This again...

Quico says: Well, despite my best intentions, the "fraud or no fraud" debate seems to have burst through with renewed vigor on the comments section. I was hoping to avoid it, but now it's out there, I guess it's best to meet it head on.

My feeling is that we don't take a skeptical enough attitude towards the fraud theories. Too often, circumstantial evidence is passed off as iron clad proof. Or the burden of proof is reversed, as though it was up to them to demonstrate non-fraud. Nobody stops to ask "yeah, but" questions about fraud theories. Nobody scrutinizes them critically to see if they really make sense or if they just seem to make sense because they confirm our preexisting feelings about chavismo.

So lets be painfully explicit about what it would take to steal Sunday's referendum secretly. (Of course, a brazen gorilazo can't be ruled out, but that's a different story.)

The thing to remember is that CNE's voting system generates three separate sets of results: one in the voting machine-generated tally sheets, another in the data CNE receives from the voting machines, and a third, meant as a check on the first two, in the hot audit reports.

My point is simple: if those three tallies match, the presumption has to be that the election was clean.

Lets just review the way CNE's voting system is set up to see why:







To cheat credibly, the government would have to secretly fake triple congruence. But how? The fraud theories that are making the rounds don't give a satisfactory answer.

To fake triple congruence, you would need actual human beings to cast actual fraudulent votes at actual voting machines in actual voting centers. I can imagine two ways to do that: multiple voting, or plain old ballot stuffing.

Most people seem to think multiple voting is the government's preferred fraud channel, pointing to the opacity of the Electoral Registry as proof. Lets work through this theory:

For multiple voting to work, you'd have to supply militants with multiple, fake identity cards registered to vote in multiple voting centers. You'd then instruct them to go around voting again and again. They'd have to get around the indelible ink safeguard, which has been audited and approved by the No Block. And this would have to happen systematically, all over the country, with nobody noticing.

Just for the sake of argument, lets say they have 30,000 multiple voters with 5 cédulas each. So they can steal 150,000 votes.

Do you think each and every one of those 30,000 people was vetted for loyalty more carefully than Raul Baduel? How come not a single one of them has come forward to repent, saying he feels awful he signed up for this in the first place, oh and by the way, here are my five cédulas and the details of the five nearby but separate voting centers where I am registered?

Do none of these 30,000 people, not a single one of them, have a lover/spouse/child/uncle/friend who is less fanatically chavista than him and one day stumbled across evidence of their multiple identities? How come none of them have come forward?

How come a government too incompetent to keep milk in Mercal shelfs is competent enough to run a conspiracy on this scale and never ever get caught?

Sorry but, no creo en fraudes perfectos...the risk of getting caught is way too high.

If not multiple voting, that leaves just one option: stuffing ballots the old fashioned way.

How would that work? Presumably, in voting centers without opposition witnesses, a poll worker would have to get up and say, "OK then, who hasn't voted yet? Mr. Pepe de los Palotes? Right, mark him on the cuaderno de votación as though he did vote...I'm going in!" He'd then have to walk up to the machine and vote in his place. Repeating that again and again for many people who haven't voted.

But what if Mr. de los Palotes shows up 20 minutes later to vote? There's a problem. And just think: they would have to do that in front of the miembros de mesa, (who are randomly selected from the general public.) And in front of the Plan Republica soldiers, and the chavista witnesses, and anyone else who happens to be hanging around. And we'd have to assume that all of the people witnessing that, nationwide, would keep it a secret. That all chavistas are evil and, even less likely, discrete, competent and adequately trained to pull this off.

So again you have the Perfect Conspiracy problem. Plus, if you do this, the results from fraudulent voting centers would be very obviously different from the results of voting centers just down the road that did happen to have an oppo witness.

So neither of those fraud channels seems remotely feasible to me. And none of the other scenarios I've seen could fake triple congruence.

If you tamper with Data transmission from the machine to CNE, then the CNE tally won't match the machine generated count (which, remember, is printed before the voting machine is connected to the network). And if the results are pre-programmed in the machines, the CNE tallies won't match the hand audits.

"Yes," you say, "but what if there are no opposition witnesses there to check the hot audit?"

This retort makes especially little sense to me. Even if there are no opposition witnesses, the audits are open to the general public. But to pull off a secret fraud, CNE would have to know which voting machines to pre-program at the beginning of the day.

How could CNE know at the beginning of the day how many people are going to turn up to witness the audit in a given voting center at the end of the day? They could try to guess, but what are the chances that they will make no mistakes? The risk of getting it wrong seems absurdly high...

With the safeguards now in place, I don't see how you could carry off a remotely credible fraud. Which is not to say that CNE is impartial or fair. Just that, if they decide to cheat, subtlety will not be an option.

In fact, I think Yon Goicoechea said it perfectly succinctly:

The electoral system is fraudulent, but that fraud is identifiable.

Working Through the Scenarios II: A Fraudulent Sí

Quico says: Here's a sphincter-clenching question for you: what's the worst thing that could happen after Sunday's Constitutional Reform Referendum?

To me, the worst case scenario is the government stealing the vote. But as I tried to think through this scenario, one thing became clear to me: fraud would be impossible to hide.

At the end of the day, each electronic voting machine will spit out an automated tally sheet, and more than half (54%) of those tally-sheets will be randomly selected to be hand checked against the machine's papertrail, on election night, by witnesses from both sides.

When you stop to think about it, that makes it virtually impossible for the government to cheat without getting caught. If there's a systematic gap between the automatic tally and the hand check, it'll be perfectly obvious to everybody. As Yon Goicoechea puts it,

We can't trust in a body as dishonest, partial and submissive to Chávez [as the National Electoral Council.] The polls suggest Chávez will lose, but we can't keep our arms crossed if we want to block a possible fraud. The electoral system is fraudulent, but fraud is identifiable. That's why we call on people to vote. To prove that your vote was stolen, you first have to vote.

If the government intends to steal the election, subtlety is not an option. They will have to pull a gorilazo, a bald faced powergrab backed by force of arms. It would look, I have to guess, something like this:

At 7:15 p.m. on Sunday, minutes after voting ends and long before the hot audits are completed, a jittery Tibisay Lucena calls an official CNE cadena. As a trickle of sweat dribbles visibly down her forehead, she announces the "Sí" has officially won the vote 53% to 47%.

Soon, reports start to surface all over the country that Plan Republica soldiers are insisting the "Hot Audits" take place behind closed doors. Globovisión starts showing pictures of crowds outside a voting center in La Candelaria chanting "queremos entrar, queremos entrar" at a bunch of stone faced soldiers blocking the doors as they hug their AK103s. The defense ministry issues no statement.

Word gets around that Tibisay Lucena is about to call a second cadena, but somehow, it never comes on the air. Your cousin calls you and tells you his neighbor's uncle is an army officer in Cumana and says they've gotten orders to mobilize all their troops to Caracas that same night.

Inevitably, in a few places, the soldiers can't or won't carry out their orders to keep people out of the audit rooms. In those places, the hot audits turn up bizarre results, with the hand count showing many fewer Sí votes than in the automated count.

Late that night, Globovisión starts showing footage of voting center witnesses who, actas in hand, swear their audit totals gave the No many more votes than the machine tallies.

Soon after, Chavez goes on TV to declare that the constitutional reform has now been approved by the sovereign Pueblo, and is therefore in force immediately. In the same cadena, he calls the unfounded rumors about dodgy hot audits part of a CIA conspiracy and says the stories about tally sheets not matching audit reports are part of a destabilization plan, reminding us that, a few days before the referendum, he had warned that the opposition was goint to cry fraud.

To counteract this "unfolding imperialist conspiracy," Chávez declares a state of emergency under the newly revised constitution's beefed up powers. Invoking his new powers to curb due process guarantees and freedom of information rights in cases of emergency, he orders the Reservistas to shut down Globovisión. He announces Habeas Corpus is suspended, jails two dozen student leaders, and places strict reporting restrictions on all remaining media outlets.

Suddenly, the country is in a renewed April 11th situation. The next day, people come out onto the streets, and are severely dealt with, except this time there's no media to cover it. Parts of the Armed Force start refusing orders, flagging themselves up as traitors. In the heat of the moment, at least one or two army garrisons rise up against the government. But they're not well coordinated, and get crushed fairly quickly. The remaining dissident officers are labeled CIA agents, jailed and villified aggressively in the official media for years to come.

By 2009, the story of the heroically foiled imperialist plot to sabotage the adoption of the people's glorious socialist constitution is part of the official school curriculum. The state of emergency declared in the early hours of the morning of Dec. 3rd, 2007, remains officially in force until the day Chávez dies, in office, naturally: March 23rd, 2049.

I don't think this is a particularly likely scenario, though these days lo más probable es que quién sabe.

In any case, given the audit procedure now in place, I'm sure of one thing: if the government cheats, it will not be able to hide it effectively. It's just ot possible.

f the No side wins, Chávez will be forced to make a choice: cheat with unprecedented brutality, or own up to defeat.

Walk on through to the other side

Katy says: After a fourteen hour debate (!!), the radical opposition umbrella group Comando Nacional de la Resistencia has just abandoned its militant abstentionism. In a whiplash-inducing change of mind, they are now calling for people to go out and vote No on Sunday.

There have been no reported sightings of the last vestiges of the CNR's credibility.

Fosforito chronicles

Lucia says: Reporters Without Borders give their take on Venezuela's deepening media crisis. They review review Iris Varela's meltdown, the dangers posed by the reforms, the uncertain fate of RCTV, and an academic study of media coverage of the referendum debate.

Warning: reading this may make you more likely to buy into Quico's views on the deteriorating public sphere.

Cubanization? What cubanization?

Datanalisis Details

Quico says: It's not surprising that the Datanalisis poll from Nov 14-20th is getting the most play in the international media. With a big sample (N=1854, margin of error=2.3%), based on in-person interviews, and reaching beyond the major cities, it's certainly the soundest of the recent polls, methodologically speaking.

And it makes for some grim reading for Chavistas.

The gist of it?


(Those are the figures you get by putting together the voting intentions of the 59% of respondents who say they will definitely vote and the 16% who say they are probably going to vote.)

Now some telling detail.

Politically unalligned voters (NiNis) make up 44% of the electorate. Opposition voters make up 23.7% of the total, and pro government voters 29.4%.

So NiNis are by far the largest group of voters...and here's the kicker: out of the NiNis who definitely plan to vote, 58.9% are planning to vote No. Just 17.6% of likely-voter NiNis are planning to vote Sí.

Among all poll respondents, that trend is even worse, with just 11% of NiNis supporting reform.


That slide right there tells you most of what you need to know about this referendum: the government just can't compete if NiNis desert it in droves like that.

Now, the vexed question of turnout. Out of the government's supporters, 71% say they will definitely vote, which is not that different from the 66,7% of opposition supporters who say they will definitely vote. The real gap is with the NiNis: just 47.5% of them say they're certain to vote.


This is an important and widely misunderstood reality: the real turnout challenge is all about turning out NiNis, not about turning out the hardcore Opposition. That's not just because there are more NiNis than there are anti-chavistas, but because they're trending heavily towards the No and too few of them are planning to vote.

The government's other telling problem is that it underestimated how unpopular Chávez's ideological turn would be. The propensity to self-identify as "chavista" is in freefall in the poorest segments of the population:


As you look at that, keep in mind that, together, Segment D (formal economy workers earning the minimum wage) and Segment E (informal economy workers earning less than the minimum wage) make up about 80% of the voting population. Amazingly, NiNis now outnumber chavistas by a 3-to-2 margin among Segment E voters (44.9% to 31.5%, to be precise.) And 20.8% of Segment E is opositor.

And here's another message that doesn't seem to filter up through the international press at all: For all the talk of Chávez's overwhelming popularity among the poor, only one in three of the poorest Venezuelans think of themselves as chavistas.

In fact, the "Sí" is losing even among the very poor (Segment E): 38.6% to 33.6%.

I find it staggering to think that the only demographic where self-identification as chavista has grown since last year is the middle class segments (A and B), where it went from 6% to 9.5%.

So lets review the bidding here: there are fewer self-identified chavistas than there used to be, and fewer of them are planning to Vote Sí. There are many more NiNis than there were, and barely any of them like the Constitutional Reform. Anti-chavistas are nearly as likely to vote as chavistas, and the only group where the radical egalitarian socialist government is more popular than it was a year ago is the rich.

It looks like the perfect storm to me, folks.

Time for Some Poll Charts

Quico says: By popular request, here's the Constitutional Reform Referendum poll chart. (It's a bit hard to read like this, but you can click to enlarge.)


As you can see, there are two clearly different sets of answers here. When you ask voters in general if they favor or oppose the constitutional reform, you get a clear, consistent majority against it:



But, at the start of the campaign, most people who opposed the reforms were saying they wouldn't vote. So, until the last few weeks, the "Sí" camp had a majority among likely voters.


The trend, however, is for more and more "No" voters to say they've decided to turn out to vote after all. The rise in people's stated willingness to vote has transformed the race into either a Dead Heat (according to Hinterlaces and Datos) or a into clear lead for the "No" side (according to Datanalisis, Keller and a rather optimistic seeming Mercanalisis poll.)

So what we're facing is a remarkably fluid race: one that will come down to turnout.

Causes for caution: as you can see, many of these polls were carried out in urban areas only, and a couple of them just in the Caracas Metro area. The opposition always does relatively better in urban than in rural settings. Over a fifth of Venezuelans live in towns and villages of less than 20,000 people: they almost never get polled, and they trend heavily in favor of the government. Moreover, identifying "likely voters" is a notoriously haphazard game: more art than science. Venezuelan pollsters usually rely on people's self-reported willingness to vote, which is an iffy proxy at best.

A note of optimism: Though the race appears to be very close, the momentum is clearly with the No side. The government is bleeding votes fast, as you can see in IVAD's dramatic tracking poll results for the capital:


The magnitudes here are not significant, since it's a Caracas-only poll. But the trend is significant, and very striking.

A plea for help: Notice any mistakes in these charts? Have details of a credible poll I'm missing? Please send them in. (Oh, and the first person to leak Consultores 21's super private final poll gets a bottle of something.)

Finally, those of you minded to dismiss "opposition pollsters" due to bias are urged to check out how they did ahead of last year's presidential election.

Working through the scenarios: a Sí victory

Katy says: Over the next few days, Caracas Chronicles is going to try to put the upcoming referendum in context. Ideally, this would be a deeply intellectual exercise, brimming with thoughtful analysis and unsoiled by groundless speculation. But come on, this is Venezuela, where the most likely outcome is usually what you're least expecting...so speculate we will, and how.

First, lets work through a Sí victory scenario.This scenario is no fun, of course, but it's important we keep our wits about us and recognize that this is still a distinct possibility. For all the excitement about the No's rapidly improving standing in the polls, the campaign is still highly fluid, its outcome hinges on notoriously difficult to forecast turnout figures, and so most credible posters are still officially calling the race a toss up.

How will a Sí win be seen? It depends the margin of victory, and its credibility.

The two are deeply intertwined. A landslide for the Sí is, according to all serious polls, so unlikely, it would be impossible to sell it as a clean victory. On the other hand, a narrow Sí victory will surely be interpreted by some as clean and by others as dirty.

Lets assume the Sí wins by a small margin (less than 3%) and the election night "hot audit" fails to come up with clear proof of fraud leading opposition political actors to concede defeat. In other words, a scenario where the Sí squeaks out a somewhat credible victory.

Contrary to political common sense, Chávez will not interpret a close victory as a somewhat diminished mandate to implement Socialism. That kind of subtlety is as foreign to the government as cheese fondue. Chavismo can be expected to take a slim victory as permission to go full steam ahead.

Two things may temper this. The first is the military factor. General Baduel's "treason" suggests all is not well within the Venezuelan military, that they regard the process so far as tainted (a "coup d'etat", according to Baduel) and that some of the top brass would not regard any Si victory as legitimate. It's hard to say what effect this would have on the government, but it's likely to have some.

The other intangible is popular reaction. In contrast to previous elections, I think people in the opposition would find it hard to accept a radical new Constitution that is either the product of fraud or of the slim support of a small majority. Forget the voters: most people in Venezuela oppose the reform and think it's illegal. When you start messing with people's basic rights (even those of a minority), they're not likely to just slump off and go sulk on Alo, Ciudadano. We could very well see a merging of moderate and radical elements of the opposition once again, and the outcome of this process would almost surely be violent.

Assuming the government sails through these obstacles, Chávez has already said that once the Constitution is reformed, he will press ahead with at least 100 new socialist laws ranging on a whole range of topics. We should expect an exponential increase in State regulation in the economy, intervention on private property, and attacks on private education and health care. We should also see the government targeting agro-industry, the likely scapegoat for the scarcity problem.

The universities, for one, are hanging by a thread. Chavista students in private universities have already hinted that universities cannot be allowed to be hotbeds of opposition indefinitely. Further moves to do away with university autonomy would not be surprising - chavismo has also said recently that, in the face of continuous, overwhelming defeats in university elections in the past few years, it will force universities to give the vote to its workers and perhaps to the communities surrounding them. The outcome of this is pretty clear: university authorities and student leaders will be chavista.

Much of the government's ability to pull this off will depend on the price of oil. If the price of oil begins to fall, or even stops growing at the rates it has been growing, we will see increased scarcity of basic staples, further enraging the population. Polling evidence says that people are beginning to blame the government for the empty shelves, and this trend is likely to continue with Chávez's new powers to rule by decree indefinitely, as is stipulated in the transitional clauses of the Constitutional Reform proposal. I don't see how radicalizing the revolution is going to result in the investment needed to produce enough to meet ever growing demand, and people are beginning to wonder the same.

If popular resentment towards the government were to increase while the government is deepening its hold on the country's life, we would be in unchartered territory. The government's survival will continue to depend more and more on being able to deliver basic necessities while they take absolute control over the country, a process that would become very difficult if external conditions don't improve dramatically. However, if the price of oil were to soar, we should expect the government to sail through the next phase of the process.

Finally, there is the issue of states of exception and opposition political parties and NGOs. It's not clear whether the government would continue to tolerate political parties and NGOs that do not endorse socialism. They would have the perfect excuse to do away with these organizations on the basis that they are "unconstitutional." Furthermore, a state of exception - motivated by, say, guarimbas, which are always easy to provoke - would could lead to an open ended suspension of freedom of the press, both broadcast and print, as well as Due Process guarantees. With no checks and balances left, it's easy to envision an Egyptian style situation where a "state of emergency" remains in place for decades.

My crystal ball says that all hell would probably break loose with a Sí victory. I may be wrong, but I just don't see it playing out any other way. Your thoughts?

The difference a week makes

Quico says: Just a week ago, Chávez's victory on the constitutional reform referendum was being portrayed as inevitable by foreign journos. But over the weekend, both Reuters and AP ran stories on his souring poll numbers. Even Mercosur's Press Agency got in on the action.

Two heuristics that swing elections

Quico says: Political scientists have a dirty little secret. It's not really polite to say it in mixed company, but it's a fact: casting a smart vote is just not worth the effort.

To cast a fully informed vote, a voter would have to conduct an exhaustive search. In the case of the current Constitutional Reform Referendum, this would involve carrying out a full review of the juridical implications of each of the 70-odd articles up to be reformed, and then formulating a fully informed, perfectly rational judgment about it. Even assuming that's possible in principle (which some philosophers will tell you it isn't), it's surely not worth it.

The cost in time and effort is wildly out of proportion to the 'benefit': the negligible chance that your one measly vote will swing the election. Coldly considered casting an informed vote just doesn't make sense.

Note that this isn't an attack on regular people for being ignorant; just the opposite. It's an acknowledgment that, in trying to decide how to vote, ignorance is rational.

So rational voters do what they can to cut the costs of voting. They look for quick and easy solutions to the problem of making a decision. Academic types call them heuristics: rules of thumb designed to save time and effort. Heuristics are, by their nature, not fully rational: the whole reason they exist is to meet the need for shortcuts to full rationality.

A couple of heuristics seem to play a particularly important role in voters' behavior:

1. The nature of the times heuristic: When times are good, you vote for continuity. When times are bad, you vote for change.

2. The identification heuristic: You are more likely to vote for people you identify emotionally with, with people who, you sense, "get you."

It's due to the power of these two heuristics that so many surveys ask those familiar questions: "is the country on the right track or on the wrong track?" and "does X understand the problems of people like you?" Depressingly, those questions seem to predict voting outcomes almost as well as asking people straight out who they plan to vote for.

So how are these two heuristics likely to pan out next Sunday?

1. Sporadic shortages notwithstanding, the times are definitely good. With a massive oil bonanza fueling a 70s style consumption boom, people will tend to vote for continuity. But does that mean voting SI or NO? That's not so clear. Continuity with the government means discontinuity with the constitution, and vice versa.

The Nature of the Times heuristic explains why both campaigns have struggled to define themselves as standard bearers of continuity.

Chávez has implied that voting "No" would introduce a radical discontinuity (musing publicly about quitting his job if the No wins), and using the unambiguously continuista slogan: "SIgue con Chávez".

The opposition has stressed just how radical the proposed changes are (e.g. "it's not a reform, it's a new constitution"), and saying it would be better to start respecting the constitution we already have than to change it. And the "No" side is aided by the fact that it is the "No" side - an advantage when voters want no change.

2. The Identification heuristic has always worked brilliantly for Chávez. He's a charismatic guy, and has long had a knack for convincing regular folks that he's just like them and, like them, totally unlike the fat cat opposition.

But think how long it's been since we've heard him ask "MariPili, ¿a cuánto está el pollo?" With time, Chávez has morphed from garrulous populist to sectarian socialist. Certainly, Chávez in 2007 is a far more ideologically oriented speaker than he was even a year ago.

But here's the rub: it was always Populist Chávez that folks identified with. Socialist Chávez vaguely scares people: he's too strident, too rigid. His speeches are too abstract to tug at the old identification heuristic heartstrings like populist Chávez could. If there's one point that all Venezuelan pollsters agree on, it's that Chávez is popular despite his ideological agenda, not because of it.

For a long time, people were smitten with him because they felt that he cared about their individual, personal problems; so much so that many went to great lengths to write those problems on a slip of paper and put them - literally - in his hands. But the more esoteric and strident his discourse gets, the more detached from the mundane problems of day to day life in a poor country, the less people feel his government is all about their problems.

Chávez doesn't seem wise to these trends. Instead of realizing he's in a tight race and focusing, the guy spent the last month traveling all around the world, picking big fights with everyone in sight, spending all his time worrying about FARC's hostages or an American attack on Iran, and generally not paying any attention at all to "the problems of people like you."

All of which helps explain why polls show a big majority think constitutional reform is about what's in Chávez's interest, not about what's in the people's interests. And why Datanalisis has NiNis trending No by a bone crushing 5-to-1 margin. Which is huge.

Comando Zamora is fighting the last war. The basic flaw in the its "SIgue con Chávez" strategy is that personalizing the campaign, in 2007, means personalizing it around a figure people identify with considerably less than they once did. In fact, it means centering the campaign on a guy people suspect is doing this for his benefit, not theirs.

It's going to be an interesting week.

The times they are a'changin'...

Quico says: A couple of months ago, my feeling was that if there was any way for the oppo old guard to blow their survey lead ahead of the constitutional reform referendum, they would find it. So far, my expectations have been confounded by a highly unusual outbreak of oppo good sense. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles: the old guard seems to be sitting this one out.

Leopoldo Puchi? MIA. Antonio Ledezma? AWOL. Ramos Allup? May or may not have emigrated.

These people are not the public face of the opposition in the run up to December 2nd, and what a difference it makes.

For years, Chavismo invested tons of money and thousands of cadena hours on a concerted effort to drive up the opposition's negatives. They were shooting on an open goal, and they succeeded: tarnishing the opposition "brand" so badly that, by the start of this year, not even 10% of Venezuelans wanted to describe themselves as "opositores." That old guard's image was buried completely by the immense amount of mud slung at it, as well as the ineptitude of its own attempts at a fightback. It reached a point where simply exiting the political scene was the only viable option they had left.

Today, the public face of the opposition is the Student Movement. It may not be fair to put adolescents in this position, or wise. Katy may not like it, student leaders themselves may not want it, but it's not really up to them.

Como dijo el filósofo de cuyo nombre no me quiero acordar, "men make their own history, but not under conditions they choose." Ready or not, history has thrust these kids into the position they're in, and they just have to run with it.

One thing is clear: these chamos have learned the lessons from the failures of the leadership they've replaced. Where the old oppo was maximalist, the Student Movement makes a point of not calling for Chávez to step down before his term is up. Where the old oppo played into the government's hands by personalizing the debate, ceaselessly "Chaveztizing it", the students center their message on civil rights. Whereas the old oppo never saw a red rag it didn't want to charge, the student movement isn't scared to step away from confrontations that can only play to the government's advantage.

Gloriously, they've left Chávez without a credible target, without a reasonably demonizable enemy. His attempts to lump the kids in with the old guard are vaguely pathetic. It's just not credible to slam people who hadn't reached adolescence when Chávez first came to power as "widows of puntofijismo." There's palpable confusion as chavistas realize tried and tested polarization techniques have stopped working somehow.

And so, for the first time in the Chávez era, the government is approaching a vote it seems likely to lose. According to Datanalisis' José Antonio Gil Yépez, Datanalisis, Mercanalisis, Datos and Ivad are all showing the NO side 12 to 16 points ahead, and rising. Crucially, unaligned voters ("NiNis") are trending against the reform by as much as 5 to 1. No chavista proposal can survive a NiNi rout on that scale.

Of course, none of that matters if people don't turn out to vote. The interesting thing is that, as people become increasingly aware that the YES side is way behind, an air of excitement seems to be building about voting. There's a buzz in the air in oppo circles, a feeling that we're facing a whole new ballgame here. And that excitement takes the oxygen out of the abstention movement. Refusing to vote when, deep down, you know you're about to get drubbed is easy: electoral sour grapes mascarading as political strategy. Abstaining when, deep down, you know you're about to win is something else altogether.

We've never been in a situation like this before. This time it's for real: if chavismo wants this election, it's going to have to steal it. And it won't be able to steal it subtly: the gap between the sides is too large for electronic fraud to be concealable, given the existing hot audit procedures. With half the votes being hand counted, everyone (Venezuelan and foreigner, chavista and oppo, civilian and military) is going to be able to tell.

Terra incognita, folks. How will Chávez react?

Well...how does a semi-delusional narcissist react to a massive, very public ego blow?

Badly, is my guess. Very badly.

Lies and Consequences

Lucia says: Two quotes in recent wire stories neatly encapsulate the Chávez strategy for December 2nd.

The first comes from a 32-year old mother of four, interviewed by the Associated Press after she'd waited in line for four hours for milk:

Bastida said she still believes in Chavez and plans to vote in favor of his reforms "so that things will get better." Plus, she said, if "everyone votes 'NO' they're going to take the Megamercal away from us."

The second is a quote from Chávez himself, from a Reuters article about recent polls:

"My message to everyone (on my team) is that we try to translate the very high level of support for the president...into support for the constitutional reform," he said.

"Anyone voting 'No' is voting against Chavez, anyone voting 'Yes' is voting for Chavez," he added.


In other words, Chávez knows that trying to run a campaign on the merits of the reforms is a lost cause.

His pollsters have told him that many of the individual reforms simply do not have majority support.

But that troubles him not in the least. He's willing to change his nation's constitution based on lies ("they're going to take Mercal away") and his current personal popularity -- in other words, to re-write the major political and economic rules of his nation without creating anything resembling a real consensus.

The consequences of a Chávez victory on December 2nd would be felt for many years to come in Venezuela. But let me posit that Chávez himself will lose, if Chávez wins. He's building a revolution on lies and misunderstanding and fear. It's not a healthy foundation.

Also worth a look

Katy says: My apologies for not posting much recently. Quico has a deadline, Lucia is MIA, and I'm tied up with child-care issues and with my hard drive having some sort of nervous breakdown.

In the meantime, have fun in the comments section, and check out this uncommonly lucid interview with Causa R Secretary General Alfredo Ramos.

Worth a look

Quico says: Reporters Without Borders' letter to President Sarkozy on the eve of his meeting with Chávez is here.

The Economist's quite positive take on the student movement is here.

The BBC's story on Spain's hit ring tone of the season is here.

Chávez the Inevitable

[Quico says: About a year ago, we had a funny little incident in the comments section. Readers accused me of using a Sockpuppet by the name of "Lucía" to back up my opinions! Of course, Lucía wasn't an alter ego at all, just a reader who happened to agree with Katy and me most of the time. She's a stylish writer as well, and I'm very glad to say she's agreed to contribute to the site sporadically, starting with:]

---

Lucía says: Have you noticed how many of the foreign journalists covering Venezuela are treating a Chávez victory on December 2nd as a foregone conclusion? They’re not predicting trouble at the polls, or government fraud, or even a close race – they’re simply saying more people will vote YES than NO.

Polls showing most Venezuelans do not support the reforms have not dented this conventional wisdom, repeated in article after article, even a bit.

This is not about bias. The student movement and the Baduel defection, for instance, have received generous coverage from these same reporters.

So what’s happening here? I have a couple of ideas:

Journalists Use the Last Election as a Template for the Next One. Not entirely unreasonably, how the last election played out influences how the next one is covered. In the last election, foreign journalists saw massive rallies staged against Chávez. The opposition was mobilized and united behind Rosales. And the opposition lost.

And this made sense, too. Double-digit economic growth + billions in social spending + massively outspending your opponent -- politicians don’t tend to lose with this formula. Petrocrats worldwide are basking in strong approval ratings and consolidating power, and Chávez is no exception.

Journalists look at the current campaign and see that many of the disadvantages faced by the opposition last time around are still in place – or have gotten worse. The Venezuelan economy grew at an impressive clip in the third quarter of 2007. Billions more are being poured into misiones (with new misiones created, it seems, every time Chávez thinks up a dead ideologue he wants to honor). The opposition will again be absurdly outspent in the campaign.

If anything, the opposition's position is even worse this time around. No RCTV. Even harsher restrictions on advertising space. And an abstention problem in their own camp.

Too Many Bad Polls. Another reason journalists are skeptical about a possible No victory is that the primary evidence one could be brewing comes from the polls. And as everyone who follows Venezuelan politics knows, polls have been a major source of controversy over the last few years. There are, in fact, ways to tell good polls from bad (the composition of the sample [hint: make sure rural Venezuela is represented] and the track record of the pollster are good places to start), but most journalists aren’t going to sift through piles of data and ask tough questions about methodology. They’re going to do what makes sense when facing a deadline: they’ll print some survey results, discard most, and treat all with a healthy dose of skepticism.

And with Venezuela’s recent history littered with polls off by ten or more points, it’s hard to argue that the skepticism isn’t warranted.

The Opposition. The opposition is not, for the most part, press-savvy. To be sure, opposition leaders can be counted on to provide a quote or two to fill out an article. But opposition leaders don’t regularly cultivate foreign journalists, or share news-breaking material, or do much at all to try to combat the notion that they’re the gang who can’t shoot straight. Which is too bad. Because while some opposition figures are nothing more than Globovisión windbags, others could offer a valuable perspective, and access to grassroots sources. (You don’t think courting the foreign press is important? The Venezuelan government does: they spend your money on some very fancy lobby and PR firms.)

So that’s how many journalists genuinely view this election – some interesting developments, but still an impossible climb for the opposition.

But could the conventional wisdom be wrong?

Maybe.

This December is not last December. Standing in line for milk makes voters cranky. And Chávez is not on the ballot. This is important, because some moderate Chavistas may be willing to vote against the reforms even though they’re not entirely ready to give up on him yet. Chávez’s support outside his hard-core base is due to the misiones. But moderate Chavistas are very wary of extreme Chavismo: they don’t like the divisive rhetoric, the Fidel and Mahmoud love affairs, the spending abroad, the RCTV license cancellation, the violence against the students, the insults to the church. And they don’t like many of the reform proposals, either. The very vocal defections of Baduel and Podemos may underline what they themselves are feeling – this revolution is getting out of control.

We may have reached a tipping point for this key segment of voters.

If so, I hope reporters pick up on it and start writing about it.

Because what they write matters. If, in the final days before the vote, the LatAm cognoscenti around the world believe a Chávez victory is inevitable, there will be little scrutiny of the electoral process or outcome. But if the conventional wisdom shifts, and the “NO” momentum is acknowledged, we could be looking at a whole new ball game.

Abstentionists in their ink

Katy says: There was an interesting development yesterday in the CNE, one that plays a not-so-minor role in the abstention vs. voting debate. The indelible ink to be used on December 2nd was audited in the presence of the "No" camp.

This issue is not a minor one. As I have said before, the use of indelible ink is a valuable step in the direction of holding fair electoral processes. Of course, it doesn't fix everything, but it certainly takes away some of the arguments for abstaining.

One of these arguments has to do with the Electoral Registry (REP). The story is that the Registry contains too many people who are dead, people who appear several times, have weird information or are suspicious for other reasons. The rationale is that the Registry is screwed up so that chavistas are allowed to vote many times, and that therefore we should not vote because voting would legitimize the fraud being perpetrated.

There is no doubt the REP could use some work. But with indelible ink, this argument becomes moot since nobody physically present in the country the day of the election would, in theory, be able to vote twice. And while there is an issue with votes being tallied without anyone having actually cast them, it would be clear whenever this happened. After all, electoral notebooks and opposition witnesses would be able to tell how many people physically showed up and compare that number to the number of votes being spit out by the machine.

One of the complaints from the last election was that the ink was not indelible after all, and that this allowed chavistas to vote twice. Yet the enormous effort it would require to ship thousands of chavistas to their voting centers, have them erase the evidence of their vote, and then take them to their secondary or tertiary voting center so they could vote with their supplemental identities, repeating the process in between, made this scenario highly unlikely.

Ink also serves as a psychological weapon. There is something about the use of indelible ink that makes people trust the system a little bit more, and make them a tad more confident that the chavistas around them have not double- or triple-dipped their fingers and cast multiple votes.

The ink has now been audited, and the process will continue, with the CNE having apparently agreed to allow for random audits of different samples while the electoral material is being put together. The CNE even allowed the UCV to participate, and it was all controversy-free.

Add to this the fact that the fingerprint machines will not be connected to CNE headquarters, that electronic voting notebooks will not be used, that half the boxes will be audited, and it seems to me that conditions this time around are decent. Obviously, one would want more electoral transparency - the issue of the use of government funds for campaigning is a non-starter - but I find the arguments for abstention becoming thinner and thinner every day.

Sort of like the ink that was used last December.

The Public Sphere is like a Garden

Quico says: Habermas understands the public sphere as that realm of social life where private individuals come together to discuss public matters collectively. The public sphere is actualized every single day on the pages of newspapers, at university cafeterias, around kitchen tables, in union halls and political party meetings as well as on blogs - whenever and wherever private individuals come together to talk about public affairs.

At its best, deliberation in the public sphere is reasoned, focused on arguments rather than personalities, open to all, and geared towards building common understanding. The health of the public sphere is vital to the viability of democracy. The opinion of the majority is democratically legitimate only to the degree that discussion in the public sphere operates as it's supposed to. Only then does "public opinion" embody a process of collective deliberation that honors our nature as thinking beings: and that, deep down, is the whole point of democracy.

But there's no a priori reason to believe the Public Sphere will work properly all or even most of the time. Just the opposite: the habits of mind necessary to sustain critical debate in a democratic public sphere are always fragile, always precarious, always in need of attention. They can't be mandated or legislated or imposed. They need to be fostered and protected.

I've been trying to think of an image, a metaphor to capture what's happened to our public sphere over the last few years. The other day I tried Alzheimer's. But maybe this one works better:

A democratic public sphere is like a garden. It needs tending. It needs attention, care, fussing over. It needs somebody to protect it from all kinds of threats: insects, fungi, storms, frosts, rabbits and weeds. Left to its own devices, it will be slowly overrun. It can't be taken for granted.

Venezuela's public sphere was never particularly tidy. Since 1958, it was always a bit ramshackle, overgrown here and there, encroached on by the surrounding, wild tropical vegetation and besieged by all kinds of plagues - petrostate clientelism, the mantuano discourse, general ignorance, pervasive disdain. Nobody took the job of tending it very seriously - we treated more like a Conuco, really - but neither did it quite turn back into jungle.

Eight years ago, Hugo Chavez sized up our public sphere and took a flamethrower to it. It's a heap of smoldering debris by now, just totally wrecked. Worse yet, many in the opposition figured that the way to fight back was to get flamethrowers of their own. They ended up scorching the parts of the garden that had somehow survived the initial onslaught.

Others (a minority) realized all along the need to try to save what could be saved of the garden, to protect it, to shield it from the devastation all around. But it's a losing battle. Gardening takes time, effort, perseverance. Flamethrowing doesn't. What takes the gardener a year to build takes the flamethrower a minute to burn down. Does it really make sense to try to garden while we're surrounded by people determined to burn down whatever we manage to grow?

One thing is clear to me: if we're going to build a democratic public sphere, winning in December isn't enough. Even getting Chavez out of Miraflores isn't enough, because he can keep wrecking any attempt to build a democratic public sphere just as easily from the opposition as he can from the government. We need to wrestle the flamethrower away from him...as well as from the hotheads on "our" side. And then we need to start gardening.

We need to reinvent the way we talk about ourselves to ourselves. We need to craft a new consensus about what is and what isn't acceptable in public deliberation. We need to enshrine the kind of standards Zapatero was trying (in vain) to explain to Chavez when the King lost his cool ("Se puede estar en las antípodas de una posición ideológica - no seré yo el que esté cerca de las ideas de Aznar - pero el ex presidente Aznar fue elegido por los españoles y exijo ese respeto. Se puede discrepar radicalmente sin irrespetar.") In Venezuela, getting everyone to accept those norms would require a whole new conception of what it means to "do politics." It'll be the work of a generation, or more.

One glimmer of hope: when farmers are looking to clear a field for cultivation, probably the oldest technique to prepare it is to slash-and-burn. It's just imaginable that if one day, somehow, we manage to get the flamethrowers out of our public sphere, we'll find the ground is readier for cultivation than now seems quite imaginable.

Got milk?

Katy says: We maracuchas have our own little brands that we like to buy and promote. All else things equal, a true zuliano will always choose the local brand over the national one.

For example, for many years in Maracaibo a "newspaper" was called a "Panorama" because of the now-infamous chavista daily that, at least in our city, outsold all national papers combined; Banco de Maracaibo was the top bank in the city far and away, a title now claimed by BOD; Regional Beer and Cerveza Zulia outsold Polar; and so on...

It turns out that we also have our own supermarket chains in Maracaibo. Two of the most popular ones are Víveres de Candido and EnnE - yes, you've never heard of them, but any maracucho/a has, and they're pretty big.

Today I got a picture my sister took two days ago. Turns out the EnnE closest to her house was selling milk! Shows you what you have to go through to get milk in Venezuela, if you're lucky...

Comments are back...

Quico says: ...sanity isn't.

I've been trying to think of stuff to post recently (no, really, I have) but drawing a string of blanks. The country's too far gone.

Sitting down to blog about Venezuela these days reminds me of going to visit my grandmother during the last years of her life. She had Alzheimer's, poor thing.

If you've ever seen someone battle Alzheimer's you know how gradual and drawn out the descent can be. At first it was just a vague feeling that something wasn't quite right with grandma. Then, as the disease became clearer and deeper, an increasing desperation to communicate, coupled with a growing awareness of the difficulties involved. And then, at some point - years after it had all started, but still years before she finally passed away - that hideous certainty that the line between us had been cut, that she would never again recognize me, that the possibility of communion between us had gone for good. She was still alive but, for me, the process of mourning had already begun.

That's more or less how I see Venezuela's democratic public sphere these days. It's still "going," in some sense, but has reached such an advanced level of dementia that you can no longer interact with it in any meaningful sense. Like my grandmother, it becomes less coherent and more repetitive each and every day. Words that may once, long ago, have made sense are repeated mindlessly, devoid of any context, appearing more and more like symptoms of pathology and less and less like meaningful utterances. Fears that may, arguably, have once been rooted in reality get decontextualized, blown out of all proportion and repeated endlessly.

The process has been slow, cruelly gradual, and it could go on for many years to come. By now, the most we can hope for is a crude imitation of democratic deliberation. And we know it can go on like this, getting a very little bit worse day after day after day until, eventually, there's nothing left to get worse and the patient passes away physically, as well as mentally.

And that, I fear, is what's really original about the Venezuelan Path to Totalitarianism. If the German and Russian and Cuban roads were like massive strokes, ending all free political debate in one violent convulsion, our path is degenerative, gradual, and all the more cruel for it.

The cruelest moment - or, given the nature of the disease, the cruellest string of identical moments - in an Alzheimer's patient's progression is when he reaches a panicked insight into the nature of his own condition. When the terrifying clarity of what is happening strikes him, along with the awareness that there's simply nothing he can do to stop or even slow it. For those who have witnessed it from the outside, it's a moment of indescribable pathos.

As I see it, that's more or less where Venezuela is now. In any case, it's certainly where I am.

Just a matter of opinion

Katy says: Yesterday, crackpot Chavista lawmaker Iris Varela threatened to take over private TV station Globovisión. Her complaint is that the station is "conspiring" against the revolution, more or less. No specifics were given.

I've come down hard on Globovisión before. I believe, as I have for a while, that Globovisión's pro-opposition editorial line is damaging to our side because it borders on media manipulation and it does nothing to convince swing voters.

However, Ms. Varela's complaint this time around rings demential, to put it lightly. While Globovisión's coverage is surely biased, the channel is continually used by pro-Chavez figures to broadcast their points of view, something that cannot be said of state TV station VTV.

One of the interesting things I receive in my inbox every day is a summary of all the morning's opinion programs. It lists the guests and what they talked about, and it gives you a glimpse of the type of "balance" Ms. Varela has in mind when calling for "the people" (i.e. chavistas) to take over a private TV station so that it stops conspiring (i.e. airing different points of view).

What follows is a guest-list from morning shows in Globovisión and VTV that have aired in the past three weeks.

Chavista guests on Globovision morning opinion programs included chavistas like Saúl Ortega, Sandra Oblitas, Elvis Amoroso, Alberto Castellar, Robert Serra, Juan José Molina (several times) and Aurora Morales, among others. Their point of view is certainly biased toward the opposition, but I was surprised to see how many chavistas usually go to Globovisión to air their views.

On the other hand, the guest-list on VTV's programs was made up of Luis Bilbao, Jorge Alvarado (Bolivian Ambassador to Venezuela), Vladimir Acosta, Jose Manuel Iglesias (Avila TV), Nestor Lopez (Avila TV), Darío Vivas, Erika Farías, Tibisay Lucena, Jessica Blanco, Cristóbal Jiménez, Andreína Tarazón, Osly Hernández, Rony Prieto, Diosdado Cabello, Carlos Acosta Pérez, José Agustín Campos, José Julián Villalba, Luis Acuña, Zenayda Tahhán, Rafael Isea, Patricia Villegas, Diana Gómez, Hugo Oramas and Jesse Chacón.

If you're wondering what this last list of people have in common, your first guess is right: they are all chavistas. Opposition points of view have been completely been absent from VTV's airwaves in the past three weeks. Let me repeat that: VTV has not aired a single opposition point of view in its morning shows in the past three weeks.

When faced with evidence like this, a blogger is tempted to end the post with a coherent argument about how Ms. Varela needs to look at state-funded VTV and make sure its programming is fair and balanced before complaining about allegedly biased coverage of a privately-owned TV station. But that would be too rational for these people, whose idea of a debate typically involves foaming at the mouth and long firearms.

So I'll lower myself to their level just this once and simply say: Hugo, put your ho on a leash!

Baduel hints at ...

Katy says: ... violence?

Ret.Gen. Raúl Baduel gave a press conference this afternoon and read a strange statement. Although at first glance there is not much in the statement one can argue with - aside from all the BS about the oath at the Güere tree - upon a closer inspection, something mildly creepy reared its head.

He says the reform will guarantee "violence", and that the only way to prevent violence is to either withdraw the reform or call for a Constituent Assembly. He says that this is the only way to ensure some form of consensus or democracy in Venezuela.

Sugarcoating the possibility of consensus in the country at this stage of the game certainly raises an eyebrow, but there was one particular paragraph that freaked me out. He says:

"As soldiers we've been professionally prepared to administer the State's legal and legitimate violence, and therefore, we are experts in the topic of violence and what it entails. Our duty, specially during times like these, is to avoid the unleashing of violent processes and come forward as generators of calm and guides so the country can embark on a true path of development and as promoters and maintainers of peace, remembering the peaceful nature of the Venezuelan people which is expressed in Article 13 of the Constitution."

So - if the Reform causes violence, and it is the duty of the Armed Forces to prevent violence and restore peace, what is he getting at? Is it just me, or is Baduel ever-so-subtly calling his comrades to take up arms against the Reform?

Top ten things we learned at the Iberoamerican Summit

Katy says:

10. This year's Summit was on "Social Cohesion", yet more proof that our leaders still have a sense of humor.

9. Today's fortune cookie: If you invite a crazy man to dinner, don't get mad when he takes a dump on your china.

8. New on DVD... European Royals Gone Wild!

7. Daniel Ortega proves once more that Nicaragua is the land where time stopped.

6. Chavista diplomacy: if we're not gonna talk about what I want, I'm gonna piss all over you.

5. You say Fascist, I say Chavist...

4. Had Angela Merkel been hostess, she would have hosed off the little punks.

3. The King can say goodbye to hanging with Naomi, Sean, Eva and the rest of the posse.

2. The reason he won't shut up is Tourette's Syndrome.

and... (drumroll)

1. The only country in IberoAmerica Chavez has not yet insulted is... Andorra!

Saudi Brazil

Quico says: While we weren't paying attention, South America's energy map changed.

Brazil has discovered somewhere north of 5 billion barrels of recoverable, light oil just off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The Tupi find could boost Brazil total reserves by 50%, turning the country into a net exporter. They could be pumping a million barrels a day outta there for a decade and a half or more to come.

It's one of those transcendent but slow burn events whose importance the press isn't very good at conveying. You won't notice the implications this week, or this year. But the strategic calculus in the region just changed.

Brazil's reserves are still a small fraction of Venezuela's but, today, the regional power is much less energy dependent on its northern neighbor than it was last week. It won't be the sexiest piece of news you'll read this week, but it's probably the most important.

Be the reconciliation you preach

Katy says: The violence we are currently seeing on the streets of Venezuela should surprise no one. Last Sunday, Pres. Chavez ordered his followers to crack down on student protesters, and that is exactly what they are doing. To accomplish this goal, they are ensured a fresh supply of weapons and full immunity from all levels of the State.

Obviously, protesting in Venezuela is becoming an increasingly dangerous proposition. However, there is another imminent danger - that we fall into the same cycle of violence. Few things work better for chavismo than forcing our side to radicalize, and it seems as if the government is following the same script we have seen dozens of times before.

At this stage in the game, though, we need to be very careful with the message we convey. We are less than a month away from a crucial election, and adopting a radical position would simply turn away the moderate swing-voters that hold the key to winning.

I realize that right now might seem like the least appropriate moment to be talking about reconciliation, what with our young people getting shot at. However, it's in times like these when our true mettle is tested, when our true nature comes to the surface. It's important that people in the opposition as well as moderate chavistas see that our nature is peaceful, just like we say it is.

Of all groups, moderate chavistas who dislike the Constitutional reform figure as they key constituency right now. According to recent polls, these are people who are not yet convinced of voting against Chavez because they like some of the things the government does.

So while we contemplate with horror how students are attacked, let's keep our heads cool and remember a few key ideas:

1. We offer reconciliation and peace, chavismo offers violence. This idea may sound like a cliché, but it should be the core of our message, and this has practical implications. Restraint is the key here. If we defend ourselves using violence, we can no longer confidently say that we are for reconciliation. And if we are dishonest about reconciliation, we have very little message left. In other words, one of the single most important reasons in our arsenal to convince people to vote "No" hinges on taking it like flower-eating pacifists and turning the other cheek.

The developments so far are promising. Not only did UCV students yesterday show remarkable judgment in not responding to violence, they also canceled a march today to cool things off a bit. This prevents further skirmishes where we may have a lot to lose in the eyes of public opinion.

2. Recognize that some chavistas are honest idealists fighting real injustice. It is not enough to simply back off from responding to chavistas. We need to continue reaching out to moderate chavistas who are just as horrified as we are about the current events, who may oppose the reform but still feel they would not vote against it because it would amount to voting against Chavez.

In order to get their attention, we must recognize that many of these people are honest in their beliefs, and that we can live with, tolerate and even respect them. We must struggle to find common ground. For example, neither them nor us want to go back to what we had before. Both of us can agree there was, and still is, a tremendous amount of injustice and exclusion in our society. Until you believe these things, until you are able to see past the gunmen and discover the moderates, you cannot become an instrument of reconciliation, and any promises to be one will come off as dishonest.

3. Nobody who hates Chavez and chavistas can preach reconciliation honestly. I thought about this one for a while, but I believe it is true. If you hate, you cannot reconcile. The reason is simple: reconciliation will require in the future an arrangement where chavistas and us can coexist, where the possibility of civilized interactions between Chavez and our leaders is still possible. Yet hatred gets in the way of that, making it extremely difficult and unlikely.

Imagine for a moment a future where you are President and Chavez is no longer in office but still a relevant political figure. Is your first inclination to extract revenge for all that has happened? Is it your goal to wipe chavismo off the political face of the nation? Or do you seek to find a way to coexist with chavismo, its legacy and its followers without sacrificing your own ideas? Do you look for a middle ground, or would you see that as a betrayal to our cause?

I think everyone who participates in our struggle must ask themselves these questions. The answer to them will say a lot about how honest we are as agents of reconciliation, a key element in becoming a majority and saving our country.

Go the extra mile to be the peace that you preach, but don't take it from me, take it from one of my heroes.

A picture summarizes what a "Si" victory would mean

Katy says: Really says it all, doesn't it?

PS.- Quico is traveling, and I'll be out of contact starting tonight for the weekend. Later today, I will post something, and then it's lights out until Monday. Have a safe weekend.

Are you in an abusive political relationship?

Katy says: Does the President you have supported in the past:

1. Embarrass you with put-downs and call you a traitor for not thinking like him?

2. Say things or act in ways that scare you?

3. Want to control what you do, what you see on TV, what education your kids get, what you buy or where you go?

4. Harm your relationship with your friends, coworkers or family members?

5. Take your money, make you ask for money or refuse to give you money

6. Make all of the decisions?

7. Tell you that your values are wrong or threaten to take away your freedoms?

8. Prevent you from finding a job or learning according to your choice?

9. Act like verbal abuse or violence is no big deal, it’s your fault, or even deny doing it?

10. Destroy or take away people's property in an unfair manner?

11. Intimidate you with purchases of guns, airplanes, boats or other weapons?

12. Hit you with laws that came out of nowhere, on which you had no input?

13. Force you to go to marches and wear a red shirt?

14. Say that all good things he has done will end if he does not get what he wants?

15. Threaten to never leave office or bury politically anybody who disagrees with him?

If you answered 'yes' to even one of these questions, you may be in an abusive political relationship.

For help in how to deal with this, VOTE NO December 2nd.

PS.- This one is dedicated to my moderate chavista friends.
PS2.- I trust I have not come across as insensitive toward the plight of victims of domestic violence the world over, but this questionnaire is adapted from this one.

School shootings in Finland, and Caracas

Katy says: The peaceful march to the Supreme Tribunal is tainted in blood, as previous marches were. There are reports that an armed group has entered the campus of Central University in Caracas and has opened fir on students coming back from the march. They have apparently taken over the School of Social Work and set fire to a bus. Four kids have gunshot wounds, but the number is sure to mount. Read the breaking news in Spanish here.

There was a school shooting in Finland today as well. I'm sure the UCV shooting will not make the headlines in the same way as the Finland shooting. After all, when students are shot in Finland, it's news. When it happens in Caracas, it's just another day in the red, very red revolution.

What can we do but hope this ends without further bloodshed.

Tomorrow's headlines, today

Loyal reader lucia say: A glimpse at the possible headlines on December 3, 2007

Chávez Wins Once More, Despite Opposition to Reforms

Caracas. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez won approval from Venezuelan voters yesterday on a slate of constitutional changes that considerably consolidates his hold over power, altering substantially the political and legal framework in this nation of 26 million. Approval for the reform reached 52% of valid votes, versus 45% for the "No" option.

Although polls leading up the election had shown growing opposition to the reforms, and a number of prominent supporters of the President had defected from his camp in recent weeks, Venezuela's divided opposition was unable to turn these advantages into a victory, as a substantial portion of "No" voters stayed away from the polls out of mistrust for the process and electoral authorities. Abstention reached 60% of eligible voters.

Objecting to what they called unfair conditions, some opposition leaders had called for abstention, a strategy which appears to have provided the President with the margin needed for victory. Polls leading up the elections had shown majorities in Venezuela against the reform’s central propositions, which included the removal of term limits for the President and new restrictions on private property.

President Chávez has easily won electoral contests in the past, but faced new challenges in this referendum. General Raúl Baduel, long a Chávez loyalist, was a vocal critic of the reforms. Podemos, one of the policital parties that supports the President, openly called people to vote "No." Escalating food shortages have cut into the President’s once sky-high approval ratings. University students across the nation had led demonstrations against the reforms in the weeks leading up to the vote and repeatedly called on voters to vote "No." And although support for the President’s social spending remains high, there were clear indications that the new reforms were considered too radical for most Venezuelans.

Nonetheless, today it appears as if the President has the tools he needs to transform his nation into a socialist state. Some anticipate an increase in media censorship and political repression along with the broad changes to the nation’s economic underpinnings.

“There’s no doubt about it,” said Lance Freeman of the Inter-American Dialogue, “Venezuela’s opposition scored another own-goal.”

Pablo Cabrera, 54, a taxi driver, was one of the opposition’s supporters who did vote yesterday. "Of course, we have to vote, no matter what,” he said, standing in line at a voting center in Catia, a barrio in Caracas, “or these reforms will kill our country.”

One thing I am forced to admit...

Quico says: ...the electoral dynamic is not what it was.

Top ten reasons you should vote December 2

Katy and loyal reader lucia say: Well, it's election time again, and even though the rightful owner of this blog is kind of sick of the voting vs. abstaining debate, most pollsters think it's the most relevant issue. Personally, I believe we should engage those who believe in abstention - chavistas and non alike - and try and convince them to vote come December 2.

What follows are the Top Ten reasons why you should vote on December 2 - I thought of using "abstain from abstaining", but that was going to be way too confusing. Credit for this post goes to lucia, who egged me on and wrote most of it.

TOP TEN REASONS TO VOTE ON DECEMBER 2

Imagine your sister tells you she's not going to vote, period. How would you convince her? What would you tell her? Here are a few hints.

1. Vote because it is the right thing to do. If the Sí vote wins, things will get worse, a lot worse. And one day, historians will point to this moment as the key, the moment when Chávez went from wannabe dictator to the real thing.

Voting is a sacred right, a privilege. Many Venezuelans died so you could have the right to vote. To this day, people all over the world continue to die because they don't have the right to vote. Do you think the Burmese monks who are in the streets protesting would boycott an election if the military junta held one? Probably not.

2. Vote because your vote does not legitimize anything, just like abstaining does not take away legitimacy from anything. A vote does not equal an endorsement of the CNE, nor does it equal an endorsement of the way the reforms have been introduced. It is possible to vote and protest at the same time. In fact, that day, voting is the only form of protest that will be allowed.

3. Vote to show we are democratic. If we want to show fellow Venezuelans and the world that our movement is democratic, we must participate in elections. Look at how others see our track record: the Carmona debacle, a strike, a boycott of Asamblea elections. If we're honest, we acknowledge that our own democratic credentials could use a boost.

People in Venezuela find it hard to grasp exactly how much respect our side has lost in the eyes of foreign observers. It's very, very hard to explain to sympathetic foreign audiences that abstaining or boycotting elections is the way to get rid of Chávez. Yes, we're fighting an un-democratic regime. But unless we fight it democratically, why are we any better? And how can abstaining or waiting for guarimbas or a coup to topple the government be considered democratic?

4. Vote because, for the first time since before the Recall Referendum, we may actually win. Surveys show voters do not support indefinite re-election. Among all voters, the Sí vote loses! But among likely voters, the Sí vote wins.

Why? Abstention in the No camp. If we vote, we put pressure on the CNE and the government. We force them to either recognize our triumph, or steal the election.

5. Vote because boycotts don't work. Look at what happened the last time the opposition tried a boycott: the result was zero representation of a huge chunk of the population in the Asamblea. Opposition Asamblea members would have had more standing and status to make their case to the world. When we walked out of the Asamblea, we lost a forum for dissent. No one outside the opposition (certainly nobody overseas) agreed that the low participation in the election reduced the legitimacy of the Asamblea.

Furthermore, many opposition voters (especially in the D and E classes) were disgusted with the opposition decision to deny them a chance to participate. They wanted to vote, even if they distrusted the process, just to be able to express their opposition.

That time, there was a full boycott backed by the entire opposition. This time around, key opposition leaders will promote the No vote. Boycotting a vote doesn’t usually work, and it definitely won’t this time with only a portion on board.

6. Vote to be counted, to say that we are here. A vote is the only way the government knows it has an opposition. If you don't vote, your opposition to the reforms will remain forever unknown. Whatever you think of the outcome of December's election, we can point to it and say that at least 40% of the electorate opposes Chávez.

7. Vote because a lot of people want us to vote. The students. The church. Business groups. Advocates for freedom around the world. Even chavistas such as Podemos and General Baduel. All have worked and spoken out against the reforms. All have called out to vote for the No. They've all gone out on a limb and stuck their necks out. What about you – are you going to do your part?

8. Vote because it may be the last time we're allowed to do so. Vote now, while you still can.

9. Vote to stop evil. These reforms are evil. When confronted with evil, you fight with everything you have, including your ballot.

10. Vote, so you can look at yourself in the mirror on December 3rd. When your children ask where you were on December 2, 2007, what will you tell them? That you stayed at home out of disgust for the process? That you didn't want to "legitimize" the CNE? That you considered putting a little paper ballot inside a box was equivalent to "going to the slaughterhouse"?

Instead, be able to tell them that you voted despite the obstacles, despite not believing in the CNE and having no guarantees that the outcome would be respected no matter what.

Tell them you did what you could and you stood up for what was right in spite of the circumstances. Just like Chileans did in 1988. Just like Aung San Suu Kyi did in 1990. Just like Nelson Mandela did in 1994. Just like Ukrainians did in 2004. Voting is what democrats do.

John Reed, father of all PSFs

Katy says: If John Reed were alive today, he would surely be in Caracas reporting the glories of Chavez's revolution. Say what you will about Reed, at least he packed his bags and went to live in revolutionary Russia: the guy walked the walk.

Today's brand of PSF, the likes of Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell and countless other nincompoops, prefer the quickie, in-and-out approach. Which doesn't stop them from acting like they're entitled to opine on Venezuela just because they once posed in front of a Canaima waterfall in a thong.

Over at Slate.com, Anne Appelbaum has their number. Don't miss this delicious spanking of PSFs everywhere.

Baduel drops a bombshell...

Quico says: Not much of the day-to-day political give-and-take in Caracas interests me enough to blog about anymore. That said, today's statement by General Baduel was a no-kidding bombshell. The guy who undid the April 2002 coup says the proposed constitutional reform would amount to a coup d'état and notes the armed forces' obligations as "guarantors of the rule of law". Yowza.

When Baduel takes a stand against a coup, people sit up and take notice.

Update: The government's reflexes aren't letting it down. It took about a third of a second for the Official knee to jerk and label Baduel a traitor. A pajarito put this comment in my inbox:

Can there ever have been, in the history of world politics, a leader with such extraordinarily bad judgment when it comes to choosing his closest collaborators? It would be different, perhaps, if they simply parted company on a matter of principle, but that - we are assured - is not the case. They were born traitors, just waiting for the right moment to stab the great leader in the back...

Luis Miquilena - traitor

Jesus Urdaneta - traitor

Raul Baduel - traitor

Alfredo Peña - traitor

Francisco Usón - traitor

Luis Velásquez Alvaray - traitor

Ismael García - traitor

Francisco Arias Cárdenas - reformed (?) traitor

Jorge Olavarría - traitor

Hermann Escarrá - traitor

Herma Marksman - traitor

Nedo Paniz - traitor

Pablo Medina - traitor

Manuel Rosendo - traitor

Efraín Vásquez Velasco - traitor

etc. etc....

How extraordinary that a man so astute in so many ways should have been so comprehensively - and repeatedly - deceived as to the moral fibre of his comrades.

And a happy birthday to you!

Katy says: How will folks like these assimilate into XXIst Century Socialism?

One wonders what planet these people live in. Sometimes I think *they* are the real enemy.