Teodoro Petkoff against Sumate

Well, the top blew off the opposition pressure cooker. Sumate managed to bring all opposition candidates to primaries for August 13, except one (in English here). That one, if not the one above in polls is certainly one of the best known. Teodoro Petkoff has announced that he will not participate in the primaries, though letting the door open that if some consensus is reached with or without primaries, he will withdraw from the race to make sure that there is a single opposition candidate comes December.

It is difficult to evaluate precisely this week events. Maybe Petkoff has made a major political error that will cost him his candidacy in a few weeks from now. Maybe Sumate has outreached its objectives and has brought down any hope of opposition unity. The thing that is certain is that Teodoro Petkoff has confronted Sumate which is the most trusted opposition organization. That Borges and Rosales went ahead to register for the primaries almost kicking and screaming does not distract to the fact that they did sign up for the primary and at least had the good sense to know that it was not the moment to break up with Sumate.

But Sumate also made a mistake by perhaps overestimating the importance of the primaries at this point. Until August 13 everybody will have eyes on the different opposition candidates as they will not resist the temptation to start trashing each other to get more minutes on TV, to come in second, third, or fourth so as to be able to pretend that they brought this or that to the opposition candidature and already negotiate their participation in the post Chavez era. Not realizing of course that such activities were already observed in July 2004 when the preparation of the post Recall Election presidential election seemed more important for many than actually winning the Recall Election.

But that might end up being a lesser evil if the primary campaign degenerates in a free for all of unforeseeable consequences, including a disastrous cancelation. Petkoff is not entirely wrong when he says that the primary has a certain aura of frivolity at a moment when the government is hardening his posture and repressive attitude, such as invading campuses, bringing outright ideology into education, intensifying political prosecutions and what not. In fact, today Teodoro spoke harsher against the government than he ever spoke, even harsher than any of the main opposition candidates ever spoke. Strategy? New conviction? We’ll see.

This blogger already in February was saying that primaries should be held as soon as possible, that a program AND a candidate should be set by early August. Now by mid August we “might” have a candidate. There will be no consensus program set except for the ever present “Chavez out” ritornello. There will be a need for reconciliation period and regrouping of good will among all the losing sides. Dealing with all of this will carry us through mid September at the very least. Meanwhile Chavez will have been freely campaigning, distributing presents and Misiones, unchallenged for 2 full months, except for Teodoro. How will that play out?

That candidates dithered, that Sumate did not dare to show its muscle yet, are all valid excuses for the delay, but the fact is that primaries are by definition an election and a bruising one at that. There is a reason why the US of A, a primary based system if any, ends its primary season by May, to have the national convention by July for the November election. There is necessary healing and unification time.

Yes, primaries are great and democratic and wonderful and the people want it, and whatever else you want to attribute to them, but in my humble opinion it is too late to make a difference; in this I agree with Teodoro: at this time what we need is to remind the country on how bad Chavez rule is and not on how bad Cecilia Sosa is.

This being said, I also disagree strongly with Teodoro for the way he slammed Sumate, for letting his anger show when he announced that he will not participate. A simple communiqué would have been much better, leaving him a couple of days to calm down and build a case against Sumate, if such a case exists. But I suspect that he felt abandoned by his pals of the early triumvirate: Rosales and Borges caved in (supported?) the Sumate bid and he was let alone “guindando de la brocha”.

But now we must pick up the pieces. The first objective is to get the most we can get out of the primaries. That is, we should all go and vote, even if we must take the chance that Chavez might have us filmed when we vote. The more we vote, the more we make the last December election look as the fraud it was. Even “teodoristas” should go and vote, if anything for the candidate less likely to win. We should avoid unnecessary infighting and abandon like rotten meat any candidate that starts piling shit on the other ones. No one, not even Teodoro, will benefit from the failure of the primary. This much should be clear to all.

As for this blogger. He will sign up in any way he can to help make this primary a success and encourages anyone to do so, even outside of Venezuela where there will be some primary centers set up. However I will not campaign for any one, from this page or from any other pulpit. I am saving myself to be able to support fully WHOEVER is the final candidate. So, if you come in the future to this blog to look for dirt on Cecilia Sosa, move on to other web pages (besides I have already trashed her in the past).

Of course oppo candidates that say stupid things will be duly sermoned, even if I risk having to support him or her later, even Cecilia (though that one I am not sure I can).