Sunday, November 08, 2009
That watery wall left
Tomorrow we are celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. 20 years! I still remember how stunned I was when I heard the news comingback from work. I lived in Baltimore then, and I think I spent half an hour in the parking lot until I finally left the car radio to go for the TV and start a round of phone calls to friends around the country. Oh! We knew that there were deep problems in the East but until the very last moment we could not imagine that the wall would fall just like that, with nearly a shot fired. We saw the total but not absolute collapse of a system that had outlived its use for many years before it fell.
The work is not quite over yet, and new nasty apprentices find ways to put up walls around their society.
Some walls still exist from then, such as in North Korea. China (and Vietnam?) are finding new creative ways to not only induce their folks not to escape so fast, but even to lure some to come back, even conditionally. It is a slow deliquescent wall that will take still a few more years, but it is crumbling even as in the West we pretend not to see it, do not try to push along the collapse now that we need the Chinese funds to help us out of our economic crisis.
But the folks I have really in mind are those ruling over Cuba, the Castro brothers who pretend that the Wall never fell down. For them it is easy, they have a watery wall all around their country, and nothing worth exploiting in the island. Even the beaches can be found elsewhere, at least as nice, and with not as many jinetero/as to fend off with your Panama Hat. Who cares?
And there is of course Chavez who in his immense ignorance and awesome immorality wishes the Wall would have never breached. So, as the low rated tyrant he is, his endeavor is to build an internal wall in Venezuela, to split in two Venezuelan society, having one side abuse the other in an alleged redress for the past. In fact the wall he builds is to hide behind as the coward he has always been.
But let me remind you all of one thing: when walls are built it is becasue people from both sides allow for that. People from the outside, such as the Spanish help to "integrate Cuba" or the hypocrisy of Lula toward Chavez defending him by minimizing Uribe legitimate security concerns, are the worst moral offenders of such processes. They do not even have the excuse of a war torn Europe who did not think it could take on Communism right after it took off Fascism.
-The end-Labels: civil war, communism, democracy, totalitarianism
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posted by Daniel Permalink 6:26 PM
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Saturday, November 07, 2009
And a real reality check from Cuba
Saturday is my "low on news" mental hygiene day. But a brief scanning through Juan Cristobalat CC I learn with great horror that Yoani Sanchez, the most famous dissident blogger of Cuba, has been beaten up by goons; from the Cuban government it is extremely easy to guess. She tells her harrowing experience in Spanish here.
When for Venezuelan bloggers to go through a similar experience? I ain't stopping writing any time soon, just in case chavistas goon red this. If it is going to become like Cuba, I am ready.
-The end-Labels: blogging as a way fo life, castro, repression
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posted by Daniel Permalink 10:05 PM
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Needed reality check?
I found this image today and I thought it would be intellectual enough for a lazy Saturday. Not to mention that it did not include blogging, so I can breathe, for now, hearing the warning shots over twitter that could well hit blogging any time soon. By the way, did any one follow Roland Hedley of Doonesbury this week?
I have not been very good at Twitter. I tried. After Iran I thought it would be good to have an account (@danielduquenal). But I failed. I cannot for the life of me come up even weekly with a thought that I think might be worthy of imposition on the people who have decided for some reason to follow me. Heck, I have even stopped paying attention to the not even half a dozen people I tried to follow, if anything for blogging business reason, like following Miguel. I suppose that those who follow me must be happy that I am a rare occurrence (?).
Blog reading people come to read if they want, what they want, when they want. There is a certain willing self imposition that comes with Twitter that, well, does not fit me at all. I mean, it is good to have the account, in today Venezuela one never knows when it will come in handy (assuming the goons that come to arrest me allow me to keep my blackberry, a doubtful premise). Or maybe to tweet while I am standing on line at some election day.
The fact of the matter is that if you look at the lower right side of this page you will find an MBTI profile that will tell you all. As an INTP I am interested in new technologies, I tried them, such as I did for facebook or twitter. But soon enough my Introversion takes over. Soon I stop twitting and soon enough I start hiding more and more people on my personal facebook page. The facebook blog page I set long ago, well, I have not checked it out in months... I am even thinking about closing it since I cannot figure out in which way it can complement the blog. I am sure not going to discuss on facebook whether I shower with three or four totumas..... as Chavez would have us do.
PS: I found this drawing in a blog that did not gave any credit. Hence no credit. Just in case.
-The end-Labels: blogging as a way fo life
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posted by Daniel Permalink 6:57 PM
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Thursday, November 05, 2009
The 2010 votes: gerrymandering in Venezuela
There is still some stuff to be written to prepare for the election sets of next year. In particular the latest battles between the opposition as to hold primaries or not and the infamous "tarjeta unica". But it is more important to visit in detail the last (?) issue left from this series of posts: how the new electoral law will allow for gerrymandering by the CNE as it pleases.
Perhaps the hardest things that any electoral uni-nominal system has faced is the design of electoral circumscriptions. History has told us that no one ever reached a satisfactory solution, some going all the way to civil wars in order to decide how a circumscription should count its electors and inhabitants (does the US political debates in the mid XIX century ring a bell for some of you?). Of course proportional systems do not suffer of this as much, though they are not exempt of the problem when they establish regional lists. The problem is that you may pixelate a country in even squares but each square will have an unequal number of people in it, and very differing interests as you go from the middle of the picture to the edge. Trying to group the pixels in uneven squares to get image detail is actually not very easy and could blur further the picture.
When politicians try to have their hand in pixel distribution things get even more out of shape as they try to group their supporters in thin support districts while they dump their opponents in huge majority opposing districts. A most famous designer of electoral districts was a certain Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts who showed how it was done, no matter how ridiculous the shape of the new district would be.
You can imagine that if gerrymandering can be done in countries like the US or France where the post office can reach every nook and cranny, what can be done in countries like Venezuela where millions of people have never received a letter, not even a bill, through mail. Who knows how many people actually live and vote in a given district? This was a problem before Chavez. You can assume now that the problem is much worse, and of course much more tempting to use for chavismo.
I do not know how much time I will dispose of to illustrate the extent of the problem so I chose for the time being to dissect the case of Miranda state. It will be quite a long post by itself.
Before I start you should know that contrary to the US where the state legislatures decide of new electoral district boundaries every ten years once a semi reliable census has been performed, in Venezuela as of now it will be the 5 rectors of the electoral board, the CNE, who will decide of new electoral districts with little supervision and no possibility for redress. Add to this that the last electoral census was nine years ago, and a sham at that, and that the INE is well known for fudging all sorts of statistics and you can guess the possibilities that open for the chavista controlled CNE who will have all sorts of convenient numbers to justify any arbitrary decision they decide to take.
This being said. Until last year electoral districts were created by adding municipalities until enough of them yielded enough people to justify a representative. Municipalities could not be cut, sliced, etc... and in addition they had to touch each other. In that way it was hoped, even though the distribution could not be quite fair, that at least abuses by electoral authorities would be limited through the political parties influencing them, and that the union of these municipalities would yield some kind of "regional" interest. Considering that in Venezuela it is difficult to determine exactly who lives where the system sort of worked.
The Miranda case: from 1998 until today
The first figure is the example of possible Miranda state electoral result, based on the 2008 results and how districts were decided in the old system. In 2008 the regional vote was Governor Disodado Cabello with 507K votes, defeated by challenger Capriles Radonski who got 584K votes. Right click to enlarge in a different window. Note: since the minor parties in that state did not get together 2% of the vote I am just ignoring them altogether and considering all through this post that there are only two sets of candidates. To simplify matters, you know.
From above you can see that the result next year extrapolating from 2008 would be 4 district seats for the opposition (blue triangles) and 3 list seats for a total of 7. Chavismo (red stars) would get 4 district seats too, and 2 list seats for a total of 6. That is, 7 to 6 seats, really close to the vote percentages: for the oppositions 53.5% vote for 53.8% seats.
Thus the old system works even with the infamous "morochas" if both sides use the electoral trick and present a united front. It will not be really representative of the diversity of the state but at least representative of the overall majority (read preceding posts for more details).
Yet the system carried a certain number of problems, and was unfair to the opposition electorate as the next figure indicates, even if in this case the final result was fair. Let's look first at the raw data from 2008. According to the CNE data from 2005 and 2008 we can list each electoral district and its number and the different municipalities that are included in each district (matching colors with the above map); how each municipality voted for Diosdado and Capriles, and the population of the district. In the last column I calculate the percentage of that population that voted for the major candidates.
The first observation we can thus discuss is that of the 21 municipalities that include Miranda only 8 had more than 40% people voting, and of these 8, ONLY 2 were carried by chavismo/Diosdado (red stars). Independently from the virtues and defect of Diosdado Cabello as a candidate, it is clear that any gerrymandering requires a consideration of districts more likely to have high voter participation, and isolate or group them together as required.
The advantage of chavismo becomes clearer in this next figure when we look at the electoral "quotient". That is, how the CNE determined how many districts are created and how many of those ones will include more than one representative (in Miranda case only one district, Sucre, has two representatives).
In the first columns we have the districts and their municipalities, as above. Then we have the population in each district for 2005. Then I divide the population by 8 (8 district seats in 2005, there will be 10 in 2008) for the "quotient" of which I use to calculate what I call the elector value of each district. Before I go into that number, it is this one rounded up or down that determines how many seats each district gets, in the one before last columns (Sucre got two because Miranda got an extra national seat for some reason not of the scope of this discussion).The voter value number as I calculated it allows to compare the worth of each district. If I divide the 1.26 of district 4 by the 0.72 of district 1 the results is 1.75. This means that the electoral value of an elector in district 1 is almost the double of the value of an elector in district 4 since it will take almost two votes of the inhabitants of district 4 to "neutralize" a vote from district 1. Obviously, trying to address such issues is one way to enter into gerrymandering as I will show next.
How will Miranda by chopped for 2010?
The first thing to remember is that from 5 list votes Miranda will go to three representatives elected through the list vote. Thus to the original 8 district representatives we must add two new seats which oblige new calculations and perhaps redistricting. I do not know of course what will the CNE decide in the end, I am just offering you a possible scenario next. It will include a reasonably legal and justified change, and an unconstitutional one made legal through the new law. Let's start with a new table.
The table just above is the same posted just before except that now the "quotient" is calculated over 10 representatives, at 278.903 people. The last column is the division of the district population which rounded up requires the CNE to add one seat to district 4 and district 2. But what you can observe is that when we look at the voter value now district 4 has an advantage and the district punished the most is district 7! The CNE should normally accept that though there is a way to change district configuration that would be acceptable, legal and without changing the overall results. That new result, in theory, would be as the figure below shows:
The result now would be coming from:
1)removing two representatives from the list vote, one from each side,
2)the addition of of one opposition seat to district 4 and one chavista seat for district 2.
In other words we do retain an overall fairness of representative distribution for the state, 6 to 7 seats won, even if district 7 is more unfairly represented than district 4 was.
But through gerrymandering the CNE can change the result without too much trouble.
First, the municipality of Los Salias, who votes heavily for the opposition, could be split from district 7 to 4. Now the elector value for 7 would drop from 1.42 to an acceptable 1.16 while the voter value of district 4 would go up from 0.79 to 0.92, all more acceptable. The final result should still remain the same taking 2008 numbers, BUT... the opposition victory in district 7 would now be razor thin and a heavy chavista investment in that district could turn it around for a razor thin victory. That is, reasonably safe districts 1, 5 and 6 could be worked out less intensely while the financial effort of vote buying could be focused on 7. In a year where electoral money will be less plentiful, such details count a lot. Not to mention that other tricks can be used to favor chavismo in district 7 such as voter migration from district 5. If that strategy were to work opposition would now get 6 seats to 7 for chavismo EVENT THOUGH the opposition would still get MORE THAN 50% of the vote!!!
But it gets better. According tot he new CNE law parishes (and maybe even smaller geographical units?) can be detached from their municipality and joined to another one strictly for electoral purposes. If clearly this could be use to reinforce chavismo in Guacaipuro by giving it some border area of Urdaneta, there is a much more spectacular application in Sucre, district 3.
With the new seat distribution district 2 is now the one with the best voter value at 0.74, and thus the most unfairly advantaged. Compensation cannot really come from district 1 which is still favored itself. Compensation can come only from district 3, Sucre municipality. But there is a problem, it voted opposition in 2008, even though the majority of this districts is comprised of "ranchos", low economical class areas in theory Chavez lovers.
Now, close examination of district 3 reveals that the parish close to district 4, Leoncio Martinez, voted for Capriles by 30.786 votes to the meager 6.801 votes Diosdado Cabello received. By cutting off this parish, including it into district 4 AND including the remaining of Sucre into district 2 we create a new large district which elects 4, FOUR, representatives. And the beauty of it is that the chavista advantage in district 2 is enough to compensate the deficit in 3. Not by much, but enough. The result of all of this combined is shown in the new map below:
With the 2008 numbers where Capriles Radosnski won with 584k to 507k votes, chavismo gets 8 seats to the 5 that the opposition now gets! And if the trick works in district 7, that number becomes 9 to 4!!!!!!!! In other words, with a theoretical vote 560 to 531 (51.3% to 48.7%) won by the opposition chavismo could still get 9 to 4 seats, that is 69% of the seats!!!!! 49% of the vote becomes 69% of the seats!!!!
The counter part of course is that if chavismo continues its decline in Miranda, the opposition c could carry the 4 seats of the new super district 2 and with 55% of the vote it would carry 9 to 4. However observe that for the opposition to carry 69% of the seats IT NEEDS to carry at least 55% of the vote, 6 points more than what chavismo requires, courtesy of CNE redistricting (one legal and on illegal moves). Note, to underline this hypothesis I have put a red and blue question mark in these narrow margin results, the districts that could go either way if votes are counted as they should be.
Conclusion
It should be crystal clear that in front of redistricting the only weapon the opposition has is a perfect unity of candidature, coupled to all the usual, as, etc, etc.... Any division will not only be a sure disaster in district 7, but also in 3 if kept as is. A divided opposition can lower the required 49% vote of chavismo to acquire a seat majority to as low as 40-45%!!!
Unity is the requisite sine qua non. The CNE, we can be absolutely sure, will try to establish as favorable a redistricting for chavismo as possible, and also publish the final electoral map as late as possible to hinder as much as possible the opposition effort to reach unique candidate nominations. Chavismo has no such problem because not only they will know these changes before hand, and certainly before the opposition, but because their party structure and authority of its beloved leader will allow for a prompt and definite nomination process.
The opposition leadership has a huge challenge in front of it. Not only it needs to reach some form of unity agreement but it also needs to reach it alone because the kind of game involved in redistricting can only be countered by political parties, not by NGO organizations that will not even be received at the CNE offices. Civil society and naive folks like me can only hope to impress that notion on the political chiefs that must fight this battle.
-The end-Labels: 2010 elections, cne, electoral fraud
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posted by Daniel Permalink 12:13 AM
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Sunday, November 01, 2009
Is the Future in Europe?
Two news item from Europe this week tell us that the social future is in Europe and not in Venezuela.
In Paris, former president Jacques Chirac will stand trial on some funky business when he was mayor of Paris. During his 12 years tenure at the presidency he managed to dodge the issue claiming that a president benefited from judicial immunity during his tenure. Now, he is again a simple citizen and his past is finally catching up to him. Interestingly the more sympathetic comment came from his socialist adversaries, one of them regretting that such a trial would affect the needed majesty of the presidency.
Whatever the case might be, it is refreshing to see that the French quasi monarchic presidency is brought down from its cloud. First the term was lowered from 7 to 5 years, and last year, sitting president Sarkozy supported yet a new constitutional change that limited the presidency hold to a maximum of two consecutive terms. I need not offend your intelligence by reminding you how the Chavez presidency has become eternal, imperial and unaccountable. Por ahora.
Across the border in Germany a new government has been sworn in. It includes as the number 2 figure, vice-chancellor and foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, openly gay politician with hubby, leading the Liberal party of Germany (Free Democrats, neo-liberal in US terms). Of course, my first thought is for gay movement of the US who like African Americans have tied hopelessly their fate to the fortunes of the Democratic party just to be used and discarded as needed. Or should I remind folks for example how blacks voted for Obama in California while shooting down gay marriage there? So pays the Devil.
Amusingly the first foreign trip of Westerwelle is to Poland where he met with Catholic militant (and possible homophobe?) very conservative president Lech Kaczynski. I had to put the picture because I find the meeting hilarious, when one knows all the past of these two countries and their troubled relationship. If anything says social progress in Europe, it has got to be scenes like this one.
Right now I cannot imagine a meeting between cheap macho Chavez and Westervelle. I am pretty sure that either him or his boss Angela Merkel will try to avoid such a meeting as much as possible. I can even imagine the vulgar pleasure that Chavez might take during one of his Alo Cadena in preparation to such a meeting, or after that one. He would talk good words but in such a tone and context so as to make them in fact a vulgar mockery. After all Chavez is the president who has managed to put 4 women in the 5 powers of Venezuela, to the contrary expected effect. All of them look like maids there, put up by Chavez so they can do whatever he orders them to do. It is amazing that the fact that 4 out of 5 top political positions occupied by women in Venezuela end up in fact as a regression on women's lib, in effect looking much more like a symbol of female submission to the alpha male that tries to find any possible way to screw us.
Truly, the future is not in Venezuela.... But one can always dream of Chavez on trial (with much m more serious charges than those of Chirac) while a new democratic National Assembly votes gay marriage. Which will happen first?
-The end-Labels: corruption, homophobia, machismo
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posted by Daniel Permalink 6:57 AM
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Saturday, October 31, 2009
A Halloween agreement in Honduras
The agreement signed in Honduras yesterday is conveniently close to Halloween, a weird omen about its effectiveness and who might win the battle in the end. It is not just a matter of disguise as a Venetian Carnival would have been. In Honduras the threat of further violence and terror exists behind the continuous masquerade where all know what is at stake but where few dare to say it aloud. Freddy would have a field day playing the different inner terror of these people.
We have several pieces that try to explain what the agreement is. The Wall Street Journal titles Honduras 1, Hillary 0. Besides the note that it givers us our third capital H for the day it would seem that the WSJ is betting on the Micheletti combo to carry the day. They do have a point: the Us indeed wants this masquerade out and is indirectly acknowledging that for 4 months the Micheletti administration has been paying the bills and pushing forward the election. The Zelaya camp besides its clownesque discredit has been sabotaging elections instead of trying to take an active role in them and building for the future, which must be reminded is less than 3-4 years from now, less than the duration of a presidential term.
I am not so sure. Zelaya, or Roldos, or another will have the financial backing of Chavez, the implicit support of Brazil if Lula manages to decide who succeeds him, the complacency of the US, the intrigues of Insulza, etc, etc.... In other words, Honduras is far from having escaped the Chavez communism curse (Chavez himself in a lapsus brutis used the term communism to qualify his pseudo socialism of the XXI century).
The Washington Post has a more complete article and a more skeptical one as to who is in the winning seat. It would be all fine if they had charged the beginning of the crisis at Zelaya's attempt at unconstitutionally changing the constitution rather than the fact of the military putting him in pajamas in an airplane. But certain patterns of guilt attribution seem hard to break no matter how much evidence is brought forth.
Curiously in its editorial the Washington Post is way more sanguine than its article. For them, it is OK to sub-title "How the Obama administration outmaneuvered Hugo Chavez". True, on paper Zelaya gets to return, maybe, to his old job but in a much weakened position, a true lame duck presidency while free and recognized elections can now be held. If the turnout is above 60% this would guarantee final proof that Honduras never supported Zelaya's plan to create his own version of presidency for life. The flaw here is that it all depends on how much the US is willing to bend its muscle to enforce the deal. We might expect in the US favor that Lula, having understood the image damage he did by accepting on his own Zelaya in Brazil's embassy, might consider now that supporting the US here and telling Chavez to back off would be in fact a nice touch for Lula to end his presidency with more of a statesman image. That would explain why Chavez is using his trade mark "por ahora" about Zelaya, understanding that for the time being he cannot do anything further in Honduras. "For the time being", it must be underlined.
The New York Times looks more at the strong arms tactics need by the US to reach an agreement. If the WSJ journal took this allegedly forceful attitude as a way out for the US, the Times is somewhat more positive. though there is a slight pro Zelaya aroma that comes out of the article. The NYT, it must be noted, did not worry as much about the hand of Chavez in the continuous whole story, almost contenting itself in making the Honduras crisis a classical banana republic tale. Today we must note this sentence "But hundreds of millions of dollars in American humanitarian assistance continued to flow" making one wonder whether the NYT journalists would have liked to see more misery in the streets of Honduras... Makes you wonder if they ever called Caracas correspondent Simon Romero to check about the bounties of XXI century socialo/communism...
I am not too sure what to think of this agreement. First, for the Micheletti side to sign, no matter how much pressure Hillary put on them, it must mean that they have a fair sense that they can prevail in the end. After all hurricane season is nearly over an Honduras was spared this year, giving less opportunity for chaos which would have favored the Zelaya side. Second, they got what they wanted, elections at the end of the month with Zelaya out long enough to cease being a major destructive influence on the democratic process. Third, having removed Zelaya for so long allowed the transition government to purge or neutralize the local administration of the worse pro Chavez agents: Zelaya will have a hard time putting them back in charge, in particular if the president elect gets a good share of the electorate and if the runner up recognizes the victory without ambiguity.
Indeed, Zelaya might be so weakened now, equally from the corset about to be set up on him as well as his ridiculous handling of the situation, that the Micheletti camp might feel it worth to take the risk of bringing him back in office, to politically finish him up once and for all. There is also the possibility that Zelaya knows his days are over and he will accept to play the game so as to bring back into Honduras people like Patricia Rodas and pass the baton to them. By coming back even as a figurehead, even for only three months, Zelaya ensure his presidential pension, his retirement on his Honduras land and maybe not a too awful position in Honduras history books.
But in such an aleatory situation one never knows what surprises are in store. So let's wait to see first whether the Honduras congress will vote the agreement, the first mine field to cross. It will take at least a week or two, but no more because they need international observers for the elections. That is the final goal after all for the Micheletti people: reach a recognized election result.
-The end-Labels: honduras
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posted by Daniel Permalink 10:29 AM
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Thursday, October 29, 2009
What Chavez never did
I have long ago stopped economic posts because, well, Miguel and Quico take care of this much better than what I could do. But that I took upon other tasks such as electoral analysis does not stop me from on occasion point out to the essential.
The New York Times carries today an article on how Michelle Bachelet was able to turn around a presidency that started very shakily into a 70% favorable popularity opinion a few months before she leaves office. Why? How?
Very simple: when copper prices were high during the commodities boom that lasted until the mid of last year, she set aside a large portion of the income for rainy days.
What is notable is that her administration managed to place in sovereign funds 20 billion USD. If to this you add that Chile is an export driven economy fueled by agriculture added value products (wine comes to mind and summer fruits in the US during its winter) you can understand that when the crisis came Chile indeed suffered, but not as much as other countries. Today Chile is hoping to get back next year into the 5% growth range, which is enough to finish to pull it off third world status very soon, and certainly earlier than any South American country. Some people might argue that Chile is already out of this category but it is not as its technological sector is not quit there yet, as well as its per capita GNP. Also Chile is still vulnerable to political adventurers such as the growth in polls of Enriquez-Ominami whose changing positions and media based program makes me nickname him Origami as a more appropriate name for an all show, no substance politician.
In short, Bachelet did all that Chavez did not want to do and as such she is high in polls just as Chavez is finally starting his long overdue slide into polling inferno.
Think about for a second: just out of copper Chile managed to save 20 billion, a commodity that does not compare whatsoever with oil. Had Chavez been a little bit more careful, imagine how much he could have actually placed in sovereign bonds without much trouble. 40? 60? 100? billions and with less effort than what surely had to do so create this piggy bank. Even more telling is that Chile today is a net creditor just as Venezuela is issuing yet another set of questionable bond issues, increasing dangerously its debt burden.
But what is even less forgivable when we look at Chavez balance is that he has damaged so much the Venezuelan productive apparatus, in particular agriculture, that now 95% of our exports are oil, and we import at least half of our food. It bears to recall that in Venezuela agriculture should be easier than in Chile since with adequate irrigation it could provide for year round production of some items. Nobody, in an oil producing country , is expecting that we export more food than what we import, but we could at least demand that we do not eat our oil, literally. You know where the oil money spent on food ends, do you?
The final irony here is that as we, an energy rich country, are facing major power blackouts for the next few years, Chile, an energy poor country, announces that its electricity output went up by 2% over the last 12 months.
-The end-Labels: bachelet, chavez, chile
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posted by Daniel Permalink 10:54 AM
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Nicaragua-Honduras: when blogs go fast
A WSJ editorial FINALLY writes what I wrote almost a week ago, that the judicial coup in Nicaragua was a vindication of what the Micheletti group did in Honduras three months ago. It is not really that I might be smarter than the WSJ, or that blogging is faster, it is simply a matter of logic: all gang up on Honduras and yet Ortega did the same shit, at least on a legal point of view, and nobody at the OAS has said anything.
Each day the OAS keeps sinking in deeper opprobrium. And the US plays along, not always but way, way too often.
-The end-Labels: honduras
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posted by Daniel Permalink 9:21 AM
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My little bit to help Honduras
Over there they are interested is seeing what they might have escaped from. Please, visit la Gringa and thank her for having forced me to work extra this week end.
-The end-Labels: honduras
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posted by Daniel Permalink 12:13 AM
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Presidential budget in Venezuela
I was meaning to write about it but in France Center left paper Le Monde beat me to it.
In next year budget, the Miraflores Palace budget increases by, hold yourself tight, 638%!
Meanwhile the education budget goes down, but the weapon purchase budget seems to make it out OK.
Economic crisis Chavez style. Close to delirium as they stop any pretense.....
Meanwhile the word, astounded, observes the Mugabization of Venezuela.
UPDATE: some of you complain that I am forcing you to read French. Fear not, El Pais of Madrid also notices the immoral budget increase for Chavez own needs. In Spanish. The author, Maye Primera, takes an exquisite pleasure at contrasting the "3 minute shower" speech of Chavez with the reality of his budget asking 84,000 USD of toiletries. I suppose that amount will include "dry shampoo"?
-The end-Labels: autocracy, corruption
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posted by Daniel Permalink 12:07 AM
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Monday, October 26, 2009
They all knew about electrical woes for at least 7 years
I am not going to translate it, no time today but below you can read in Spanish the Tal Cual article that explains how the government knew about the coming electrical crisis since at least 2002, and even before had they been paying attention. There is ONLY one guilty party for the current energy mess and it is Hugo Chavez.
Edelca advirtió la crisis
El presidente Hugo Chávez y sus ministros de economía conocieron todos y cada uno de los informes sobre una inminente crisis eléctrica en el país
Damián Prat, Guayana
L eer y analizar los informes de los ingenieros de Edelca que nos muestra el ex gobernador Andrés Velásquez- hechos en 2002 advirtiendo lo que ocurriría "entre 2009 y 2010" de no tomarse las medidas adecuadas junto con hacer un plan de inversiones que ellos detallaron, es comprender la causa de la actual crisis de energía eléctrica.
Mas claro si se consultan dos informes de los ingenieros de Cadafe. Uno de 1997 y otro de 1999 ya con Chávez en el gobierno.
Sin ser la empresa especialista hay un cuarto informe, de un equipo profesional de Bauxilum, también de 2002 y 2003, que ofrece parecidos análisis y conclusiones semejantes.
Todo estaba dicho. Nada quedó sin analizarse. Casa cosa estaba prevista sin tratarse de predicciones de brujo, sino análisis con la experticia profesional y usando los datos y estudios de años.
La Venezuela que comenzaba a ser gobernada por Chávez usaba la colosal inversión en hidroelectricidad, transmisión y distribución de energía hecha en continuidad administrativa por ocho gobiernos anteriores junto con la de empresas privadas como La Electricidad de Caracas.
Y disponía de siete años para continuar la línea de desarrollo en inversiones a fin de no romper el equilibrio entre la oferta de energía de origen hidroeléctrica y la térmica, así como para evitar que los requerimientos de energía no tuvieran respuesta en la disponibilidad de la misma con el margen suficiente hasta para cubrir "años malos" por sequías.
El presidente Hugo Chávez conoció todos y cada uno de esos informes. Todos llegaron a sus manos y a las de los de sus ministros de la economía, los presidentes de CVG, Pdvsa, los de Edelca y mas recientemente al de Corpoelec.
Es mas, ocasionalmente, Chávez se refería a algunos de esos proyectos cuando hacía promesas dominicales, lanzando discursos gradielocuentes o colocaba "piedras fundacionales". Lo que estaba era relatando los proyectos de aquellas listas, pero aderezándolos con su verbo, como si fuesen "ideas nuevas".
La recuperación de Planta Centro, las nuevas de EDC y de Oriente, las dos hidroeléctricas de Los Andes y Centro Occidente, la ampliación completa de Enelven en Zulia, entre otras.
Chávez y los jerarcas de su gobierno siempre supieron -durante los últimos siete años- que ese plan de inversiones en plantas termoeléctricas, unas para recuperarlas y otras para sumarlas a las existentes era indispensable o habría crisis "entre 2009 y 2010".
Y que el sistema de líneas de 800 y 400 kv que llevan la energía desde Guayana a toda Venezuela debía seguir creciendo nunca paralizarse como ocurrió en este septenio- para adaptarse al crecimiento.
SIEMPRE LO SUPO TODO
Dinero jamás le faltó pues justamente ese período fue el de la mayor bonanza de ingresos petroleros de nuestra historia. Poder político e institucional tampoco era problema. Todos los poderes e instituciones han estado en sus manos obedientemente.
Y sin embargo, al día de hoy, transcurridos esos siete años, estamos en la más profunda crisis de energía eléctrica de nuestra historia moderna.
Muy poco de aquel plan de inversiones se ejecutó. Casi nada.
Lo más relevante fue que no "inventó" con Edelca en los primeros años y las obras de Caruachi continuaron y su gobierno las concluyó.
Muchos proyectos ni siquiera se iniciaron. Ni en las termoeléctricas destinadas a ser recuperadas ni en las nuevas. De Planta Centro apenas funciona a medias uno de cinco generadores. Tampoco en los sistemas de transmisión. Peor aún, se le metió "plomo en el ala" a la otrora eficiente Edelca al partidizarla y luego al quitarle toda su autonomía, tras centralizar en la burocrática Corpoelec.
Por eso está Guri, por vez primera en su historia, con seis de sus 20 unidades generadoras paralizadas.
Por eso anda Planta Centro más "en el suelo" que nunca, con una sola unidad funcionando a medias y las otras cuatro paradas.
Estatizada EDC, se paralizaron las inversiones en la nueva termoeléctrica de esa empresa que debía sumarse a Tacoa.
Por eso ahora Chávez hace discursos y "cadenas" tratando de "inventar un enemigo" y desviar las culpas hacia "el Sambil y los Malls" (que en realidad gastan apenas el 0.3% del déficit actual) o hacia "el derroche de los venezolanos". Para tratar de ocultar sus propias culpas.
Por eso estamos "de apagón en alumbrón" en medio país y el gobierno imponiendo un plan de reducción de la demanda, que incluye arruinar más a Sidor recortando las horas de uso de sus hornos eléctricos y manteniendo en la ruina a las destartaladas empresas del aluminio dejando sin reparar sus más de 300 celdas de reducción de aluminio dañadas para que no consuman.
"Chávez no puede pretender hacerle creer al país que el problema es el despilfarro en lugar de confesar la verdad: el problema está en la desinversión de su gobierno en la generación de energía", remata Andrés Velásquez.
"El tiene que responder por los serios daños colaterales a la calidad de vida de las personas por el racionamiento residencial y al comercio. Los serios daños a la industria estatal y a la privada. En nuestras cuentas se han regalado unos 47 mil millones de dólares en el exterior. Con menos de un tercio de eso se habrían hecho todas las inversiones eléctricas y mas", señala mostrando los informes.
Y finaliza: "incluso el proyecto Tocoma con todo y ser financiado por el BID- tiene retraso de al menos dos años".
-The end-Labels: corruption, incompetence
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posted by Daniel Permalink 1:06 PM
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Chavez busy solving the electricty problem
It seems that chavista pollsters must be reading the numbers right and that is sending Chavez into a flurry of activity so as to appear to do something about it, trying desperately to dispel the reality that in ten years he has done near zilch to plan the energetic future of the country. Along the way his true egotistical self shows plenty opportunities to show off, while he accumulates dangerous lapsus brutis.
It all started into his now customary cabinet meeting live on TV, and sometimes even on cadena. You need to understand first that a live cabinet meeting is not a working reunion: ministers spend several hours listening to Chavez rants, leavened occasionally by the scolding to one of their lot. The scolded idiot nods with his or her head, sure that he will handsomely rewarded for allowing the beloved leader humiliate him in public.
The cabinet reunion as usual was extremely useful for the well being of the country: Chavez explained to us that we needed to take only three minutes showers, that we had no need for hot water, and that he was creating a new ministry for electricity. You can see it for yourself in several Youtube videos, in particular this one below. As a bonus you get the lapsus bruti of an unhinged Chavez admitting that that his socialism of the XXI century is nothing else than disguised communism.
But apparently this was not enough. TV luminaries interpreted this scene justly as a mockery of the people, so Chavez had to change his discourse and find someone to blame for the power outages. Today in his Alo Presidente it was the Sambil Malls that consume too much electricity. They have been ordered to install their own electricity generation system because Chavez was going to cut their electricity supply.
What?
First of all, why blame the Sambil who actually offers a useful social function as being the only entertainment center for the masses, where rich and poor can go to walk around in a safe and cool AC space and eat some cheap junk food instead of daring the contaminated streets, where they can risk reckless drivers and out of control criminals! Why not close instead some of the government agency that produce nothing but hot air?
Second the biggest Sambil of them all is the one in Caracas. It was inaugurated, if memory does not fail me, in 1998. And certainly until at least 3 years ago there was no electrical outages that could be blamed on the mall.....
But you have to admire the bravado of Chavez, pointing at the Sambil windmills! He could not take down Colombia, he will take down the Sambils! Our hero!!!!!
Meanwhile, he, the socialist president of the masses is attacking the trade unions of the electrical sector who are claiming their due. He pretends that since we are in crisis they should put on hold their grievances. Eh? Is it their fault that Chavez has not invested in the electric sector? Are they to be blamed in the same breath as the Sambil? Oh, Lord! Give me strength!
But of course Chavez has never been a manager and he certainly cannot understand what the private sector knows very well: without motivated workers, you are not going to accomplish much.
If he is not a manager, that does not seem to have reached his mind and he also decided that he will be the national diet director. In addition of taking now the right to decide who can buy electricity and who cannot, Chavez also told us that we are getting fat, that now 14% of the people are obese. I suppose that for once, knowing that soon he will not be able to buy all the food he needs to buy he needs to have more folks eat less. Wise man, ain't he? Also, the less people eat the less use for a refrigerator and so more Watts saved!!!! Brilliant!
But there were other gems today. One was that the Colombian defense minister was accused of being a "retardado", that is, vulgarly, a retard. Except that in Venezuelan Spanish it should be "retrasado" instead of "retardado", a word that does not exist here but is used in Cuba. Decide by yourself whether this is yet another lapsus brutus.
That is our Chavez, in a single day battling all fronts, Sambil overconsumption, obesity, rice production in Apure, drug trafficking, murders on the border, Colombia, restless trade unions, and what not!!!! All of course with equal resounding success! I feel soooo safe!
-The end-
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posted by Daniel Permalink 7:29 AM
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