavez would lose the referendum -- less than 40 percent of the population supports his eccentric, quasi-authoritarian populism. Contrary to his claims, he has impoverished as well as polarized his country: Venezuela's per capita income has declined by a quarter in the six years he has been in office, and the poor are worse off than ever.
More to the point, the president's words conflict with his actions. He has spent the past year doing everything in his power to prevent a democratic vote on his tenure -- and has repeatedly vowed that no referendum will take place.
So why would Mr. Chavez claim otherwise? Because the latest propaganda strategy of this would-be "Bolivarian revolutionary" is to portray a complicated petition verification process scheduled for this weekend as an impartial procedure whose outcome should be accepted as a fair resolution of the country's political conflict. In fact, the procedure should not be taking place at all: It is the result of an attempt by Mr. Chavez's appointees to invalidate on bogus technicalities 1.6 million out of 3.4 million signatures the opposition collected to trigger the recall election. By all rights, the election should have occurred months ago, because the opposition gathered 1 million more signatures than required by the constitution and has now collected more than enough signatures for a recall vote on two occasions. Instead, after protracted wrangling, authorities have set aside two days in which hundreds of thousands of would-be voters must return to confirm their signatures. Unless at least 600,000 manage to do so despite numerous procedural obstacles and intimidation by government goon squads, Mr. Chavez and his cronies will declare the recall a failure.
Sadly, the odds are that Mr. Chavez will carry out this coup-by-technicality and thwart a democratic resolution to Venezuela's long-running political crisis. The president points out that some of his opponents previously supported a coup against him (Mr. Chavez doesn't mention that he also once led a military rebellion against a democratic government); but now that the opposition has committed itself to an electoral solution, Mr. Chavez refuses to allow it. About the only hope for a fair outcome is the presence of observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Carter Center who could call attention to acts of overt fraud and intimidation; Mr. Chavez tried to exclude them from the verification process but was obliged to give in late last week.
Mr. Chavez swallowed the observers for the same reason he penned his op-ed: He hopes not only to block the referendum but also to head off any subsequent decision by the OAS to invoke its democracy charter, which calls for sanctions against governments that interrupt the rule of law. Even if it decided to act, the OAS probably wouldn't be able to stop Mr. Chavez from destroying what remains of democracy in Venezuela. Already, the president's only real friend in the outside world is Cuba's Fidel Castro. But if he proceeds to deny his country a democratic vote, Mr. Chavez should, at least, be denied the pretense that his actions are legal, or acceptable to the region's democracies.
Hugo Chavez in translation
From the Washington Post...
*to honestese
Ready for a Recall Vote
By Hugo Chavez
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A27
CARACAS, Venezuela -- For the first 24 hours of the coup d'etat that briefly overthrew my government on April 11, 2002, I expected to be executed at any moment.
The coup leaders told Venezuela and the world that I hadn't been overthrown but rather had resigned. I expected that my captors would soon shoot me in the head and call it a suicide.
Translation*: For the first 24 hours after the uprising that briefly overthrew my government on April 11, 2002, my paranoia reached unheard of heights.
General Lucas Rincon, my most trusted officer in the armed forces and my current Interior Minister, told Venezuela and the world that I hadn't been overthrown but rather had resigned. I expected that my captors would soon shoot me in the head and call it a suicide.
Instead, something extraordinary happened. The truth about the coup got out, and millions of Venezuelans took to the streets. Their protests emboldened the pro-democracy forces in the military to put down the brief dictatorship, led by Venezuelan business leader Pedro Carmona.
Instead, something extraordinary happened. The coup plotters blundered, refused my offer to fly to Cuba, and soon tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets, with some rioting. Their protest emboldened the pro-Chavez forces in the military who, together with the officers who first rebelled against me, ended the brief dictatorship, led by Venezuelan business leader Pedro Carmona.
The truth saved my life, and with it Venezuela's democracy. This near-death experience changed me. I wish I could say it changed my country.
Having swept under the rug all of the uncomfortable bits from that story, I find it comforting to use it to bolster my position. But it's true, the near-death experience changed me. I decided politics was a fight to the death, and that only the elimination of my opponents could ensure my stay in power.
The political divisions in Venezuela didn't start with my election in 1998. My country has been socially and economically divided throughout its history. Venezuela is one of the largest oil exporting countries in the world -- the fourth-largest supplier to the United States -- and yet the majority of Venezuelans remain mired in poverty.
The political divisions in Venezuela didn't start with my election in 1998. My country has been socially and economically divided throughout its history. Venezuela is one of the largest oil exporing countries in the world - the fourth largest supplier to the United States -- and yet while poverty shrank dramatically from 1930 to 1979, since then living standards have fallen by half, with the period of fastest impoverishment coinciding with my administration.
What has enraged my opponents, most of whom are from the upper classes, is not Venezuela's persistent misery and inequality but rather my efforts to dedicate a portion of our oil wealth to improving the lives of the poor. In the past six years we have doubled spending on health care and tripled the education budget. Infant mortality has fallen; life expectancy and literacy have increased.
I rationalize my authoritarian excess is by telling myself that what has enraged my opponents, (about a third of whom come from the middle and upper class, but whom I choose to mischaracterize in public as uniformly rich) is not Venezuela's persistent misery and inequality, but rather my efforts to dedicate a portion of our oil wealth to improving their lives. In the past four years we have vastly expanded the scale of existent of government services. Infant mortality has continued to fall; life expectancy has continued to increase.
Having failed to force me from office through the 2002 coup, my opponents shut down the government oil company last year. Now they are trying to collect enough signatures to force a recall referendum on my presidency. Venezuela's constitution -- redrafted and approved by a majority of voters in 1999 -- is the only constitution in the Western Hemisphere that allows for a president to be recalled.
Having failed to force me from office through the 2002 uprising, my opponents answered a calculated series of escalations on my part to shut down the government oil company last year. Now, with the leaders of that strike largely sidelined from the opposition leadership, a new group of more moderate leaders is trying to collect enough signatures to force a recall referendum on my presidency. Venezuela's constitution - redrafted and approved by a majority of voters in 1999 - is the only constitution in the Western Hemisphere that allows for a president to be recalled.
Venezuela's National Electoral Council -- a body as independent as the Federal Election Commission in the United States -- found that more than 375,000 recall petition signatures were faked and that an additional 800,000 had similar handwriting. Having been elected president twice by large majorities in less than six years, I find it more than a little ironic to be accused of behaving undemocratically by many of the same people who were involved in the illegal overthrow of my government.
Venezuela's National Electoral Council - a body appointed by my cronies in thhe Constitutional Hall of the Supreme Tribunal, which everybody and his cat in Venezuela knows I control but which, for more than obvious reasons, need to assert is independent -- found that more than 375,000 of the recall petition had technical problems, the nature of which they failed to specify, and that an additional 1.2 million had similar handwriting in the personal data, though not necessarily in the signatures. This, predictably, feeds into my persecution complex: I seem certain I can make political points by pointing out that the very people who rebelled in 2002 when I gave the army orders to clear the streets by force continue to accuse me of behaving undemocratically!
The National Electoral Council has invited representatives of the Organization of American States and the Carter Center to observe a signature verification process that will be conducted during the last four days of this month. That process will determine whether the opposition has gathered enough valid signatures to trigger a recall election, which would be held this August. To be frank, I hope that my opponents have gathered enough signatures to trigger a referendum, because I relish the opportunity to once again win the people's mandate.
The National Electoral Council has invited representatives of the Organization of American States and the Carter Center to observe a signature verification process that will be conducted during the last four days of this month. That process will determine whether the opposition has gathered enough valid signatures to trigger a recall election, which would be held this August. To be frank, I'm half petrified by the prospect of having to face the voters, wallowing as I am in the mid-30s in the polls. This is why my cronies have conducted a series of raids, arrests, and acts of judicial intimidation against the organizers of the signature petition drive.
But it is not up to me. To underscore my commitment to the rule of law, my supporters and I have publicly and repeatedly pledged to abide by the results of that transparent process, whatever they may be. My political opponents have not made a similar commitment; some have even said they will accept only a ruling in favor of a recall vote.
But it is not up to me. To continue the sick charade of feigning a commitment to the rule of law, my supporters and I have publicly and repeatedly pledged to abide by the results of the process run by my other supporters, whatever they may be. My political opponents have not made similar commitment, deferring instead to the judgement of international observers who have repeatedly stated that the CNE's procedures and legal standards run counter to basic standards of electoral fairness.
The Bush administration was alone in the world when it endorsed the overthrow of my government in 2002. It is my hope that this time the Bush administration will respect our republican democracy. We are counting on the international community -- and all Venezuelans -- to make a clear and firm commitment to respect and support the outcome of the signature verification process, no matter the result.
The Bush administration was one of the few in the world when it welcomed the announcement of my resignation as delivered by my most trusted lieutenant. It is my hope that the Bush administration will be a little more circumspect this time around and continue to voice agreement with the increasingly untenable notion that my government constitutes a republican democracy. I'm counting on the international community - and all Venezuelans - to make a clear and firm commitment to respect and support the outcome of the signature verification process as announced by my cronies at the CNE, whatever international observers might opine.
The writer is president of Venezuela.
The translator doesn't buy a word of it.
*to honestese
May 25, 2004
The Guardian 1 - Patton Boggs 0
The government can spend as much as it wants on lobbying fees, but as the autocratic fangs come out more and more clearly, the foreign press will be less and less manageable for them. Even that paladin of the English metropolitan left, The Guardian, refuses to parrot the heroic-Chavez line. A capable Sibylla Brodzinsky does one of the best jobs in recent memory in trying to tell a balanced story.
On Chávez's Economic Boom
from VenEconomy
The Central Bank has released its estimates of the economy's performance during first quarter 2004. As expected, the numbers are spectacular with the economy showing growth of 29.9% compared to the first quarter 2003 (oil, up 72.5%; non-oil activities, up 18.9%.)
But the numbers point to little more than a statistical anomaly. The fact is that the economy was severely depressed during last year's first quarter, due to the direct and indirect impacts of the national work stoppage (paro cívico nacional) - an exogenous shock that President Chavez has admitted he consciously sought to provoke. Last year, the economy shrank an incredible 27.9% in the first quarter (oil, down 47.0%; non-oil, down 19.2%.) Thus, it should come as no surprise that the economy was statistically "up" in this year's first quarter .
The first quarter of 2002 is a better basis for comparisons. The economy was running "normally" at that time. Yet, in the first quarter 2004 GDP was 6.3% below its Jan.-Mar. 2002 level (oil, down 8.5%; non-oil, 4.0%). The sectors doing best, as compared with two years ago, are Communications (up 10.4%), Government Services (up 9.5%) and Electricity & Water (up 6.3%). The largest declines were registered in Construction (down 52.7%), Commerce (down 11.1%) and Mining (down 9.4%).
May 24, 2004
Two Stories: Darius Rejali and Julia
Story 1: In college, I was fortunate enough to learn from Darius Rejali, a brilliant Iranian-American political scientist specializing in Torture. He taught a class called Comparative Revolutions, which I took and, if I remember, got an A for. Darius is a wonderful flamboyant character with a razor intelligence. One memory stands out from that class, though:
Darius brought in an English translation of the Chinese People's Republic constitution. He started reading its procedural clauses, and, remarkably, it sounded not unlike a Western constitution: there was a legislative branch, an executive, courts, civilian control of the state, social rights, the works.
Next, as an assignment, he asked us to use the then new-fangled thing called the "internet" to look up constitutions of other authoritarian states. Somebody did North Korea, someone else did Cuba, then Vietnam, Egypt, Burma etc. And, surprise surprise, every dictatorship out there we could find had a sterling democratic-seeming constititon. What it didn't have, Darius argued, was the cultural or social institutions to sustain real democracy, or the political will to build them.
Something to keep in mind as you consider the implosion of Venezuelan Institutions
Story 2:
There's something horribly stereotypical about telling stories about caraqueños' house staff to make political points, but this once I will make an exception. One of my sisters, a Sumate volunteers, tells me the story of the psychodrama in her kitchen on the evening of February 27th, the start of the week of anti-CNE rioting in Eastern Caracas.
My sister had hired a cook, Julia, to feed her sprawling family. Julia is a chavista, my sister a Colomina listener, but also enough of a comeflor to refuse to let politics interfere in their relationship. So, they agreed simply not to talk about politics. My sister watched Globovision and Julia watched VTV and they didn't communicate about it.
This uneasy situation changed on the evening of February 27th, when the news showed that CNE had called into question 876,000 signatures from the recall petition drive. Julia, who had barely a few years' formal education, heard the TV presenter say that many of the questioned signatures were "planillas planas", i.e. forms filled out on behalf of the signer, which the signer then signed.
The TV presenter went on to say that many such signatures were gathered at hospitals, from very old or sick people who could not write easily, or from people with limited literacy, who might make mistakes filling the form.
At this she broke down crying and told my sister that that was it, she couldn't support the government anymore. Julia, who can barely write herself, was deeply offended that the government was maneouvering to stop people like her from registering their views officially. "Wasn't this what Chavez promised?"
My sister, not wanting to be overbearing at a time like this, suggested simply that she take a piece of paper and a pen and try to write down how she was feeling just then, and why she had come to change her mind like that.
In heartbreakingly misshapen handwriting, with no punctuation and no spaces between words, Julia wrote of her bitterness at the desperate and deteriorating economics of being a barrio dweller, and at how impossibly competitive the job market for people like her was. "The situation is really not right in the barrios now," she wrote.
My sister tells me she talked about the three chavistas in CNE as kinds of devils for all the mischief their decision was causing. Certainly, she had never before held a job where she had to pack sandwich lunches for the señora to eat at the barricades.
I don't think Julia will be joining my sister in any marches, but I do think the story is significant, and touching. Chavistas have eyes to see, and ears to listen...
May 22, 2004
Ripley's Believe it or Not...
This weekend, a number of Círculos Bolivarianos - pro-Chavez civilian neighborhood groups - are slated to organize a number of seminars to "train" volunteers to witness the opposition's reparos process against Chavez. The training courses will take place in Petare - a sprawling Caracas slum - today and tomorrow.
And where does the money come from? From the U.S. taxpayer, that's where! Word around the campfire is the American money is footing the bill...
May 21, 2004
Mandela sez...
from Long Walk to Freedom
Mandela is describing life in prison on Robben Island in the early 1970s, under a new Prison Comander, Colonel Piet Badenhorst, the most brutal prison administrator he met in 27 years on that island:
We felt the effects of Badenhorst's regime before we ever saw him. A number of the newer regulations regarding study and free time were immediately rescinded. It was obvious that he intended to roll back every privilege we had won over the years. Our old warders were transferred off the island and replaced by Badenhorst's handpicked guards. They were younger, coarser men who enforced every niggling regulation, whose job was to harass and demoralize us. Within days of Badenhorst's appointment, our cells were raided and searched, books and papers were confiscated, meals were suspended without warning and men were jostled on the way to the quary.
Badenhorst attempted to turn back the clock to the way the island was in the early 1960s. The answer to every question was always no. Prisoners who requested to see their lawyers were given solitary confinement instead. Complaints were completely ignored. Visits were cancelled without explanation. The food deteriorated. Censorship increased.
After several years of this, Badenhorst is reassigned to a different post...
A few days before Badenhorst's departure, I was called to the main office. General Steyn [Badenhorst's superior] was visiting the island and wanted to know if we had any complaints. Badenhorst was there as I went through a list of demands. When I had finished, Badenhorst spoke to me directly. He told me that he would be leaving the island, and added, "I just want to wish you people good luck." I do not know if I looked dumbfounded, but I was amazed. He spoke these words like a human being, and showed a side of himself we had never seen before. I thanked him for his good wishes, and wished him luck in his endeavours.
I thought about this moment for a long time afterwards. Badenhorst had perhaps been the most callous and barbaric commanding officer we had had on Robben Island. But that day in the office, he had revealed that there was another side to his nature, a side that had been obscured but that still existed. It was a useful reminder that all men, even the most seemingly cold-blooded, have a core of decency, and that if their hearts are touched, they are capable of changing. Ultimately, Badenhorst was not evil; his inhumanity had been foisted upon him by an inhuman system. He behaved like a brute because he was rewarded for brutish behavior.
May 20, 2004
Eva Golinger, Foreign Money, Double Standards and Jail
Isn't transparency a wondrous thing? First, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we learned that the US National Endowment for Democracy - a 100% US government funded institution - has financed a number of anti-Chavez institutions in Venezuela.
Eva Golinger replies
Now, thanks to the US Department of Justice's Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), we learn that the Venezuelan-American pro-Chavez activist who first uncovered that fact herself receives foreign money - in fact, money from the very government she spends so much time defending in public fora.
Eva Golinger would like to be known as the Brooklyn-based lawyer who blew the lid on the US conspiracy to topple Chavez. It was Ms. Golinger who first exposed NED's funding of Sumate through her website: VenezuelaFOIA.info.
First, the facts: On November 7th and November 9th, 2003, the Venezuela Information Office in Washington cut Ms. Golinger two checks to help pay for a conference on Media Reform in Madison, WI. Now, the Venezuelan taxpayer money that ended up in Ms. Golinger's bank account is hardly going to make her rich - less than $10,000 in all, from the FARA records Orlando Ochoa of El Universal and Quinto D%ED%E1, managed to dig up. Ms. Golinger - who is also a member of the Venezuelanalysis.com editorial board - had not disclosed her financial ties with VIO.
The sums are small - nothing that will go very far in New York these days. Just far enough, it seems to me, to put Ms. Golinger into a conflict-of-interest at least as serious as the one she denounced regarding NED and Sumate.
What precisely the difference is between Sumate taking money from NED and Eva Golinger taking money from the VIO? In some ways, VIO money is even more politically tainted than NED money: the NED is a quasi-NGO, a bipartisan organization fully funded with public monies but not directly controlled by the US government. VIO, on the other hand, is an appendage of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, fully funded and fully controlled by chavistas. NED is at least bipartisan in nature, while VIO is strictly a pro-Chavez regime outfit.
It's unlikely Ms. Golinger will deny the facts - the FARA documents are there, they're public, and they're publicly accessible. She could claim that the sums involved are relatively modest, certainly, but then Sumate could claim that $53,400 is not really very much money either given the nationwide scale of their activities. Surely, Ms. Golinger is not really suggesting NED funded most or all of Sumate's activities, and neither am I alleging VIO funded most of hers.
I wonder if Ms. Golinger will have the presence of mind to understand the parallels between her situation and Maria Corina Machado's, Sumate's chief spokesperson.
Presumably Ms. Golinger went after Sumate because she thought accepting even a small sum of money from a foreign agent makes a political organization suspect - but then, why doesn't that reasoning apply to the small sums she has received from the Venezuelan government?
At this point, if she's reading this, I imagine Ms. Golinger will be feeling quite annoyed, peeved, even unfairly treated! "But I've done soooo much work on VenezuelaFOIA and all those other activities because I believe in it, damn it! What could be more unfair than to dismiss all the honest work I've done, on my beliefs, on the basis of two measly little checks from way back in November?"
...which, of course, is exactly what my sister says after she comes back, tired but proud, from a day of volunteering for Sumate together with dozens of other unpaid volunteers only to see chavista spokesmen on State TV slam the organization as a US puppet.
So I'm afraid Ms. Golinger is storing her rabo'e'paja in a big glass house. There are too many rocks around for that, and too many matches.
Y'know, what angers me the most about Ms. Golinger's VIO funding pecadillo is her unwillingness to just come clean about it. In email to the escualido blogosphere (Alek Boyd, Daniel Duquenal and yours truly) sent on May 7th, she closed with:
"Finally, I will reiterate again, published personal attacks basedfalsitesties fall outside the realm of protected speech and basic respect. Please, get it through your heads: I don't get paid to write or speak about Venezuela and I do not answer to absolutely anyone. Stop the madness boys! A little serenity would do you all well."
Eva Golinger is a lawyer, of course, and writes like one (i.e.: carefully.) Her little denial is both strictly speaking correct and obviously misleading. Her profession of impartiality obviously looks rather different in light of her VIO billing history.
Shouldn't we expect a crusader for openness on foreign funding of political activists to disclose that she is herself a political activist who receives foreign funding?
The question is when, exactly, Ms. Golinger was planning to disclose her financial ties with VIO. If Orlando Ochoa - a lawyer with years of experience on this - hadn't dug up VIO's FARA files, would we ever have heard of it? What's your guess?...
One final thought: Ms. Golinger will, I imagine (and intend) be embarrassed by this entry. She does not - thank God - face a prison sentence for what she's done. That is as it should be. Because only a despotic government would threaten to put someone in prison for something as minor as what she's done
Yet, while Ms. Golinger kicks back comfortably in NYC reading this, Maria Corina Machado is in Caracas facing a criminal investigation and possible jail time on charges related to Ms. Golinger's allegations. And that, when you get right down to it, is the only difference between their situations...
Eva Golinger replies
Thanks, Francisco. Then feel free to publish my response, as it would only be just, since I don't own your website or have all the media on my side able to "inform the world of the truth", small world that it is anyway who reads your (and my) websites. I'll include to you the letter I wrote to El Universal in response to their article entitled "Influencias Alquiladas". And, I will clarify that the only reason I remotely feel I should respond to your "blog" is because I did send you and those others mentioned in your note a letter reiterating that I am not financed and receive no financing from the Venezuelan government for my political activities. Nor am I
directed by the Venezuelan government in absoultely any way.
Certainly you don't think that I am not aware of the FARA regulations? Well, if you must know, the work I did for the Venezuela Information Office actually had to do with ensuring they were following the FARA regulations, writing contracts and providing legal assistance in the creation of their legal entity. As a lawyer, that is precisely the type of work I am capable of doing and, when possible, should be compensated for. There really is not much more to the work I did for that office, and, as you must know, the
quanity compensated was not very high. I can assure that my earning capacity is much higher than that as a result of my very successful private practice in which I've helped hundreds of artists, superstars and others come to the U.S. and pursue their "dreams." Some of your friends may be amongst them.
In any case, your comparison to Súmate is ridiculous. The funds that Súmate receives from the National Endowment for Democracy, an entity of the US government, not only are directed and controlled by the US government, but also are used for an entirely political purpose. Surely providing counsel on compling with US laws and drafting employment contracts cannot be a form of
work compared to being paid to mount a massive propaganda and political campaign to recall an elected president from office prematurely. I am not being paid to overthrow and destablize the US government, as Súmate is being subsidized to do with the Venezuelan government. Mr. Toro - you must be able to figure out that one on your own. You are really stretching far, Mr. Toro,
and obviously grasping at air - something that you and your colleagues are well full of.
Again, I have absolutely nothing to hide in my work or my finances. Say or write what you wish, but you will find no evidence of any financing of political activities that I have carried out - nor have I done any legal work for the Venezuela Information Office since the initiation of my investigation into the financing of various Venezuelan organizations and individuals. Not that there would be anything wrong if I were - after all, being paid for your expert services as a professional is vastly different from receiving funding from a foreign government to build a political movement intended to result in a regime change.
One of your colleagues pointed out something critical to me regarding your "blogs" - he made clear that what you all write is just merely opinion, with no legal weight and no evidentiary burden. You can freely be reckless and irresponsible in your essays with no legal repercussion because you are bound by no editorial policy or legal rules that obligate you to base your writings in fact.
I happen to be more ethical and responsible than that, Mr. Toro. I base my accusations in hard evidence and fact. But then again, I am a lawyer bound to professional responsibility regulations and you and your colleagues are just blogging away in cyberspace with no one to answer to.
Cordially,
Eva Golinger
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