The 2008 Venezuelan results: 7 - Conclusions

It is rather late to give the conclusions of the November 23 electoral joust. But a new election sneaked in and well, you know, I had to cover two elections at once. Thus this post can be considered the last of the 2008 series but also the preamble of the 2009 series. And to illustrate this duality I will like to look at the Lara state results.

Lara is a very interesting state because it is supposed to be a chavista bastion and yet as the table on the right, click to enlarge, shows it has a high electoral instability, meaning that chavismo can never be sure how it will perform there. And at a referendum time this is quite a handicap as the 2007 "surprise" illustrates when Chavez lost the referendum in Lara. It is also interesting to observe that the percentage of votes obtained in Lara bears little relationship with the actual amount of votes gained there. The top vote getting was for Chavez in 2006, but Henry Falcon gets 7% more share with almost 70 000 votes less. And yet chavismo should not be happy with that result at all: at least 100 000 of these votes are cross votes from the opposition!!!

If you look at the 2008 details you will see that there were almost 120 000 more votes cast for governor than for the state legislature. I know it is more difficult and maybe less interesting to vote for legislators, but that is quite a difference, is it not? And when you look at who lost the most votes you can see by yourself that the PSUV lost 50.000 but its allies more than 100.000! However the opposition in spite of its division loses much less. In fact, Primero Justicia gets more vote in the legislature list than for the governor they supported!

There is only one explanation for the numbers that you see in that table on the right: the new governor of Lara, Henry Falcon, is a free agent of chavismo, well, almost, and a significant chunk of chavismo will not follow Chavez every time. From 2006 to 2007 chavismo lost 120.000. But it did not recover them to elect Falcon: at least 100.000 of his electors came from the opposition. Chavismo must be worried sick about Lara this time around: not only Lara could contribute even more to a NO result next February, but a solid NO victory could even force the hand of Falcon to become in turn a dissident. All that is at stake for Chavez in 2009 is illustrated in Lara!

And this is perhaps the most important result of 2008: Chavez might have reached his last historical plateau. If we believe chavismo account of 53% of the popular vote it is way below the 66% of Chavez two years ago, the more damaging that the regional election campaign became a plebiscite on Chavez due to his grotesque intervention in the election. Indeed chavismo did win more votes than the opposition on November 23 but as we have seen there are many factors that diminish greatly whatever positive might reside in that 53. For example, key states were lost. For example, dissidence might not have been as strong as expected but the way in which chavismo dealt with it will come back to haunt them. For example rural vote might have gone for Chavez, but all indicate that a significant fraction of it was a "dependency" vote. Maybe individually these things are not that big, but taken together they are very ominous for the next referendum.

But the opposition should not gloat as much as some of its spokespeople do. It still lack in vote even though it has been growing steadily since 2006. And even if it wins next February, its difficulty at unifying its electorate weakens its future perspectives. The arrogance of a a few local leaders was enough to cause the loss of at least 10% of the districts that should have gone to the opposition. The opposition has thus three urgent tasks that it must conduct almost simultaneously:

- get ready for the amendment referendum.
- find a way to effect better unity for the municipal council elections later in 2009.
- offer a real program that can carry the opposition to a National Assembly victory in 2010.

The work starts today, Xmas or not.


-The end-

The 2009 results, the hidden meaning

The good news is that I can do the whole analysis in one single post: after all, the 2008 analysis still mostly applies and what we need to understand is simply why Chavez managed to mobilize better his base. After all, the opposition does not have much to complain: in spite of a rather weak to dismal campaign (it depends on the areas) it still manages to increase its share of the vote once again.

Thus this post will be organized in small, parts to address simply the main points.

Why Chavez increased his vote?

Very simple: he made a campaign blitz as we had never seen before, forcing all public administration employees to hit the streets all the time, threatening, blackmailing, and what not. Of course, state money use was no object. And yet the rather dismal campaign closing show of Avenida Bolivar indicates that the SI vote was one of lassitude rather than one of certainty, as if many of his supporters thought "well, we are stuck with him, he will never give up, we might as well give him what he wants to see if he leaves us alone for a while".

The machinery in the country side was spectacular as people were carted and monitored all along. I have a friend who happened to be the president of a voting "mesa" in a pro Chavez district, even though she is opposition. She told me that:

• at 5:30AM she had to start her day with an argument against the military in charge of the security because there were plenty of chavista supporters trying to hide their support with hats that simply had a red star on it or some other allusive item. She threatened to put a white hat herself to finally force them naked head.
• as the vote proceeded she had to fight back attempts at voting "in company" as the military in charge said he did not see why people could not take a "trusted friend" along to vote. Even the CNE representative had to side with my friend, rule book in hand, to explain once and again that only physically handicapped people were allowed to bring someone along.
• then she counted at least half a dozen "returning voters", as in people that had not voted in years who suddenly appeared, all expenses paid from wherever they had moved to in Venezuela, to vote for the SI.

Thus, if this was a table where opposition had a determined leadership, you can imagine what was allowed in rural areas where the leadership of voting tables has long been taken over by chavismo, courtesy of the CNE.

So in fact the question might be: with all this display of brute strength how come Chavez got ONLY 54%?

Free and fair elections?

No way, not at all. Those who pretend to the contrary are simply either uninformed or are plain liars. Your choice. If you still think otherwise, well, you have not read what I just wrote above.

Why the opposition lost

Very simple, it could not go beyond the No es No slogan, never replied to the charge that it was going to kill the Misiones, even though these are working less and less well, killed by chavismo inefficacy and corruption. In fact I suspect that the students are solely responsible for the opposition maintaining and increasing its vote count.

If to this you add the grotesque abuses of Chavez, well, there is no mystery.

Again, as long as the political leadership of the opposition does not unite behind a clear message and at least a clear shared leadership, Chavez will win. Even if there is an economic crisis because Chavez will always have more money than the opposition and will not be afraid to use even worse tactics than what he has done so far. Period.

How the vote moved

The interesting fact of this vote result is that both chavismo and anti chavismo increased their vote counts, a rather unusual event in elections. On this respect my very cautious and not optimistic predictions went down anyway. I made three predictions: that the opposition would get at least 4.763.000 votes and it did, which is score one for me; that the NO would win narrowly, thus score 0 for me; that chavismo would get more than what it got in November which it did but no more than 5.188.000 while it went almost a million above, big score -1 for me. However getting back to check my predictions I realized with great horror that this 5.188.000 number I reported was wrong, not what I had calculated in my tables (it should have been the 5.300 of 2008). Oh well, too bad, I am screwed anyway. I need an editor... but then again none of you caught my mistake!

How did this play out at the national level? I did use the CNE results of the first bulletin and for the table below I did not bother checking how these had changed with the third bulletin , it would not matter much for what I have to say (by the way, is it that not EXTRAORDINARY that the CNE has the nearly complete results of last Sunday and we are still waiting for the 2007 complete results? Am I the only one bothered by that at this point?)

In the table below what I simply did was to highlight the results where one side increased its vote, at every level, from one election to the next (red chavismo, blue oppo). You can observe by yourself the interesting phenomenon that in 2007 ALL went down for Chavez, in 2008 all went up but in 2009 actually some went down again! The opposition shows a more "coherent progression where all states more or less keep increasing their vote, albeit slowly. Clearly, the quality of Chavez leadership at a given election is what determines how he scores, the opposition benefiting from a more steady progression (rounded votes, X1000).


Interesting details

There were a few noteworthy items worth remarking. In no particular order.

Tachira, Libertador and Miranda: the revenge of the victims. In these states where chavismo has been particularly brutal in not recognizing the victory of the opposition the people have paid Chavez back. In Tachira chavismo drops by 20,000 and the opposition grows by 40,000. Cesar Perez Vivas can look forward a rematch where this time he will win easily if they dare annul the election, with state assembly victory as a bonus point for him. In Miranda chavismo grows (a state particularly sensitive to the Misiones) but Capriles grows as much. In fact the district of Guaicaipuro (Los Teques), whose newly elected chavista mayor has been sort of appointed as the chavismo face in the state, has lost ground. Winning with 50% in 2009, Guaicaipuro goes NO this time around. In Sucre (Petare) the poor district insulted by Chavez who said it was full of golf courses, well, Ocariz led the NO to victory with 166 to 129. Even in Libertador the SI victory was very weak ensuring that Caracas at large voted massively for the NO, validating Ledezma rule clearly. Note that in Libertador (also sensitive to Misiones and public worker blackmailing) the NO gained 100 000 votes from 2008 whereas the SI had a progression of only 60 000 from last November.

Aragua and Sucre red tide. There the demise of PODEMOS implies the loss of its electoral machinery and the amazing take over of chavismo. Even Maracay who was barely lost by PJ last November is now taken over by the SI with a 112 to 105.

The dissident 2008 vote. It seems to have spread evenly betweenabstention, chavismo and opposition as we can see for Trujillo, Portuguesa and Guarico. But in Barinas chavismo returns triumphant.

Primero Justicia is punished. In the states where the maneuvers of Primero Justicia led to opposition division in 2008, this one does not improve much as chavismo advances decisively. Clearly a demoralized opposition did not have the heart to campaign hard (as I saw personally in Yaracuy). Yes, I know, I should not single out PJ for that division but in these three states at least it was at the heart of the maneuvers and lost its shirt (Bolivar, Aragua and Yaracuy).

Rosales is not the absolute kingmaker in Zulia? In an interesting twist in Zulia the SI lost by less than chavismo lost in 2008. Could it be that an eternal reelection of Rosales was not to everyone's liking? However there might be another less palatable explanation: many Rosales supporters might not have voted NO, but SI to retain their man. We certainly see that phenomenon in Nueva Esparta were the reelected governor is probably already starting to plan his third term campaign.

Merida and Lara: where the opposition had really the wrong man in 2008. In these two states the opposition improved greatly its votes from November 2008. Then in Merida clearly the defeat was due to a lousy candidate for the opposition. But in Lara it was because many in the opposition went directly to support Falcon who suddenly realizes that his ample victory was not as strong as he might have thought at first.

Is there a hidden message in all of this?

Definitely: Caucaguita. As I wrote in an earlier post analyzing the results of 2008, the popular and poor district of Caucaguita inside of Sucre municipality is still going heavily Chavez but the opposition is creeping slowly and continuously. I have updated my slide from then and you can observe it by yourselves.


The vote of the E and D sectors are not all locked up for chavimso. I truly think that last Sunday Chavez reached his last real victory. In votes and in percentage he has gone down from 2006 and in spite of all the advantage he had he could not repeat his 2006 number. Short of forcing people to vote for him at gun point I do not know what he can do to improve his latest score.

Which of course does not mean that the opposition is going to win anytime soon. If it wants to wait for the natural attrition of chavismo, this one as a few good years still ahead.

The future?

With Chavez regained power to stay in office his ability to blackmail and threaten his own supporters to follow him are renewed. That is, for the lifted term limits for all, within chavismo at least they all know that without Chavez blessing NONE of them can go for reelection. Now for the next 4 years at least they all need to outdo each other in sycophancy to be allowed to run for office again.

With the display of power abuse we have been witnessing since last summer leading to that paroxysm in January you know that free and fair elections in Venezuela is something that does not exist any more. Next election will be even worse.

Only economic collapse can maybe remove Chavez from office. And even that is not certain as we see how Mugabe and Castro tactics are kindly observed by chavismo.

My friends, we are in a military dictatorship. Oh, a "legal" one for sure, validated by some form of voting scheme, but a dictatorship nevertheless. Watch as it turns ugly.

Epilogue

And thus I conclude what is probably my last election coverage. There is no interest anymore for me to cover future elections as they will be even less free and much less fair than this one. The CNE as it stands is totally sold out to Chavez and it is, in my opinion, only a matter of time for the last "neutral" member of the CNE to either give up or be expelled, something that Chavez has already publicly demanded. If it is true that the voting moment by itself could be qualified as "normal", as long as international observers refuse to notice the amount of fraud that takes place BEFORE the vote, elections are simply useless. The inner logic of the political regime is to be more and more repressive and soon even the voting act by itself will not be acceptable.

I must say without false modesty that still to date my electoral evaluations are the most comprehensive ones you will see on the web, and probably even in Venezuelan papers who lamely repeat the numbers without bothering to look for what they really mean. And I do not even have access to the polls that these people read all the time... As I wrote before, the only guy that really would appreciate these posts of mine is Chavez himself who is the finest politician in Venezuela even if he is totally gross and repulsive. If anyone knows the Venezuelan electoral map and its pulse, it is him, just as Mitterrand knew in France and just as Sarkozy seems to know (they are the only examples that I can come up with of people who knew their electoral business as Chavez does, better than their entourage; Speaker Tip O'Neal was also excellent but he had no presidential timber).

I will write one or two more posts related to electoral interpretation of last Sunday and then move this blog to its next phase. Thus enjoy the graphs above because you are not going to see much of them anymore.

-The end-

The 2010 election predictions: The Andes

The Andes region, Trujillo, Merida and Tachira states, used to be seen as a common entity, from their high mountain physiognomy to their political similarities.  Not any more.  Tachira is now decidedly in the opposition camp while Trujillo has truly become an unconquerable chavista fortress.  Merida remains mercurial but then again it is the largest of the three, the one with the most flat land, the hot and humid region of El Vigia, the one with the highest peak of the country. Let's start with the simplest one: Trujillo.

Trujillo

For some reason this northerner of the Andean states has become a bastion of chavismo. In 2008 Hugo Cabezas was dropped out of nowhere by Chavez and still managed to win with 170,000 votes, the double than its next rival from the coalition opposition. And if opposition was in the hope of better days, it should keep in mind that the candidate of the Communist Party and PPT coalition (Trujillo was the rare division within chavismo) got 38,000, half of what the opposition won.

The 2008 Venezuelan results: 4 - The reason why Chavez is so upset

There has been that fake debate as to who really won the November 23 election. Chavez got more votes, but the big prizes were lost by him. You can go on and on with that (Chavez does, every cadena, reciting the list of town halls he won even if he did not). Or you can try to look for what makes Chavez so angry. One reason is quite easy to verify if you know where to look for: the opposition might be far from beating Chavez in urban popular districts, but it is growing.

Now, there must be a caveat with that observation: the popular districts where opposition vote grew in strength this time around are districts associated with more industrial and developed districts. Popular districts in more provincial cities do not show that shift, or at least not as clearly. To look at how true was the claim that the opposition is nibbling at Chavez strongholds I went to the biggest prize of them all, the Libertador district of Caracas.

Libertador is the biggest district of Caracas with roughly half of its population. As such it is the largest single municipal district of Venezuela. It is divided in parishes, the most famous ones of Venezuela perhaps as many of them have been the seat of major events, residence to famous artists or writers, and the scenery for interesting folksy events. But today as Caracas has become a huge constricted monstrosity, the parishes have long lost their charm and are simple areas where to pack folks. For the discussion required here I will divide the parishes in three kinds of districts.

There are the ones which are mostly made of “ranchos” (favellas, slums, shacks, etc…) and grouped together at the start of the table (ranked within each group from larger to smaller district). Such districts are not necessary only slums. For example Sucre has huge slums but it also includes the Catia district which is a lower middle class residential area established more than half a century ago. 23 Enero includes dozens of high rises but bad management and urban degradation has made some of these high rises barely better than glorified slums, joining in spirit the slums that grew around. We will call them R parishes, for “ranchos”.

As it is always the case in Venezuela, wealthy neighborhoods can be next to pauper districts. That reckless mix is one of the main characteristic of Venezuela urbanism. Even Altamira and Los Palos Grandes do not escape it. Thus the second group, parishes that are dominated by ranchos but that will have at least a very significant chunk occupied by middle class districts. Let’s say for the sake of the argument these lower middle to middle class districts can be between 40 and 60% of the population in these districts. We will call them RH parishes, Ranchos and Homes. This category is important for the discussion next because in such type of parishes you do have some mix of people living in the two worlds that you will not get in, say, Chacao. The hard core chavista voter in such parishes might be more influenced by non Chavez “values” than in an R parish.

Finally there is a third group of districts in Libertador where ranchos exist but are clearly in limited areas. However there is one very important thing to know about Libertador: there is no wealthy area of note. That is, upper middle class is limited to a very small area within San Bernardino. All the upper middle class of Caracas resides in Chacao, Baruta and El Hatillo districts. This is the unique feature of Libertador: it goes from underclass to middle/middle class, and that one is limited to parts of San Bernardino, El Recreo and San Pedro with a ghetto of sorts in El Paraiso. The rest is from lower middle class to indigence. This third group of districts we will call them H parishes because the majority of people live actually in a real designed homes with basic services.

Luck has it that there is enough of these parishes in each group that we can look for meaningful trends. The table below tries to describe the current political situation. The first column gives the rank of each parish according to its total vote cast (political weight, not population necessarily). The second column is the parishes divided as explained above, top the R ones, middle the RH and bottom the H (red highlight those won by Jorge Rodriguez of chavismo). Three even groups, each one including major parishes by population. The third column is the total votes cast in each parish.


The first observation is that indeed R parishes went red as expected. So did the RH parishes though we cannot fail to observe that in these parishes the PSUV had trouble reaching the 50% mark. In the H parishes the opposition fares better. Note that Catedral is a strange red glitch. Very few people do actually live in this parish which is the seat of ministries and institutions. Apparently most of its voters actually reside elsewhere and might be public employees or misiones folks that register there provisionally.

Now I have looked only at the party votes for the PSUV and the three opposition vote getters: Primero Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo and Accion Democratica (AD of the pre Chavez era). Although there is a significant chunk of the rest of the oppo vote it is too dispersed to study here. Taken separately none of these opposition parties looks too good in front of the PSUV which has successfully sucked in almost any “left” vote. But that would be a little bit too simple. To begin with in only 5 of the 22 parishes does the PSUV gets more than 60% of the cast votes. In fact in 10 parishes it gets LESS than 50% of the votes cast, even if Rodriguez still wins in two of these. Geographically at least the PSUV advantage is not that overwhelming.

Next I decided to invent an index of opposition penetration. To make it more difficult I only added the votes of the two more recent parties, PJ and UNT, not AD. Then I looked for which parishes the PJ plus UNT total represented at least 30% of the PSUV vote. The reason is simple, if for three chavista you have one new opposition, in that district the opposition will have a basis upon which to build up. That does not mean of course that a parish like La Pastora with an index of 51% will vote opposition tomorrow, but it means that chavismo will have to start working at keeping districts where the index I made up reaches 30%. Some of these districts cannot be taken for granted anymore by chavismo. Only 5 parishes highlighted in pink have that penetration index below 30% and can be considered as pro Chavez safe for the foreseeable future. In all the other districts the opposition has of now a political base and thus we can say that indeed, the opposition has penetrated chavistas strongholds such as La Vega or Santa Rosalia. True, small amounts but real amounts and thus a new worry for Chavez.

Let’s note in this table that UNT ALONE is able to beat the PSUV in San Pedro. Note also that I marked in bold blue all parishes where PJ or UNT reached 12.5%, that is 1 voter in 8 which indicates also a creation of a political base for the political parties that reach that number. Note that UNT reaches that feat in La Vega and Santa Rosalia, two R parishes. Let’s also observe that in Macarao and Antimano which have perhaps the highest percentage of ranchos of Libertador the PSUV still barely make it 69% and 72% respectively. True, a good victory in absolute terms but a weak one as both district should be closer to 80% than 70%. Chavez does understand the meaning of that not so slight shift.

To go further in this study I simplified the above table by removing some districts, keeping only symbolic parishes in each category. In the next table I looked only at the difference between the 2004 and 2008 voices. In 2004 the opposition abstention after the post referendum trauma gives of course a very low result for Melo, its standard bearer. But Bernal running for reelection did have a poor result too: 192 K less votes than Rodriguez two Sundays ago. Stalin Gonzalez makes a very decent score and gains MORE votes than what Jorge Rodriguez gained from Bernal result. Not surprising perhaps but when you look at the consequences on the voter advantage you realize that these gains of Stalin are significant, the more so that I only included the vote of PJ; UNT and AD, to make things more challenging for the opposition to look good. If I include the other small parties that supported Stalin, the results would look even more favorable for the opposition. In red parishes where Rodriguez gained more over Bernal than Gonzalez over Melo. And in blue the reverse.



The last two columns of that table thus represent the advantage of the chavista vote in 2004 and the advantage today of the PSUV vote over AD/PJ/UNT. For example Sucre in 2004 had a 9,5 voter advantage for chavista voters. This advantage has now been cut down dramatically to 2,7. Good, very good even in a normal democracy, but still very worrisome for chavismo.

Finally, to see if really the opposition has made inroads, albeit weak in places, we need to look at the vote variation over recent years. Something by the way that few politicians discuss as all get out with egg on their face. I have kept the same parishes as the previous table since the question is whether opposition made inroads, not how many of those they did (I just have no time to look in details at so many districts). In the chosen parishes in 2004 the opposition wins only 1. In 2006, the apogee of Chavez, Rosales manages only two. But lo and behold! in 2007 seven of these parishes voted NO, as well as the whole of Libertador! This time around the opposition manages only 3 of these districts, still better than 2004 and 2006 (reminder: the opposition wins in 8, see first table above).



The story here of course is the clear evidence of a chavista vote who said NO in 2007 but who returned to the fold, in part, in 2008. But only in part, which is what bothers so much Chavez. Why can we say that? Chavez got a staggering 658 K in 2006. But in 2007 he lost an equally staggering 40%! We can say that this is a real loss and that many chavista voters crossed the line to vote NO because the NO vote is higher than the Rosales vote of 2006, by 11%. In 2008 Stalin fails to recover the Rosales vote (-4,6%) or the NO vote, which tells us that chavistas who voted NO did not vote opposition. But did they vote for Jorge Rodriguez? Maybe not: Rodriguez also fails to recover the Chavez vote of 2006 (-27%). Of these 180 K missing votes in the Chavez camp, how many are just plain local election abstention and how many are disgusted chavistas that actively stay home?

Conclusion

In the heartland of sorts of chavismo, in the slums to low middle class neighborhoods of downtown Caracas chavismo has won but the opposition progresses in significant ways. Also a large segment of the chavista vote is not reliable anymore for Chavez. Perhaps as much as 100.000 Caracas voters will think twice before voting for Chavez in any future election. They will likely vote NO for the next amendment. Or abstain, but not vote SI. The massive support that Chavez had in Caracas at one time does not exist anymore. We knew it when we saw how many buses were required to fill up chavista rallies. But when we look at the numbers in the table above we can see that the busing bill is not going to go down any time soon.

That is why Chavez is so angry. He knows how to read electoral results and he sees that his support remains strong but is weakening. But even worse than that, the Chavez support is becoming more conditional, high winded speeches are not enough anymore to drag chavistas to the polling station: real results are finally demanded by more and more chavista voters. It is these results, these trends that can also be found in other areas, that worry sick Chavez and demand he gets reelection faculties because without the possibility of reelection he will soon become a lame duck and become just a big ineffective scarecrow.


-The end-

The 2008 Venezuelan results: 3 - Yaracuy as the epitome of all that is wrong with the Venezuelan Political System

In the second post of this series I alluded to the possibility that Chavez has reached his plateau and that he will never again get a result as good as what he got last Sunday. The reason I advance is that the caudillo model he offers is reaching exhaustion: after the most brutal campaign he could come up with, he fails to recover his 2006 numbers, while the opposition grows significantly in some urban areas. Looking at the Yaracuy results where we see the ignominious end of another caudillo, Eduardo Lapi, we can see in that state the perfect mirror of a political system that I hope is reaching its end. Note: this article will be the longest of this series, I promise that the next two installments will be less than half the length of this one. Consider it a compensation for not having written on Yaracuy much during the campaign as I watched in horror what was going on.

The Yaracuy story: the decline of Eduardo Lapi

Eduardo Lapi was the very energetic governor of Yaracuy. Triumphantly reelected in 2000 he could boast of one of the best managed states in Venezuela. Even though representing one of the smallest states he did managed to get enough national recognition that he ended as a representative of the opposition during the difficult negotiations of 2003 sponsored by the OAS and the Carter Center. Incidentally, these promised to veil for the well being of the opposition negotiators and today all of them have felt into hard times, Lapi even being in exile, and not a word form the OAS or the Carter Center.

In 2004, during the hard campaign for the Recall Election of Chavez, Lapi was one of the biggest movers, even exposing his life. He did stir the locals effectively. And he became thus a Chavez target. That eventually Chavez won the referendum in Yaracuy did not help him much. Three months after in October Lapi failed to be reelected governor in questionable elections, but he accepted the results. Yaracuy had the lowest abstention that year, a witness of how Lapi was able to stir the electorate even in the post Recall Election depression.

Things went downhill fast. Soon the mediocre, Chavez appointed, drug addict governor, Carlos Gimenez, found some way to accuse Lapi. Even though no solid evidence was presented and even though Lapi was quiet at home in Yaracuy, he was arrested and jailed because "he could escape", said Gimenez. Fine, except that the trial was never started and eventually Lapi's life was put in danger and he had to escape jail. Presently he lives in exile. You can get many of these details by searching the label Lapi.

Of course the objective of these highly unjust and illegal actions was to get rid of Lapi politically. While Gimenez succeeded at that, he failed at running the state. In the barely three years he was in office Yaracuy became a beacon for crime while services started to fail, in particular the San Felipe Central Hospital which is now considered one of the worst in Venezuela. Gimenez administration has been so bad and so corrupt that he wears the dubious distinction of being the only chavista governor investigated for corruption charges. These charges were solid enough that he was removed form office. Yet, while he awaits the end of the investigation and a possible trial, Gimenez walks the streets free. Lapi, condemned and jailed without a trial for much less than what Gimenez did, lives in exile and fears for his life.

And then the elections came. Lapi, probably, I assume, resentful that Yaracuy did not protest strongly enough the injustices that were made against him, decided to vindicate himself by winning the election, even from exile. That was a mistake, at least in the opinion of this blogger because his candidature was just too easily subjected to any legal maneuver that would leave us without a viable option in front of the chavista challenge. Besides, Yaracuy is backward enough that a campaign has to be run by pressing the flesh. Quickly the whole scheme got out of hand when Lapi refused to participate in any opposition unity front. This resulted in a break up of the unity pact observed elsewhere in the country. Weeks went by and things got even worse as Convergencia and Lapi decided to launch their candidates anywhere regardless of previous agreements reached by the opposition: it was Lapi or nothing. As a state we were taken hostage by Lapi and judging from the results we did not like it.

What was going to happen did happen. Apparently Lapi was high enough in polls that the high court decided that he could not run after all, a few days before the end of the campaign. I personally do not think he was that high in the polls. I think that all along chavismo had threaded a web in which Lapi got trapped. By letting him run, the CNE ensured a deep opposition division. And by removing Lapi a few days before the end of the campaign the TSJ made sure that there was not enough time for the opposition to repair the damage while weakening the Lapi camp. It worked: irresponsibly Lapi did not accept any unity deal and put his lame brother to run the show. The stupidity of the other side of the opposition not to understand what was at stake at this point, the refusal to swallow hard to salvage at least a few town halls, did the rest of the work and you can appreciate the consequences in the table below. This tasteless naked ambition display for people that are in fact in the supplicant line made me angry enough that for a few days I even considered not voting!!!! I voted eventually, but some did not, or not for Lapi.

The governor results: the undeserving winner

The table below shows without any doubt that not only Lapi strategy to take all of Yaracuy failed, but in the process he probably contributed AT THE SAME TIME to a weakening of the opposition and a strengthening of chavismo. Since Chavez is the one that runs the campaign of the guys he appoints to be elected governor, I call his alliances through the years "Chavez votes", in red. Since Lapi is equally as arrogant a caudillo as Chavez is, though more efficient administrator, I call the opposition votes "Lapi's votes" in blue.



I have put all the results for Yaracuy since 2004. It is easy to see the decline of the opposition electorate since then. In fact, perhaps alone of all states (Lara is special), the opposition FAILS to recover its 2007 number of SI!!!! This is even more dramatic when we look at the Convergencia vote, Lapi's movement: from being stronger than Chavez MVR in 2004, it is now 1 to 3 compared to the PSUV. The result is clear, the political destruction of Lapi has been successful, and was helped along by Lapi's own arrogance and errors.

Why such a catastrophic decline? Yaracuy is a relatively backward state, and a very dependent state now that Gimenez administration brought a considerable economical decline. Yaracuyanos voted in a pragmatic way: the lower classes know very well that a Lapi victory will not bring them much benefit, no matter how much they might like Lapi and miss the good old days when services sort of worked. The PSUV candidate was the only sensible choice if you live in the country side and have very little possibility of independent income. Chavez strategy of rendering the countryside dependent from the central state for its well being has beautifully worked in Yaracuy where considerable farm land invasions have destroyed agricultural production and impoverished the state. Take a drive through the state and it is for all to see. Even the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal did special numbers on Yaracuy agricultural destruction!

In addition in the few months since Gimenez has been ousted, a provisional administration supervised by today's governor elect had time to repair in part chavismo image and deflect all the blame on PODEMOS from where Gimenez came from. When things are awful, any small improvement looks really good, and better than what it really is. A Stockholm syndrome of sorts.

The only problem in here is that the winner of the governor's mansion is Julio Leon Heredia, a sectarian ideologue, the perfect man for Chavez to do all the dirty work still to be done to destroy once and for all whatever is left of the old Yaracuy. Not that there is much left anyway, nor that there is much worth saving here, Lapi himself was an iconoclast of sorts, busy ensuring his power by ways not too dissimilar to Chavez if more civilized. But Julio Leon is not even liked by the local chavistas. He failed at previous attempts to gain office, any office. His most stinging defeat was when he run for the National Assembly in 2005 when a dissident chavista, Ricardo Capella, beat him with only 12.748 votes! The only case in the whole country as the opposition had withdrawn from the ballot. Julio Leon comes to office because the Gimenez administration was so bad, so many people were so involved with its fraudulent ways that Julio Leon escaped the damage because no one liked him at the start. An apparatchik man that manages to pass as a new comer!

As additional information I included the numbers of PODEMOS. Gimenez was from PODEMOS before he went to the PSUV. You can see the effect on PODEMOS, when this one went from 12,2% in 2006, to 0,3% last Sunday. Nice job! All were Chavez votes after all.

The Mayors results: how Primero Justicia sabotaged the opposition results?

Primero Justicia should not escape the blame for all that went wrong in Yaracuy. Four years ago Primero Jusiticia seemed a good fit to recover what was a possibly mutating Convergencia. After all both can trace their origins to COPEI brand. Rationality would have even indicated that Primero Justicia should have fused with Convergencia in Yaracuy. But it seems that Lapi would have none of it and that Julio Borges, a caudillo of sorts himself, decided that he could pick up the remains of Convergencia on his own. Well, not only it did not work out, but Yaracuy was surrendered in full to chavismo: all districts went red this time around! Primero Justicia will be held responsible for the disaster and UNT who has stuck with Lapi will probably become the Yaracuy visible face of the opposition. After a fast rise from o,3% to 3.1% between 2004 and 2006, its fall to 1,8% last Sunday is a bad omen for Primero Justicia. A look at mayoral results will illustrate better what I mean.

The results of San Felipe are in the table below.


The first thing to look at is the Chavez vote. It is in ascent but dips badly in 2007 where the NO makes a surprise strong showing. But then it was the worst time of the Gimenez administration. However the recovery of 2008 is noteworthy in that chavismo fails to recover, by far, the 2006 vote number. Furthermore, cross voting was important when you observe that the chavista candidate, Francisco Capdevielle gets ONLY 37.4% of the vote while Julio Leon gets 52.6%. The opposition does not have much to brag about anyway since it also fails to recover its 2007 NO vote when you combine the Lapi and non-Lapi oppo vote. Even Primero Justicia does not escape that cross voting, a clear sanction to its choices. Miguel Ponente a decent candidate whose main endorsement was Primero Justicia did manage a second position and got more than half of its votes from Primero Justicia. But at the governor level for San Felipe PJ votes drops from the 3979 gained at the mayor level to 1827 votes at the governor level where it did not back Lapi. Considering that San Felipe should be by far the starting point for a P.J. conquest of Yaracuy and seeing that it barely brought half of its state wide votes, clearly, whatever strategy Julio Borges had went horribly wrong with the voters. Leaving many like me really angry at Primero Justicia for having brought us the curse of a total state loss.

For Convergencia the result is equally bad. The imposed at the last minute candidate de la Cruz came in third, ruining the chances of Ponente, a decent candidate. Not only that but de la Cruz fails to get the Convergencia vote: at governor level for San Felipe they get 7393 while at town hall level they get only 4617! I regret that exit polls are scant in this country because there would be a fascinating story of voter sanction to be written in San Felipe. True, the appearance of a slimy third party candidate, Salame, who had the most visible local campaign (paid by whom?) could explain a lot; but one thing is certain, if the opposition had rallied behind Ponente who could only afford a discrete campaign, the dynamics might have pushed him above Capdevielle.

A Ponente success was possible because the PSUV candidate was a very poor choice for the PSUV as the result plainly show. Francisco Capdevielle used to be the editor of a local rag, Yaracuy al Dia, and thought that this was enough credential for politics. Whenever he run he lost, and bad. You can see in 2004 when he run as a dissident chavista how little he got, wrecking the chances of Gamarra to get elected in a year where the opposition abstention was heavy. The PSUV named him because they probably did not think he would win anyway and also because he worked in the local state government to try to recover some the mess left by Gimenez. Now, thanks to the PJ/Lapi fight, we, in San Felipe, are stuck with a nightmare mayor, delusional about his worth, and without a mandate, which probably will radicalize him even more.

For illustration I am also showing an even more pathetic case, the one from Independencia district which is in reality the Western part of San Felipe. There mayor Parra Barrios was running for reelection. This Convergencia mayor was barely elected 4 years ago benefiting from a chavista division (Gimenez had been such a bad mayor that his sister came in third). This time, Gimenez out of the way, the dissident chavista of 2004 comes back as the official PSUV and carries the district. Unfortunately for us Parra Barrios was considered possibly the best mayor of Yaracuy in the last 4 years, and you can see it by the cross voting where a lot of supporters of the "other" oppo option went to vote for him anyway.

What is very damning for P.J. in this case is that its total votes that went to Pastora, 135, would have been more than enough to put Parra Barrios over the top!!! Did P.J. not realize that Parra Barrios was ahead, that he was a good mayor, that he deserved reelection, that Pastora had no chance? The loss of Independencia is solely attributable to P.J. insistence in supporting a candidate that had no chance whatsoever!!! We, the people who are goign to suffer the possible negative consequences of this, are not going to forget the dreadful role of P.J. in Yaracuy. At least in Independencia I got a better feed back from Alvarado than for Leon or Capdevielle.....

To complete the Yaracuy survey and to illustrate how strongly the cacique Chavez has managed to impact the traditional political culture of the country side I include the results of the Veroes district. This district is the low lands close to the sea, the site of old sugar cane plantations and slavery. As such it has the highest proportion of African American and agrarian conflict. Chavez should get there 70 % of the vote, and he does.

If you examine this table carefully you will also notice that when Lapi was managing himself Yaracuy and the campaign, he was getting reasonable results in Veroes. But once he is out, the Convergencia apparatus dwindles fast and limits itself to urban centers as they do not have the guts Lapi had to seek votes even in Veroes. Caudillos share this characteristics: be it Chavez or Lapi they have the gall to speak their mind and go where it takes to win (though Chavez does that less and less). That explains the extraordinary decline of the Convergencia vote. One thing we can also note there is the stupendous decline of voting in 2007! Veroes is a true Podunck backwaters area interested only when there is a need to elect the Cacique. Other elections simply do not register there. And P.J. 49 votes, well, I need not explain... As long as it cannot have at least 300 votes in Veroes it can forget about Yaracuy.

Conclusions

Yaracuy is the perfect example on how the caudillo/cacique qualities of Chavez have managed to conquer the rural areas of Venezuela. The more urban areas resisted better but any encouraging result was made impossible when you found also another caudillo pretending to impose his will. When Lapi was in charge he could influence enough rural votes to be reelected because people sensed that they could vote for him and still keep receiving whatever services they were receiving. Besides the cacique Lapi was next door whereas the cacique Chavez was in Caracas. Lapi was more scary...

But these same people knew perfectly well that a Lapi in exile, even if he won, could not guarantee access to whatever they had access to today. Never mind the brutal campaign of Chavez that was really scary for people hanging on a thread for their daily bread. The large and undeserved victory of Julio Leon Heredia is at least in part explained by this social reality since it cannot be explained at all by his inexistent charisma.

The good news here is that Lapi is now politically dead and probably buried for good. In his arrogance he took such gambles that now he is left with no one to speak for him in Yaracuy. No one elected that is, with some political clout to keep Lapi in the martyrdom news. You do not get fame or win future elections through a battery of lawyers fighting a judicial system staked against you: you get fame by confronting the abuses against you by being there yourself. Lapi's arrogance left him worse, much, much worse than what he was a few weeks ago. Not only politically but in the mood of the people who will blame him for 4 years of deep chavismo, in case, as it almost certainly will be the case, the new mayors fail. He probably will remain in exile for years.

We got rid of one caudillo. Now we need to wait until the drop in oil prices coupled to more arrogance from Caracas teaches us not to trust in caudillos ever again. With this thought at least the results of last Sunday have a silver leaning for Yaracuy.

Epilogue

The recovery of Yaracuy for the opposition has been made tremendously difficult. Not only it will have no district where to base itself as a showcase of good administration, but its only and lone leader is politically dead. The only ones that could have replaced him are also out such as Parra Barrios. Convergencia only gets a lone representative at the Legislative council. There is nothing she can do when you consider the well known sectarian nature of the incoming administration who will try to find ways to silence her from day one. Obama it ain't.

I think that Convergencia days are now over and the party should examine itself closely, say bye bye to Lapi and seek new horizons with an out of state machinery that will help them launch a credible challenge in 2012 where it should be able to recover at least San Felipe, but not much more. Yaracuy is in PSUV hands safely until at least 2016. Even a bad Leon Heredia administration will not hurt chavismo considering that the disastrous Gimenez rule did not stop the PSUV from increasing its vote count! By wrecking the independence and self respect of the state the Gimenez administration has been at least very successful in one thing: giving Yaracuy tied up to Chavez.

AS far as I am concerned Convergencia should dissolve itself and go over to UNT. There is no UNT leadership yet in Yaracuy, so the good Convergencia local leaders could get the UNT nod without too much trouble and get help from Zulia. Going to P.J. would be a huge mistake as this one needs first to clean up its act, to apologize to Yaracuy. But I do not see Borges doing that, if you ask me, he showed too much contempt for us last month. Too many people in what should be the starting blocks of PJ in the state, San Felipe and Independencia, are mad at PJ. This one would be better advised to go elsewhere to invest politically. This blogger, for one, who gave 2 of his 4 votes cast last Sunday to Primero Justicia will probably never give his votes again to P.J., or at least as long as Borges is its leader. If UNT people want to contact me, I am open to propositions.


-The end-

The 2008 Venezuelan results: 2 - is there a new chavista voter?

The answer is NO.

What has taken place is a decanting of the electorate into a client group that votes for Chavez, like it or not, and a more critical group that distances itself from Chavez more and more. This is nothing new. Already in 2004 I observed that the Recall Election result was a defeat for Chavez in Caracas area and many urban areas, with his margin of victory coming from outlying suburban or rural areas. You could see that even in relatively small cities like San Felipe where Chavez was defeated, though the result at large of Yaracuy state was a strong win for Chavez. This pattern was described again and again in 2006 and 2007 when I analyzed closely the results then. What we see today is the culmination of sorts of this separation of the electorate which results in the map that we see (that once again I lift from AM as he has the tact to put in light blue the states won by the oppo with less than 50%, and in lighter red the likewise PSUV victories, that way it looks less drab than the propaganda maps offered by chavismo).

The 2008 Venezuelan results: 5 - Dissidence: are you for real?

There has been much talk about the dissidence effect on chavismo vote last November. And yet, nothing came of it except perhaps in Barinas where there are even rumors of cheating in this most important of states for the Chavez “famiglia” as Teodoro Petkoff calls it these days. Yet, for all its victories chavismo has not much else to cheer about as the price paid for having forced these dissidents to run might be a lower score next February, losing votes where chavismo does not need to lose them.

The dissidence: definitions

Definitions is in plural because there are many ways to define the dissidence. The first definition is that the dissidence was all with Chavez until 2007. Then PODEMOS left and it took it a full year until it finally was able to make some electoral agreements with the opposition. The toll has been terrible for PODEMOS which has lost its two power centers of Sucre and Aragua. Yet PODEMOS still managed to get some votes that can be useful for future bargains. Also, by being hit so hard PODEMOS sorts of pays an atonement and next elections it will be able to negotiate better deals with the opposition while attracting disaffected chavista voters that could vote for PODEMOS but never for, say, AD or Primero Justicia.

The second group of dissidents is more recent and not as complete. It has two sources. The first group of dissidents is the PPT and the PCV. These two party gripe is that they think they represent more electoral weight than what Chavez is willing to give them. In all fairness he is not willing to give them anything anyway, but let’s not go into details. Thus PPT and PCV after having refused to join the PSUV did sort of manage to pretend to be allies. But Chavez was furious and refused. As a consequence the PPT and the PCV some times together, some times separated decided to launch some of their own candidates although on occasion one of these two groups did file with the PSUV. Neither can they be considered allies of Chavez but neither can they be considered as having broken with chavismo. I suspect that the final break will come eventually for the PPT, but the price it will pay will be far worse than PODEMOS, without the possibility to make occasional arrangements with the opposition.

Finally the third dissidence is really confined to the state of Barinas. There the abuses of the Chavez family who have treated their home state as their personal property have really upset many of the natives. There a real dissidence movement was created and almost beat Adan Chavez himself. The reason was that this type of dissidence was able to attract many opposition voters.

The results

To try to make sense of this issue I have limited myself to the governor votes. IF we look at the district level it becomes quickly very complex and not that much more telling anyway. In the table below I have shown the Chavez vote since 2004, in red. The opposition vote since 2004 is shown in blue and in orange the dissidence vote this time around. Since alliances do shift you will note that in Aragua, for example, PODEMOS is red in 2004 and 2006 but blue in 2007 and 2008. By state, click to enlarge, as usual.


Aragua

This was the big loss for PODEMOS who held that state through Didalco Bolivar since 1995. Such a long tenure did have a price and when the very well financed campaign of Isea rolled in including distribution of refrigerators, Henry Rosales could not recoup. There was also the mystery of why Didalco did not participate that much in the campaign. If that was a strategic decision then it was a mistake. If not, maybe Didalco wanted to rest his old days (he is rumored to have cancer) and did not want to have Chavez perturb his retirement.

If PODEMOS loses half its electoral base, it is also noteworthy to point that PPT/PCV who there supported the PSUV candidate did a very meager 2.54%. Clearly the PSUV has been sucking in all the “left” vote as people now identify PSUV and Chavez, “the real thing” of sorts. Still, a near 40% for the opposition in difficult conditions is not a shabby result, it is in fact a solid base to build on since it is difficult for Chavez to progress further in Aragua. I have the feeling that Isea is just another crook and he will not do very well in Aragua. The opposition can hope to repeat its 47% NO next February, after all it is starting from 40% when in 2007 it was starting from the paltry 28% of 2006.

Trujillo

This was a state where for a while the dissident was heralded, and imploded. Then the opposition guy was given good chances but in the end the PSUV run over all opposition. PPT/PCV decided to go it on their own. Why? Who knows! Because neither in 2006 or 2004 they had numbers that would allow them to dream of conquering Trujillo some day. Apparently it was the dissidence of sitting governor Viloria that opened the door. But clearly Trujillo wants chavismo, and wants it bad. In fact, even the opposition drops some respective to previous elections which might indicate that some did buy the argument that the PPT/PCV could win. Still, the bitter defeat of the dissident option allows us to hope that the NO vote will be maintained next February, through we cannot hope to reach 40% there.

Guarico

Guarico was a stronger option for the dissidence. After all in 2006 the PPT was able to bring almost 20% of the Chavez vote. Even the candidate, the daughter of the sitting governor barred from a third term was appealing enough to dismiss the nepotism charges. And yet in Guarico the PCV did not follow the tainted Manuitt administration. Nor did the opposition for that matter: too soon. It is to be noted that the opposition in Guarico is particularly weak, with a peak of barely 28% in 2006. Thus even a good cross over effect might not have been enough. Yet, when we see the final result we do not know what the dynamic of unity behind Manuitt’s daughter would have caused. However one thing is almost certain in Guarico: the bitterness of the PPT loss there makes it a good candidate to increase the NO vote which was an already surprising 42% high in 2007. The PSUV victory does not seem strong enough and the new governor patsy enough that Guarico could well vote NO in February!

Barinas

That was the most exciting race in Venezuela, though it became exciting in the end once Miranda seemed gained for the opposition. There the dissidence almost made it and if the opposition candidate had had the good sense of retiring an upset would have been quite possible. In fact the cross over is clear: the opposition got 31% in 2006 and only 5% this time. That is 5 in 6 opposition voters went ahead and voted for the dissident candidate, who is today claiming fraud, by the way.

This is the kind of victory that shakes Chavez, the more so that in Barinas the PPT and PCV decided to be prudent and follow Chavez brother (not that it will help them much in the end but one can always hope, no?). But they made a mistake because there was also a cross over vote in their rank as this two parties went down from 7% in 2006 to 2% in 2008. Sometimes one is wiser to look more closely at the local conditions. Note that Barinas had a solid 44% NO in 2007. Expect a possible NO victory in 2009.

Portuguesa

This one turned out to be the least interesting of the lot. But it should be mentioned anyway. It is pretty much the same story as Trujillo except that this time around the retiring governor did help the PSUV and manage to bring in the victory. However good that victory is it bodes ill for 2009. If the SI is almost certain to take that state once again, you can expect this time the bitterness of the 2008 campaign to spill over into a 40%+ count for the NO.

Conclusion

The failure of the PPT/PCV challenges is due to two basic facts 1) they misread the numbers assuming that their share was untainted by the Chavez love of the lower classes that both PPT and PCV were also supposed to represent and 2) they assumed that the opposition was dead and that they did not need it to win. But the opposition not only was not dead but bet them in Trujillo and Portuguesa, creating further embarrassment for them.

Now both PPT and PCV faces the dire choice of trying to get inside the PSUV as second class party members with little or no future, or take the jump and break, at a much bigger cost than PODEMOS who has reached bottom and can only go up no. In other words PPT and PCV face at least two years of wilderness and the possibility of being excluded from parliament in 2010. My advice to them? Campaign for the NO in February so as to pay your dues as fast as possible and clean your image toward the opposition and PODEMOS with which you could actually create a “third way” that could get a 20% in 2010. Chavez is going to eat you alive otherwise, and the better if he pretends to be nice with you so as to get your support in February.

The Barinas case is much more interesting and a clear message to any PSUV politico that thinks of defecting. If you do it right, with proper timing, you can actually rescue your political career. The guy that lost in Barinas is almost 1005 certain to be elected to the National assembly in 2010, with the opposition vote to boot.


-The end-

The 2008 Venezuelan results: 1 - Eating crow, eating cake

My broadband is returning but is very wobbly. I was able to start looking at the CNE result but they are incomplete, and at the speed I have I cannot be bothered. Since I do not have special contacts that can send me the CNE files, I will have to wait to start my post election analysis. That is, assuming that the CNE will give us complete results some day. After all we are still waiting for the 2007 final results....

But if I cannot analyze things I can at least score my predictions. Last Saturday I posted two graphics, one including major cities to watch for. Since the CNE is not complete I cannot score myself with that last one. But the second graph which was really my predictions, I can score.

The first thing I must do is eat some crow. When I designed that table I really did not think carefully enough about scoring it after. I tried to organize it from the state where the opposition would get the highest percentage to the state where it would get the lowest. But that worked for anything shaded blue or red. In a Cartesian fit I placed in the middle the states "tending to" dissidence but I did not place them really where they would have gone if I had thought about them some more. And Yaracuy of course I should not have placed it at all since I was not calling it. I should have placed it with the Alcaldia Mayor which I was not including in the series since it is not properly a state.

Thus I have packed all of these at the bottom of the chart, including Libertador that the CNE does not give numbers for yet, though Rodriguez has been proclaimed mayor elect already.

This being said. I predicted 6 sure for the opposition and I got 5. I predicted two tending, and I got one. I predicted three tending dissidence and I got zero. But Barinas was so, so close..... I missed Sucre, my biggest mistake of all. Maybe I really bought the confidence of the locals, the polls and the image of Maestre as being such a lout, a bad candidate, a failed mayor of Cumana. Simply put, logic could not allow for his election. And yet he won. But we will discuss the why in future posts. Merida as I mentioned in some comment I was reluctant, very reluctant to give to the opposition. In fact it is the only state tending for the opposition whereas I had more tending chavismo. In normal predictions one would have put 3-4 tendency (though some of course could argue that the dissidence is actually opposition so I would have put 4 and got 0). Then again I could say that I got all my pro Chavez predictions :)

But it was easy to predict the opposition winning. I can point out that in Cojedes I resisted siren songs and I always put it in the Chavez column. Same thing with Aragua which some were saying that Didalco would bring to our side. So, to make things a little bit more challenging I classified the states according to where would the opposition get the best and worse percentile. Which was a mistake of sorts that forced me to remove a few states to be able to evaluate, as I explained above. Once these states were taken out (Libertador by the way would not change much the result if I put it in since it would fall with Falcon) you get the graph above.

On the left column the way I ranked the states last Saturday. The second column the appropriate colors according to the convention of this blog. The third column is the percentile difference as of today CNE. Next column is of course the states classified according to that difference. In total there are 18 states classified.

In maroon 6 states that fall exactly where I predicted they would fall!!! 33% exact score. Note, two oppo states BUT 4 chavista states ranked accordingly. And three in the middle which is more difficult to place than on the extremes.

In mauve the states that are only one off their predicted position, not bad at all, 2 states.

In yellow the states that are" in their zone", that is within two spots of were they were predicted to fall. 5 of them.

And finally the way off mark, in red, three of them.

Thus out of 18 states I got 15 either in their right position of fairly close to it. If I dare say so, this is a rather good score. True, if I had included the 3 dissident and Libertador it would not have been as good as Trujillo would have been a wrench. I did the exercise tonight anyway and I still would get 16 out of 22 within three spots of their final rank, still 4 of them in their exact rank.

I am starting to know my Venezuela, no? Maybe not the success of 2007 in prediction but who did better than me thsi Sunday? OK, I know, it is pretentious to pat one's back but.....

-The end-

The 2010 election predictions: Aragua and Carabobo

When I started this project I did not know if I was going to have enough time to finish it.  Thus originally I had planned to leave for the end Bolivar and the Llanos, the regions that I know less about, hoping that in case I lacked time the rest of the discussion would be enough to give a good idea of the September 26 election result.  But as I plodded my way through I realized that the election will be decided in the two states of Aragua and Carabobo, the industrial heartland of the country, and thus found the motivation to write it all and leave that discussion for the end.

With 18 seats these two states represent 11% of the representatives to be elected in the new assembly.  If everywhere else in the country results can be guessed more or less accurately, in these two states it is where we are more likely to find interesting and significant shifts.  That is, Zulia is for the opposition: that the PSUV gains 1 or 3 seats really does not affect much the overall picture.  Same story in the Llanos where the PSUV is going to win and where the opposition gains will not be enough to imperil a putative chavista majority.  But in Carabobo, through gerrymandering, the opposition is not certain at all to fulfill its potential and in Aragua, the chavista bastion will still be carried by the PSUV but will be quite damaged.  For the opposition to win the National Assembly it is a must that it resists the gerrymandering of Carabobo AND that it breaches the PSUV monopoly in Aragua, and for chavismo it is essential that the Aragua hegemony is preserved and that the opposition does not reach half of the Carabobo seats otherwise its majority will be too thin for comfort.

The 2010 election predictions: Llanos

This is deep Venezuela, the large central plains, a chavista area and in some states perhaps even a bastion.  The reason is quite simple and goes beyond the Llanero origin of Chavez: the wave of land grabs, the expropriation of a considerable amount of large farms have created a generalized impoverishment of the area and thus an increased dependency of the people from state alms.  More than anywhere else we can see the contrast between the few urban areas of the Llanos which still can on occasion show an opposition presence, and the rural districts which have become a terre de mission for opposition candidates (missionary lands, french political vocabulary).

Cojedes

The 2012 Prez results: elections in Venezuela were neither free, fair nor democratic

We keep playing the democratic game, we keep improving ourselves, we keep finding adequate retorts to the treachery of chavismo and yet we keep falling on our faces because chavismo is reckless in its pursuit to retain power at all cost and creates ever more outrageous ways to cheat for which not only we are not prepared, but for which, after Sunday 7, we may never be able to get prepared.

The elections were not free

It is clear now that there were a lot of people that voted under duress. They were scared to find out at 3 PM that that the chavista electoral steam roller knew they had not voted yet. They got scared when they were hauled unto a van with other people that had not voted yet and were also found out. They were scared when they arrived at the voting center and saw strange machines and realized the privacy of vote was compromised. And thus they truly thought that chavismo would know whether they voted for Chavez or not.

The 2008 Venezuelan results: 6 - Unity, thy shall not fail us

Not only I am running late in finishing my post election analysis but I should already be writing the next one for the coming eternal reelection amendment. What I am sure of is that my plan this year to stop the blog for at least two weeks is off.

One thing that the opposition tried very hard to get early this year was unity, understanding very well that without unity chavismo would simply smother the opposition. The 2006 and 2007 numbers were clear, one on one the opposition could win a few important places, two on one it had no chance outside a dozen districts of Venezuela. All went fine, all states but two had unity, but what the opposition did not say was that unity was not achieved as widely as we thought in individual districts. True, a few people like Petkoff tried in the last weeks to ring an alarm but personal ambitions were too strong. As a consequence key places were lost that should have been won without trouble. The table below illustrates some glaring examples of how this division cost dearly to the opposition. I have added also what political movement was the responsible of the loss in a given district, but meaner than what Tal Cual did over a week ago as I was preparing this post.

Before getting into the details it is important to recall how division can play a role. Of course, division favors chavismo who has pulverized any internal divergence. But there is another perverse effect of visible division: it risks promoting abstention among the likely opposition voters. The NiNi or chavista elector considering voting for the opposition as a way to punish the administration is probably going to be out off if the opposition does not offer him or her a clear choice.

The column "missing votes" is the total percentage won by chavismo minus the
votes gathered by A and B (and C when it happened). If the result is negative
that means the united opposition would have won. If it is positive (Bolivar)
it is small enough that a more focused unity campaign
would have made up the difference.

I have illustrated the division in three scenarios: state, local, legislative. Let's start at state level since there is only one clear example (I have already extensively discussed Yaracuy where division was not the only factor). Bolivar is the pathetic example. There Primero Justicia made a deal with PODEMOS, a deal mirrored apparently in Aragua and elsewhere. Even though polls indicated that Andres Velazquez was forging ahead, PJ and PODEMOS stuck with their man and both candidates went down in flames. Unfortunately for PJ, Rojas Suarez had LESS than half the votes of Andres Velazquez. For those in the know, two weeks before the election PJ and PODEMOS knew that their man was not going to make it. For PODEMOS the guilt will not be too much since it got punished elsewhere severely but for Primero Justicia there is a lot to explain. Also Bolivar is a perfect example on how a bitter battle between the two opposition candidates probably generated rejection from the electorate and thus the sum of both men do not quite reach the PSUV number. Had unity prevailed the campaign about the very lousy governor running for reelection would have been more consequent and effective.

At municipal level there are many examples. I have already discussed Yaracuy losses of San Felipe and Independencia that touched me closely and that I blame on the arrogance of Julio Borges and Lapi. At least Lapi will pay for his arrogance as he can face now years of long exile. Borges will have to account for that if he wants PJ to grow in Yaracuy. But there was another even more pathetic example, Carabobo.

There the Salas dynasty is a mix of the Lapi arrogance and the more modernist image of PJ. Proyecto Venezuela, their party, failed there accumulating the errors of Lapi and PJ! By personal arrogance they meant that Carabobo was their due and thus they refused to make the necessary political alliances. By arrogance of thinking that they were owed a national destiny, they also refused to make the alliances that would have eased their fusion with the movements who actually had a future. The result has no appeal. Salas Feo won with less votes than what was expected although the unity was made around his own candidacy. His less than 50% victory was further damaged when most districts went Chavez and when even the legislative body went from Proyecto Venezuela control to PSUV control!!! That is right, when in 2004 Salas Feo lost, Proyecto Venezuela did manage to retain the control of the legislative assembly of the state. This time around, due to division, Proyecto Venezuela might have won the state but it lost the assembly. True, there is the unjust way into which seats are allocated, but as we can see in Carabobo #1, single districts were also lost because of division.

I have also shown some other glaring losses such as Cumana and La Cañada. There is no point in going further into all the losses, the point is made (Tal Cual counts 26, but it might reach more than 30 districts lost due to divisions, no to mention the losses at legislative level). We must observe that we are already paying a high price to that division. Let's imagine for a moment that in addition to all that the opposition won it also had got Valencia, Cumana and Bolivar. It could have got these three prizes with exactly the same number of votes it got. Do you think that Chavez would be bellowing these days his amendment if he could not brag on these three victories?

Conclusion

There is a powerful lesson in the districts lost by the opposition due to its division. True, a stinging defeat of Chavez in the amendment might change things a lot but it is too early to think about the consequences of an hypothetical victory. Right now the opposition MUST find a way to forge unity candidates. The opportunity comes in 2009 for the municipal delegates elections which will be held in a format similar to the state assemblies. Many ways to reach this goal are possible but that is the subject for a post by itself. But whatever way is selected, it must be thought as the one that will also be used for the legislative elections of 2010 which could bring the end of the chavista majority in the National Assembly. Because economic crisis or no crisis, if the opposition does not unify better by 2010 it will have a hard time to reach even a third of the new assembly.

-The end-

Venezuela in July 2005: a political portrait

Whether we like it, or see any pertinence to it, we are again at election time in Venezuela. August and December will see the completion of the realignment of forces that started in August 2004 and thus will close, for better or worse, a cycle in Venezuelan history. If I write "pertinence" it is because the result is pretty much known in advance. In the present political situation it is simply impossible, least some spectacular new development, that chavismo will lose these elections, for which it does not even need to use outright fraud if it wanted to get, say, an 80% of the seats at stake.

The situation is at the same time very complex and daringly simple. But so is all of Venezuelan history since some time in the early 80ies when the populist bubble burst. In this perspective, the Chavez administration is at the last one of the failed administrations that have besotted us since "el viernes negro" (1). It is also the first one of the times of troubles where the fabric of Venezuelan society has been mercilessly rent with consequences yet unforeseeable, but for which there is very little optimism to be offered.

Yet we must keep observing, commenting, anticipating when possible.  Thus I am writing this long "portrait" with interactive links to the different sections, hoping that it will be useful as a reference for following the political developments in the next months, just as I dutifully wrote for the previous electoral events of 2003 and 2004.
(Note: best seen on Internet Expolorer! Firefox has problems with table viewing!)

---

The electoral system
The coming elections
How we elect representatives
Double voting
Multiple voting
The built in electoral fraud
Conclusion 1

Polls and more polls
Conclusion 2

Economical perspectives
Conclusion 3

The opposition disarray
The original sin
Venial sins?
Present situation
The December deadline
The SUMATE factor
Conclusion 4

The chavismo hubris
Chavez, El Supremo
The appeal of Chavez at home, and its consequences
Chavismo today
Conclusion 5

Venezuela's prospects

Bibliography

---

The electoral system

The coming elections

Early August we will be electing the town hall councils.  Since 1998 Venezuela has started acquiring a more complex system which has required to move from a single election once every 5 years to now a series of elections to elect the different bodies.  This in a way is a democratic progress, but due to the towering figure of Chavez and the nature of the regime, it has turned out perversely as the way for the regime to consolidate its hold to public offices while not necessarily granting it true legitimacy.

As of the 2000 elections the town hall councils elections have been further separated, resulting now in that the new mayors elected on October 2004 will finally get a new city council mid August, 10 months later!!!   And the future mayors will inherit an old town hall for the first full year of their term in 2008.  The absurdity of it all does not seem to bother the political class.  After all, real power is in Miraflores, the rest is just mechanical organization for the transmission of orders.

Supposedly in December we will be electing a new National Assembly.  The electoral separation there makes more sense since we are in a strong presidential system where it is hoped for a National Assembly would provide some balance.  Still, one would question why a new assembly is elected just one year before a presidential election.  In the future we will have a president probably saddled for 2 or 3 years with an adverse assembly.  True, in the 1999 constitution there is a way to call for early assembly elections, but the conditions are so cumbersome that major conflict are sure to result from such a mechanism. 

Indeed, the 1999 constitution was a hack affair, only written with Chavez power in mind. (return)

How we elect representatives

This is where we really start observing problems.  Traditionally since 1947 the electoral system in Venezuela was based on a proportional distribution of the seats according to the share of the votes.  Since we had a state structure and many states had no more than a few seats allotted, there was an extra amount of seats spread as a "quotient", seats usually going to parties that got a significant amount of votes but not enough to elect a representative in a small state.  In other words, the system provided for any political party that reached nationally 2-3 % to have at least one seat.  The drawback from the system is that it was a list voting and thus political parties controlled who was elected.

This was changed already for the elections of 1998, but aggravated through the 1999 constitution.  With the necessary step of linking more directly representatives with the elector, the National Assembly now was elected according to two modalities.  A little bit over half of the representatives are now voted in through district votes while about 40% of representatives are elected according to state lists.

If the intention was right, as it usually happens when electoral systems are tampered with, on the fast, for political expediency, the result is a much worse electoral system than we used to have as now the majority group can get largely over represented.  We went from the dispersed chambers of pre 1998 to a possible monolithic one next year (2). (return)

Double voting

The perversion of the system was clearly demonstrated when governor Eduardo Lapi of Yaracuy invented the system of "las morochas" (the twins) for the 2000 election.  He simply created a purely electoral party to take advantage of the major fault of the system: the double voting of the elector.  Indeed, when in Venezuela you vote for a legislative body, you vote for a representative at the district level (a portion of the state or town hall) and for a representative at the entity level (state or municipal district at large).  Normally the same political party runs in both circuits and the entity at large votes are allocated in a percentile fashion in such a way as to account for minorities (largest median per representative).  Thus if a political party gets ALL of the single district seats it will obtain few, if any, of the entity seats.

But of course, if you run under one party at the district level and as another party at the entity level, you can get almost all the seats to be allocated.  A fictitious example will illustrate the point. 

Let's assume an entity with 100 voters, divided in three districts of 31, 32 and 37 voters each.  And three political tendencies but divided into 4 parties, one tendency running under two names (same color code).  5 representatives to be elected, 3 by district and 2 at large.

Electoral Division	Political Parties	Votes Gained	Seats allocated
District 1	United Left	13	win
31 voters	United Center	7
	United Right	11
District 2	United Left	13	win
32 voters	United Center	9
	United Right	10
District 3	United Left	14	win
37 voters	United Center	12
	United Right	11
Entity (district at large)	Supremo Party	39	win
100 voters	United Center	25
2 seats	United Right	36	win
Correlations		Percentage	Seats	Percentage seats
Total double vote left	79	39.5%	4	80%
Total double vote center	53	26.5%	0	0%
Total double vote right	68	34.0%	1	20%
Had Supremo Party run as the United Left the result would have been
Total double vote left	79	39.5%	3	60%
Total double vote center	53	26.5%	1	20%
Total double vote right	68	34.0%	1	20%

Even accounting for a different electoral behavior at the district level (easier for the voter to meet the candidate, to know him/her) than at the entity level, the unfairness of the system, when the electoral trick is applied, is obvious.  The left gets 80% of the seats with not even 40% of the votes.  Clearly, if an electoral law would be passed to force all to run under the same name at every level we would still see a victory of the left with an overrepresentation of this one (39.5% of the votes and 60% of the seats) but at least the center with 26.5% of the vote, a very significant minority would not be cheated of its representation.

But of course, chavismo, who has started using this trick in October to great success, is certainly not going to propose such a corrective and fair law. (return)

Multiple voting

But there is yet another level at which the present electoral system robs the people of true representation: the multi districts that happen in big cities.  Where it is rather difficult to mark separated districts, such as in metropolitan areas, the legislator has resorted to multiple districts, that is districts that elect more than one representative.  In those districts the elector MUST vote as many times as there are representatives to provide.  This system is usually applied when a majority tries to hold down a minority.  A famous example was in many US Southern States during segregation time where gerrymandering of districts at the state assembly level managed to create multiple representative districts with 60% white to 40% black and districts with 80% black and 20% white.  As a consequence, until desegregation and voting rights came, many Southern States had almost lily white congress even though they had 30, 40% of black voters.

A much simpler table illustrates this electoral perversion.  Let's imagine a multiple district with 3 seats.  Every elector gets to vote up to three times, each time of course for a different candidate that supposedly would represent the interest of the district.  But in a polarized climate, with electors that vote according to a line or even a single time for the head of the list we could have the following result.  In this table we imagine a district with 100 electors who elect 3 representatives and thus there will be 300 votes cast (only three political parties and no abstention, to simplify):

	votes per candidate	seats won	average percentage votes	percentage seats
left 1	33	0
left 2	37	0	34.3%	0%
left 3	33	0
center 1	25	0
center 2	22	0	25.7%	0%
center 3	30	0
right 1	42	win
right 2	40	win	40.0%	100%
right 3	38	win

The unfairness of the system is, again, obvious.  So why is such a system retained, in spite of all the talk of "democracia participativa" that the regime markets around?  In all fairness the regime inherited the system.  But it is definitely guilty of having made it worse.  The reason behind everything is that the political parties, or El Supremo, cannot trust the elector.  Also they need to be sure as to who are the candidates to rum.

There are many ways to correct the unfairness of this system.  One is to grant only one vote but to open lists.  That is, if you like the left list, you vote only once but for which ever one of list you relate best.  That way, if one list gets enough votes to elect more than one candidate, the order is decided by the voter, not the party.  But that, of course, gives too much power to the elector and it is well known that politicians, in Venezuela or elsewhere, do not trust the electors...

Meanwhile we are saddled with a very deficient, very unfair system, which is amply benefiting Chavez, not only for his personal appeal, but also the inability of the opposition to come with a serious electoral strategy, amen of a political program. (return)

The built in electoral fraud

As if the unfairness of the system were not enough, there are serious problems with the way the electoral mechanism for voting is organized.  This controversy comes from September 2003 when the Electoral Board, CNE, was named provisionally as the National Assembly failed in its constitutional duty to name the 5 rectors by a 2/3 majority.  Since then, things got worse.

The controversy around a possible outright fraud at the Recall Election of August 15 has never been quite settled.  However even the organizations that recognized Chavez victory, namely the OAS and the Carter Center, have since recognized that there are serious problems as to how the voting act by itself progresses, from important irregularities in the electoral rolls (remember that even noted terrorist Granda got to vote in August 15) to a general system that made voting difficult and questionable as to its safety and privacy.

Another very perturbing factor is that after the Recall Election the CNE was again revamped, again without due process.  The pro-Chavez majority went from a 3 to 5 to a 4 out of 5.  But the 5th one, Sobella Mejias, who used to be a frequent dissenting voice before August 15, has been stripped or real influence and has become deadly silent, apparently letting the other 4 guys do as they please.  For all practical purpose, it would be the same as if she had become pro-Chavez.  Naturally, the arrogance of the new president, Jorge Rodriguez, has reached new heights.  Basically, negotiations with the CNE for opposition parties have become near impossible as the CNE is creating new rules, violating established rules, creating new requirements that simply could make away with the secret and privacy of the vote.  In other words, the opposition has lost any faith in the CNE, not that it had much before.

Now, this should not be taken to mean that the elections are hopelessly rigged and that the opposition even if it gets more votes than the government will lose anyway (though one is allowed to entertain that possibility).  What it means is that the large gerrymandering of the electoral rolls and the distrust from the opposition voters ("why vote?  They are going to steal my vote!") add a bonus to the chavista vote.  And we will not enter into the fact that the CNE does not even pretend to control the excesses and abuses of the official campaign whose ample funding from public coffers is not questioned whatsoever. 

In other words, for the opposition to win it would require that not only it beats Chavez, but by a margin sufficiently elevated that the inherent fraud, and the possible fraud of outright data modification, cannot be played out or manipulated.

SUMATE, the NGO that is the main electoral advisor of the opposition and perhaps the most efficiently run group in the whole country, has listed clearly which are the 5 points that must be met to have a clean election in Venezuela, to have results that will be accepted, to obtain an electoral system that will reestablish trust of all into the act of voting.

1-Trusworthy electoral roll. Right now, with even Granda voting, and the unwillingness to release the roll to political parties to allow them to organize their campaign (a legal requirement that the CNE refuses to comply with), there is no way to know if the registered electors are indeed legal electors or in which district they are actually located.

2-Complete Audit.  Any electoral process must be audited, and not only after the voting.  The CNE is stalling any attempt at external audit from its inner workings to its electoral rolls, and amen of counting the vote.

3-Vote secret.  A new device has been introduced: electronic voting registry.  That is, when you will go and vote a computer will check your registration, instead of the printed books used until now.  Obviously, there can be any unknown "virus" that can follow the sequence of the verification steps and match it with the sequence of the voting machine.  Thus it is technically possible to figure out who voted for whom.

4-Manual counting. Considering all the controversy that has surrounded elections since 2000, it would be a good idea to perhaps emit the result a few hours after the vote but allowed for a few days to count all the votes manually.  Only that could assuage once and for all the mistrust into the electoral system as it stands now.  As far as the present CNE stands, only the ballot boxes to be audited will be counted (3).

5-Real observation. After the fiasco of the OAS and Carter Center in 2004, and the refusal for the EU to come, this has become a real problem.  We should not doubt the good intentions of the previous observers even if some might have been favoring chavismo.  The fact is that the CNE did not allow them to do their job right and yet they accepted their observer role.  This simply means that unless observers are not allowed to do their job properly, according to acceptable practices, then we might as well forget about the election, at least the national ones as local elections are rarely observed since supposedly the community does that...

As any rational reader should agree, the requirements of SUMATE are quite reasonable (in PDF here).  What is not reasonable is the arrogance of the CNE that refuses even to meet these requests half way.  No wonder abstention can only keep growing in Venezuela, no matter how fast the CNE inflates the rolls (and the votes?).  The last word will be when international arbitration will come, if it comes.  One expects from recent declarations that the Carter center as well as the OAS have learned something from the August debacle, in case they dare to return. (return)

Conclusion 1

Some apologists of the Chavez regime say that since he won elections X times, he is a democrat and Venezuela is a democracy.  This "elections are enough" litmus test obviously fails when one sees all the problems exposed above with the Venezuelan electoral system.  On the electoral front, Venezuela qualifies now as a dubious democracy at the very best, and as most charitable qualification one can give it.

Indeed, I, for one, am willing to accept that the electoral results so far do reflect the general will of the country to see Chavez in Miraflores.  However, there is no guarantee, the way things are, that this will remain the case.  And one thing is already certain, the results of any local election are not going to reflect the social composition and political wishes of the individual districts. We have entered what is called a plebiscitary regime, one where the only elections that count are the one for the executive and any plebiscite that this one may wish to hold.  Other elections are simply ways to legalize the command lines through the regions. (return)

Polls and more polls

One way to evaluate the situation of a country is to make polls.  This seems to have become useless in Venezuela.  Many reasons for that.  To begin with, there is an undeniable effect of the Chavez popularity which is not translatable to the reality of everyday life.  That is, polls, no matter where they come from always give high numbers to president Chavez while governmental institutions, ministers, program and more find themselves trailing behind sometimes by not even half of the numbers of Chavez.  Probably there is a phenomenon here that polling institutions have not been able to account for, to correct, a phenomenon which if it gives good numbers to Chavez probably also reflect an inherent vulnerability as every day more and more people seem to pin their hope on Chavez and Chavez only. Risking of course to turn him down suddenly some day.

Three polls came to hit the news lately: Datanalisis, Consultores 21 and CECA (no links alive).  It is not the objective to discuss which one of them might be the most reliable, all seems to suffer from that basic non concordance of results. 

For example Datanalisis gives more than 60% favorable ratings to Chavez but in specific questions upon which such favor should be built, none passed the 55% (e.g. are you happy with the political or economical situation of the country?)

Another example is contrasting Consultores (published by pro Chavez newspaper Panorama) and CECA (paid by opposition sectors).  Consultores estimate abstention to coming elections at 27% whereas CECA predicts 86%!  Consultores places unemployment as the main concern for 37% and corruption to be important for only 2% whereas CECA gives 41 and 20% respectively!

One of the most interesting and curious results comes from Consultores which states that 59% think that the (current?) country problems are not Chavez fault (but his administration, the past, whatever).  Yet, one of the biggest opponents of Chavez, the Catholic Church, garners 70% favor in Consultores (And equally high numbers in Datanalisis).  And the media, main opponents too, are second only to the Church in receiving the favors of the polled folks.

Finally, a very telling result in Consultores is that if 57% like Chavez (and this for pro-Chavez Panorama), 60% of polled people express the desire of a new leadership coming from the opposition!

Conclusion 2

Trying to find a common thread is rather difficult.  Perhaps the complexity of the times?  Perhaps the reluctance of people to reply frankly since confidentiality seems every day more and more impaired?  However one thing seems certain: no matter how we analyze the different poll results, there seems to be a hard core pro Chavez support that is between 30 and 35% (even seen in a nice pie chart!).  And the hard core opposition seems stuck at 30%.  Thus there is a floating 40% that seems to have loosely set on Chavez for the time being, thankful for the social programs but perhaps not as grateful as this one would like.

There is also another explanation: Chavez is like Reagan in a certain Teflon like quality, nothing sticking to him. (return)

Economical perspectives

If Chavez keeps holding to good numbers it is not only because of his undeniable charisma toward the low classes.  After all that charisma did not save him from the April 2002 disaster when only small groups of people in popular districts, some of them more interested in the looting that usually accompanies violent changes of regime, protested for his return.  If such a coup where to happen today, it is more likely that genuine crowds would hit the streets, and not only in Caracas.

What happened?  Some think that Chavez realized that he was not hitting the targets right and after April 2002 needed to get better advice.  It escapes no one notice that the Cuban presence in Venezuela boomed after April 2002, be it a the level of the presidential security or to the thousands of Cuban medic that came for Barrio Adentro, the flagship "mision".  Thus, with continuously rising oil prices, Chavez embarked in the most populist program ever experienced in Venezuela.  The windfall was invested mostly on programs that successfully shored up the presidential image that had been going down steadily since the constitutional battles of 1999.  Eventually it allowed Chavez to battle successfully the Recall Election challenges, gain the regional election battle and reach early 2005 an improbable 70% in one poll.

Of course that windfall of petrodollars had an effect in the economy.  The recovery from the disastrous oil and general strike of 2002-2003 was spectacular.  But it was only that, a recovery.  Only these days Venezuela is finally reaching a GNP comparable to the 1998 GNP, which means that the per capita income in real terms has fallen even if social programs create the illusion of some relative wellbeing in popular sectors.  The sad fact is that massive public spending touches only some sectors of the productive apparatus, such as food production.  And even that sector has been hurt by uncontrolled food importation by the state and subsidized food distribution through "mision Mercal".  These measures taken to try to control inflation (as Giordani recovered his old economy management seat lost in 2002) failed as this one persistently remains in the double digits, always threatening to spin out of control.  The Venezuelan currency remains weak as local investments remain weak and people try to shift as many dollars outside of the country as possible considering the restrictive currency exchange controls.

Only some sectors with heavy state investments (oil, of course, propelled by 50 + USD barrels; state industrial investment; some public works) show some significant growth.  Unfortunately these sectors are inherently delicate as they depend on oil prices and production.  Production numbers in particular have been questioned recently.  The private sector, the one that can effectively create the jobs required for a real and sustained recovery, is not growing as fast as wanted.  2005 will be the year where we finally will see if the massive populist spending on populist programs will be enough to reactivate the generating jobs pump.

One factor that does not help confidence to be restored, in addition of the now chronic judicial security now that chavismo has a firm control of the judicial apparatus, is the lack of accurate statistics from the government.  Most calculation systems, from the bank reserves to the jobless rates, have been modified, tainted, in order to make the government look better in its macroeconomic results.  For example IESA, the top business school in Venezuela, and El Nacional have looked at unemployment rates.  They have found that this one has started including the beneficiaries of some "misiones" into the fully employed (militia forming, "vuelvan caras").  This of course is dangerous as those are not real jobs, and most of them are not even paid at the minimum wage rate and certainly do not benefit of the labor laws advantages that are the rights of gainfully employed workers.

Finally, tales of corruption and evidence of more and more "nouveaux riches" do not help in creating confidence in legal and normal investment from the private sector.  Not to mention that some recent fiscal battles with some foreign oil investors (Sincor, e.g.) are certainly going to create new and unwanted mistrust with foreign investors in general, investors willing to risk money in Venezuela because of its oil potential.  Only those that hold technologies that the government cannot control are willing to do large investments in Venezuela (the purchase of Telcel by Movistar, for example). (return)

Conclusion 3

Indeed, the petrodollar windfall is felt and there is an impression of economic growth as commercial activity has restarted and as, without question, the lowest income sectors of the population have benefited from the social programs developed since early 2003.  It is possible that eventually this will translate in real solid economic growth but so far the signs are not encouraging.  Venezuela seems intent on, again, increase the portion of the public sector, already huge, at the expense of the private sector.  This has never worked anywhere.

Perhaps aware of this, the Chavez administration seems to want to attract large multinational investment even if this one will kill some of the Venezuelan economic sectors.  In the so vaunted "XXI century socialism" perhaps what is meant is that capitalism will exist only at two levels: anonymous and non political global companies on one side, and on the other small Venezuelan business and cooperatives and such which cannot, hopefully for Chavez, present a political challenge such as the one he experienced in 2002 and 2003.  As little as possible Venezuelan own concerns is the goal, unless controlled by pro Chavez business folks.

We will see in the future if the bet of chavismo will succeed in bringing prosperity or if we will fall further behind in Latin America as even countries as Dominican Republic have now a significantly higher GNP per capita than Venezuela. (return)

The opposition disarray

We have surveyed the different conditions that are facing the political parties today, July 5, our 194th anniversary of the declaration of Venezuelan independence.  We will start now with the examination of the opposition very own problems and how this one is reacting to the new political and economical panorama of the country.

Considering the stubbornness of the polls since mid 2004 and the dismal perspective offered at the ballot box, assuming that the polls would improve, one can understand the opposition political parties disarray.  But why is the opposition so catatonic except for the occasional exception? 

The original sin

In his recent book, Dos Izquierdas, Teodoro Petkoff has a very interesting chapter that summarizes some of the problems that the Venezuelan opposition is facing, some of the problems that have already been addressed in these pages over the last year.  One I call the "original sin" since the opposition leadership seems unable to come to grip with it.

In the fateful night of August 15 to 16, as in the wee hours the government gave the unexpected result of 59% for Chavez, some of the opposition leaders came out to scream "fraud!".  And then a few days later, the Accion Democratica leadership announced that it would run for the regional elections, and that was that.  Some pursued the fraud theory.  But those that did not pursue it made the cardinal sin of not accepting officially that Chavez had won, that is, no "graceful" concession speech.

The result was that the opposition electorate, a strong 40% by the CNE possibly fraudulent count, was left adrift, not knowing whether Chavez had won, not knowing whether fraud had really taken place.  At this point discussing the fraud theories that were later announced is rather aimless: Chavez had won a political victory and even if he had indeed lost the vote, the inability of the opposition to claim it black is equal to giving him victory.

This was a major mistake from the opposition leadership.  Not recognizing the lousy campaign for the Recall election or refusing to fight tooth and nail for a recount, as it was shown it could be done in Ukraine is what has sunk the chances of the opposition more than anything else.  Why the opposition ensnarled itself is a mystery.  Perhaps a confession of bad leadership would have forced them to profound reorganization?  Perhaps they are really that incompetent? But if the opposition lacked the guts to fight, then recognizing defeat was the indispensable requirement to rebuild the political parties and take the road to an eventual victory in the future. 

This is the root of high abstention intentions detected in polls and the October 31 2004 vote: the opposition electorate does not believe in the vote because it does not believe in its leaders.  Paradoxically chavismo is probably as skeptic of elections as anti-chavismo but does not care about it since they have their guy in office.  In addition, strong abstention in an electoral result is always bad news for a country on the long run.

And since then the paralysis has not ceded and the opposition is about to experience two major defeats because simply it is fighting with a hand tied in their back, a hand that has been tied there by themselves. (return)

Venial sins?

But the opposition has made other mistakes.  Some voices did appear in the following days of the Recall Election to point out that for example in the Caracas Metropolitan area chavismo had lost the referendum, and thus there was a possibility for the opposition to improve its positions there.  Petkoff is one of the main voices that wrote on that matter. And this very site offered a reasonable numerical analysis of these results showing that indeed some Metropolitan areas were appropriate fields for future electoral battles.

Other voices urged the opposition to entertain the thought that maybe Chavez had won and it would be good to examine why, and fast.  Already on August 12 Milagros Socorro was wondering about the effect of the "misiones" on the evolving voting intentions.  And already on August 19 she was wondering about whether the result was indeed possible, questioning it perhaps but clearly willing to accept the thought that it was a real result.

But the opposition not only did not pull out its act together, but faced the October election in disarray as Accion Democratica and Primero Justicia decided to square off to see who would become the leader of the opposition instead of fighting Chavez outright.  Now, if this is perhaps a normal reflex in a normal political system, in September 2004 it should have been a priority to save the political spaces still owned by the opposition, in particular the main states such as Carabobo and Miranda, the best blockades to an authoritarian system.

The abstention induced by the lack of openness and lethargy of the opposition leadership had the expected result, on October 31 the opposition lost much more than what it should have lost when in fact it could have even improved its positions. In November it woke up with not even a third of town halls and only two states out of 22.  A disaster worse than August 15. And this without even solving the struggle between AD and PJ, a struggle still going on [complete summary of results and interpretations here, as you will not find it anywhere else]. (return)

Present situation

With not very motivating elections coming up, the opposition is doing what it can.

Local alliances.  At the municipal level it seems that a significant number of agreements have been reached.  After all, Tip O'Neill, famed House Speaker of the US Congress was fond to say that all politics is local.  The opposition certainly need to leave Caracas TV stations and go back "local" it it wants to rebuild.  However the perspective of the largest abstention in our history, and all the electoral obstacles make one wonder what is on store at the ballot box on August 7.

Stirring the crowds.  Julio Borges, the main leader of Primero Justicia, is the one that has come the closest to admit defeat in August.  Close but no cigar.  So he has decided to run for president even if there was still 1.5 years for the 2006 when he announced.  However at least it gives him some exposure as he is starting to hit the streets and ask for votes.  It is too early to see if this will give any positive result.  But at least the fact of running will force PJ to come up with a government program to offer to the elector, something sorely missing from the opposition side.

Sleeping with he enemy.  Accion Democratica seems to have decided to accept Chavez rule for the coming years.  After all it does share the same electorate of Chavez as chavista electros were not the result of spontaneous generation: chavistas used to vote for AD or Copei in the past, contrary to a certain virginal image that these would like to project.  In fact there seems to be strong tensions within AD as some might want to make a deal with chavismo while some would like a stronger line against Chavez.  The bellwether is Sobella Mejias, the lone rector of the CNE, of AD origin and sympathies who suddenly has become dreadfully silent since last August, naturally contributing to suspicions as to the  real intentions of AD. (4)

Saving what can be saved of the left. I read somewhere that Cesar Miguel Rondon would have said "When will Chavez leave office so we can be again from the left?".  Si non e vero e ben trovato. Indeed, Chavez autocratic style is giving the left a bad name.  Chavismo has unloaded itself from all the thinking and democratic left.  Only the archaic left, la izquierda borbonica, is what is left with him, the left that looks at Cuba for inspiration and not the successful social democracies of Europe or even Latin America.  But the voters have not followed.  Thus a galaxy of leftists parties came to near nothing are trying to unite with escapees from chavismo and intellectuals to put together some united left front. But parties who have been fighting each other for decades until Chavez came with his tidal wave are necessarily having a hard time of it.

Small potatoes.  There are still some local movements who might reach the hour of truth this year. 

Proyecto Venezuela is trying to save what it still holds in Carabobo.  The gross style of the new burping governor, Acosta Carles, might either help or do them in once and for all.  His election seem to have been fraudulent, the most challenged of all the ones of October 31, and the one that the CNE stonewalled and maneuvered in an obscene way.  Carabobo was the best administered state in Venezuela and at least Acosta Carles has had the intelligence, surprising everybody, to limit itself to painting all in red across the state but sort of maintaining running what was running. 

In Zulia it seems that Rosales, the only surviving governor, has decided to weather the post referendum syndrome and is not openly seeking a political future in his last term as governor.  Thus he seems to be like AD from he originally comes, to try to weather the storm until better days come.  Will he maintain his Zulia position?  At other local levels, even in Yaracuy, it seems that all are on the verge of falling completely on the chavista side.  In Yaracuy, his ex-governor is tempting a timid return after a long post electoral absence, but it is probably too little and too late.

All in all, nothing bright. (return)

The December deadline

Unfortunately these most important elections suffer from two factors: the irrelevance where the National Assembly has fallen.  Its willingness to become a rubber stamp parliament has torn any respect that it might have.  Even the opposition shares part of the blame as many representatives have ceased any active resistance to the chavista steam roller.  Many opposition attempts at mounting small filibusters fail just because too many assemblymen just do not show up.  Even the leader of AD in the National Assembly was reported last September to discretely try to negotiate with he chavista leadership better retirement terms, an implicit acknowledgment that the political career of Ramos Allup was at an end.

This election which should be the foremost concern of the opposition has taken a back seat as the opposition seems to have preferred to see what are the results of August 7 local municipal runs to decide what type of alliances to do.  This is a very dangerous strategy as the deadline to register candidates falls barely a couple of weeks after the August vote.  Any problem at vote counting, facilitated by the pro Chavez CNE, can easily block significant electoral alliance making within the opposition.

It is to be noted that if chavismo has not presented its candidates either, the short list probably exists already and it will be launched full barely days after August 7, if not even before.  Cilia Flores has announced on July 4 that the candidates will be chose by "consultations and polls with the base, based on their work and commitment to the revolution", or such type of talk.  Clearly, chavismo is not going to take any chance with the nomination process: candidates will be blessed by Chavez or will not be candidates.  This unity will be compared with the riot that the opposition nomination process will be after August 7, unfavorably for the opposition.

The lack of "official" candidates has not stopped chavismo to sort of campaign for the National Assembly elections whereas the opposition has not started.  This is very dangerous for the opposition as National Assembly elections cannot be run on a short campaign as the Municipal elections.  There are less than 200 assemblymen to be elected, that is each one has to reach at least 50 000 electors within a couple of months.  No time left to do the good all faithful door to door visits whereas Chavez himself will be a formidable TV campaigner... (return)

The SUMATE factor

There is only one possible bright light in the opposition panorama, and that is the return to the front scene of SUMATE.  In all fairness
SUMATE never quite left the front scene, courageously and lonely insisted on some clear aspects of the fraudulent system of the CNE, and kept its leaders exposed to chavista vindictiveness.  Its crime? To have accepted funds from the NED.  Its REAL crime? To have efficiently organized the Recall Election signature drive and have beaten back Chavez dirty tactics, via CNE.

It has been now more than a year that chavismo is trying to nail penal charges on the main directors of SUMATE.  But the delay comes from probably two reasons: one, it would be difficult to really hold a case as chavismo itself would be susceptible in international courts of the same crime, of receiving electoral founds from foreigners (Case Banco Bilbao Viscaya Argenteria); and two, not reaching trial allows for chavismo to hurl all sorts of improprieties and false charges at SUMATE for cheap political purposes.

But SUMATE has demonstrated how political opposition is done, at least at the technical level. It has also overcome its mistakes and underestimations of the Recall Election process.  Semi distanced during the elections of October 31, it is clear that the political opposition does not have the nerve or the technique to face the tricks of the CNE and thus SUMATE is becoming the unavoidable assessor.

This new reality of SUMATE has been stupendously brought forward by the recent reception of its president, Maria Corina Machado, at the Oval Office for a surprisingly long meeting with President Bush.  This is the first time in years that anyone from Venezuela has been received as a political visitor by the White House.  Regardless of the ethical charges, the betrayal accusations and other rather useless comments, the visit of Maria Corina Machado was a political visit and should be judged as so.  The US has shown that it has lost patience with both the opposition and Chavez and that it wants serious people, who do serious work as interlocutors.  And right now SUMATE is the one.

It is difficult to speculate on the long term implications of the visit, but it certainly was received as a lightening bolt by the opposition parties, who are still stunned. More than with October 31 set back, the Machado reception has  demonstrated how out of place the present opposition leadership is, how badly it needs some renewal, even if Ms. Machado is a most inadequate political candidate.  but as a political operator she is now beating of all them hands down. (return)

Conclusion 4

The opposition seems on the verge of two more major electoral defeats.  Unfortunately this time it will have only itself to blame as Chavez will not even need to cheat electorally and thus will get the final validation from the dubious August 15 result.

Can the opposition still do something?  At this late point no.  Any major agreement should have been reached at least 2 or 3 months earlier to give it a chance of some momentum.  At least we can hope that August 7 will witness the end of a few people within the opposition that are just dead weight, the painful emergence of some new leadership, and the realization that organization and programs are the only way out.  People like the folks at SUMATE, editors like Petkoff,  NGO organizing neighborhoods (asambleas de ciudadanos) are what it will take to perhaps one day remove Chavez from office before the country becomes once and for all some freaky construct that depends on the humor of the supreme leader depending on what he has had for breakfast. (return)

The chavismo hubris

Fortunately the chavismo situation is easier to describe, though not really less anxiety ridden than the opposition situation.  Its main problem is that with Chavez they are all, without Chavez they are nothing.  Thus the need to describe how Chaves as a public figure has evolved since August 2004.

Chavez, El Supremo

Since August 15 Chavez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is on a big time ego trip.  He controls all the essential mechanisms of power: the judicial system, the electoral system, the legislative branches, the armed forces, 80% of the local power, the purse strings through PDVSA, soon the Central Bank, 90% of the patronage system, etc, etc...

No president of Venezuela has had as much power as Hugo Chavez, since, perhaps, Gomez.  And so little to show considering the power he holds.

Of course, this does not help him.  Not having political enemies of any concern at home left, he has had to turn to all sorts of foreign ventures, basically aimed at nagging the US (while dutifully shipping as much oil as possible over there).  If the US is irritated at Chavez, there has been no smoking gun of any serious attempt at ousting Chavez, besides a few meetings and encouragements to opposition groups.  Though of course chavismo claims that Bush and Rice spend their days and nights, possibly trying to have him assassinated.  Dozens of accusations have been made but still have to yield a serious enough charge that could actually put a suspect in jail.

Propaganda wars, that is all.

A more perturbing development is the closer and closer relation between Castro's Cuba and Chavez.  Cuban advisors are now numbered in Venezuela in the ten of thousands.  Since April 2002 sometimes it seems that Cuba has taken over the basic policies of Venezuela.  More than ever Chavez demonstrates his puerile admiration and fixation with the senile dictator of the island.

With no more brakes at home for Chavez, and adulatory attitudes from so many people overseas seeking Venezuelan contracts (read: money), then one can justifiably worry about the fate of Venezuela and how much will this adventure cost us in the long run. (return)

The appeal of Chavez at home, and its consequences

Two articles in El Universal of this last Sunday come right on hand for this section.

Luis Vicente Leon of Datanalisis has held for quite a while the image of "Yusleibis", some imaginary female dweller of the marginal areas of the cities.  For him, Chavez language reaches her because he speaks of her problems, and even if he does not bring really any long term solution, the fact that he pretends to care about her plight is enough for her.  At least "por ahora". In this Sunday installment of sorts, he also offers an explanation as to why interest in politics has dropped, even for Yusleibis. Maybe.  But what is real is that Chavez appeal is stronger now in some of those sections than it ever was.  It is due in part to the fact that some goodies are finally reaching since 2003.  It is probably due also to the fact that after so many years of speeches, Yusleibis and her family got used to the familiar voice and since nothing else is coming, they have grown to care about that voice, in the way families will defend their members, just because s/he is family.

In this aspect Chavez has exploited very well that tribal tendency of the Venezuelan, that desire to belong somewhere, that semi religious need for a towering political/paternal figure that tells them what to think.  And that he looks like them has helped along.  Chavez has taught them to relate to him, even if in some other scenarios Chavez has grown to be quite polished and away of his pseudo popular origins (he looks very prosperous now, well tailored and all, whereas Castro still retains as much as possible his olive garb).

The other Sunday article shows the perversion of the system, what people are so willing to forgive Chavez just because he semi-religiously fills their souls.  Namely, Manuel Caballero describes the nepotism that Chavez has used to settle up his relatives, in all sorts of positions where money flows through, or flows in.  The sad implication is that it suggests an explanation as to what is fast becoming a major nightmare of Venezuela and perhaps chavismo itself: the fast increasing corruption, exposed from PDVSA accusations to the sudden prosperity of some people not known for their business acumen. 

For all his brash talk, since 1999 we are waiting for a single corrupt public servant to hit the jail bench, even from the pre Chavez corrupt years.  Perhaps a reason why AD has been rather indulgent?  The mystery is how come people are so willing to put up with such favoritism, corruption and concomitant administrative inefficiency.  How long can charisma alone carry the day? (return)

Chavismo today

It is certain that the accrued powers of Chavez have affected how his movement and followers are dealing with power since last August.  Before August 2004 there was still occasional talk of a chavismo without Chavez. But this is all over now as chavismo has understood that they all depend on the good will of the "lider maximo del proceso" (the maximum leader of the process, in revolutionary techno-gab).

The first consequence might be the stillborn attempt at making the chavista vehicle, MVR, into a durable party.  Internal elections for the Regional election candidatures and the municipal election have generated enough disturbances, enough challenges that measures to control that are being taken, such as ruling out primaries for the National Assembly candidacies.

In fact there is more and more evidence that Chavez is impatient with the civilian component of the MVR and there are signs that he wants to impose a large quote of candidatures for retired military that support his regime.  Thus the continuous militarization of the country continues as now the "army party" is the faction that controls the largest part of ministries and relevant administrative posts (and 9 state houses!).  The army seems to have managed to reach power in Venezuela without having had to effect a military coup.  It was just handed down to them by Chavez who is basically anti civilian, a simple barrack soldier unable to outgrow that stage of his life.

As a result chavismo has purged itself so much that there is almost no talent left inside.  The rare exceptions are at the local level where people like Diosdado Cabello in Miranda wait for better days while they build their own support base, to challenge Chavez or a post Chavez administration as the case might be.  The public administration has become dramatically inefficient as no minister tries to take major initiatives on its own as all must be approved by Miraflores palace, be conceived for the maximum glory of the beloved leader, and certainly not burnish the star of the pseudo public servant.  There is no more continuity except to promote the revolution.

Obviously the list of candidates and the platform of any election gravitate uniquely around Chavez.  One day a price will have to be paid for it, but right now, all realize that their only chance to reach the loot is to be more chavista than Chavez.  And they all act accordingly. (return)

Conclusion 5

Chavismo has two big advantages over the opposition as elections near.  One is that it has a unified front and a unified line of command.  If this can only be a negative on the long run, for the time being it serves admirably the purposes of those who seek to retain office at all cost.  The other advantage, and a terribly unfair one, is that chavismo disposes of all of the back up of the state at the electoral level and at the financial level for a campaign.  Never in Venezuelan history people in office had benefited from such an outlandish advantage.

The drawback, in addition to the immortality of the system, is that chavismo could become such a predictable and uninteresting entity that its followers could get tired of it and not defend it if it is duly challenged.  In particular if they lose their advantages or privileges no matter who wins the challenge, or if they feel assured to keep these benefits if the other side wins.  It has happened before, it will happen again.  So is human nature and the nature of personal political systems.

Meanwhile, the coming elections will look more like an additional patronage opportunity for more job hand outs than an election, at least from the chavista perspective. (return)

Venezuela's prospects

There is no point in speculating on Venezuela's long term prospects.  It can be great or a disaster, the later one most likely if Chavez does not learn the skills of delegation, trust and efficiency.  Otherwise people will keep trying to take advantage of Venezuelan monies by flattering its leader.

Short and mid term prospects?  We are discussing the December 2006 horizon, at best.

For the end of 2005, barring some last minute events, we are likely to see the final gasp of the Venezuelan political opposition as it exists now.  Only the media, up to a point, some NGO and some isolated local authorities will remain to stop the establishment of an authoritarian regime, which is now without a doubt the drift of Chavez political project.

January 2006 will probably see chavismo with a 2/3 majority in the National Assembly even if the opposition manages to retain its 40% vote participation.  That 2/3 majority will include enough ex military to account for perhaps as much as 20% of the parliament.  This will add a new meaning to rubber stamp parliament.

Through 2006 Chavez will have the leisure to correct the "unconstitutional" measures that he has had to take over 2003 and 2004 to ensure his hold on power.  It will start by the constitutional nomination of the CNE where maybe the opposition will get a lame 5th rector.  He might even order a constitutional revision of the High Court law that will this time be voted by a 2/3 constitutional majority even if it takes buying off someone in the opposition by offering them a token couple of seats out of the 32 it now includes.  Thus for the overseas gaze, all the legal appearances will be kept, with the necessary make up corrections, that could even include freeing a few token opponents such as Carlos Ortega, to create a false image of reconciliation.

Thus, legally free of trouble and now unchallenged in his disposition of the national treasury, a well targeted social offensive starting sometime in spring 2006 should ensure that he wins a third term in December 2006.  Soon, a constitutional referendum should remove the constitutional provision that bars Chavez from a 4th term in 2012.  And the perfectly legal authoritarian regime would have been installed, with no overseas challenge.

Are there any stones on the road that could trip the project?

The media seems about the only one as the price of oil is certain to remain high enough for Chavez needs until 2007 even if Venezuela fails to increase its production.  The media in spite for restrictive laws that are now been applied, and more to come, has been able to put enough pressure on occasion to bring doubt in Chavez real strength, even slightly dropping his poll numbers.  For example the obvious mismanagement and corruption of PDVSA is now a constant stone in Chavez shoes probably forcing him at some point to concede partial defeat and even rehiring a few of the fired workers of 2003.  But this would fail on the swamp of corruption that now pervades every nook and cranny of PDVSA.  The latest scandal, for example, is the continued use of unnecessary traders of Venezuelan oil, something that was not only not needed in the past, but expressively forbidden.

By exposing constantly such practices that can only be explained by someone cashing some financial reward along the line, the media will remain a thorn in Chavez side, maintaining enough dissatisfaction in the country that he will be forced to crack down on the press.  That is when international pressure might become a factor.

Other problems loom on the horizon though more likely for a post 2006 scenario.  His constant meddling in other countries affairs, even if only by out of place reactions will eventually create a backlash.  The death of Castro would create a major challenge that he might not be able to face.  His economic "recovery" might eventually fail on the harsh laws of market and human nature.

It is just sad that the destiny of Venezuela has become so entangled with the destiny and whims of a single man.  Nothing promising in our future, unfortunately. (return)

---

Bibliography

To understand what has been happening to Venezuela these past few years, the reader has now many interesting books at his/her disposition.  I only list those that I have read recently but there are many more books such as the ones from Garrido narrating the evolution of the "bolivarian" project.

Dos Izquierdas: Teodoro Petkoff, Alfadil, ISBN 980-354-170-6 (A series of Assays by Tal Cual editor as to the fate of the left)

Venezuela en llamas: Armando Duran, Debate, ISBN 980-293-278-7 (Best recount of 2002 to 2004 so far)

Diccionario de Historia de Venezuela, Fundacion Polar, ISBN 980-6397-38-I (4 volumes)(THE reference book on Venezuelan History)

Detras de la Pobreza: Ugalde, España, Lacruz, De Viana, Gonzalez, Luengo, Ponce, UCAB 2004, ISBN 980-244-389-1 (Myths buster study about the reality of poverty in Venezuela, its origins and composition; fantastic collection of dramatic pictures)

El Acertijo de Abril: La Fuente, Meza, Debate, ISBN 980-293-255-8 (best summary of April 2002 events)

 

---

Notes

(1) "viernes negro" is the black Friday of 1983 when the Venezuelan currency, long pegged to the US dollar at 4.5, experienced its first devaluation in decades.  The never ending slide has brought us today to 2600 to the USD, that is a 577 fold depreciation. (return)

(2) the election of the Constituent Assembly of 1999 was particularly perverse in this regard as chavismo with about 60% votes got 97% of the seats.  Thus a national debate was impossible as the constituent assembly caved in to most any wishes of Chavez, the worst one of all his exacerbated desire to start the year 2000 with a new millennial constitution when the assembly had until January 31 2000 to finish debate.  This almost two months of debate and work missing explain some of the glaring problems seen today.  An unfinished constitution. (return)

(3) This blogger has attended the electoral counting at the voting center across his house on October 31.  I can assure you that an average center can emit all the results at say 10 PM and count all the ballots and emit that additional result no later than 1 or 2 AM.  If the argument of tired voting workers is advanced, well, the boxes can be sealed at midnight and be reopened in the presence of the workers after verification sometime in the next day, with the final and true results emitted no later than in the early afternoon. Even a large center should be able to count all ballots within 24 hours.  After all, major democracies still hand count all of their ballots in a no more than 3-4 hours after polls close. (return)

(4) This blogger, for one, thinks that AD is a double agent.  Though he does understand the reasons of AD, he is willing to predict that its strategy will fail and AD will finally fall into oblivion, to the great relief of everyone. (return)