The 4th day in Venezuela’s effort to recall Chavez

Monday 1, 9:40 AM

This is mostly a summary of the TV morning talk shows.

The strategy of chavistas is now quite clear.

The first attempt is to discredit the media by accusing them of showing only biased coverage of polling places. According to the diverse spokespersons from the Chavez camp, PRIVATE TV ONLY shows the places where people line up for signing. That the STATE TV ONLY shows the places where people are not rushing to sign does not seem to be objectionable. So, what else is new?

The other one is actually quite funny, if dangerous. It is the “rotten apple” strategy. If one apple is rotten in a basket, then it is legitimate to throw away ALL the apples. In other words if, say, in Carupano one signing form from a center is under suspicion of fraud, then all the forms collected there should be annulled. If to this you add the words of Chavez yesterday calling for the people to go out and defend the revolution, you can explain easily what happened in Carupano’s airport yesterday afternoon. While a group of opposition people were trying to take via small aircraft a group of boxed forms, a group of Chavez people tried to assault the airport and take away the signatures under the argument that they needed to go to court to determine whether they are valid and what not. That only the electoral board is allowed to decide whether a petition form is valid does not seem to cross their mind. This of course gave for great TV footage as the glass doors of the airport were trashed in the melee.

Indeed, the chavistas that managed to gain control of the Electoral Board are today the ones trying to discredit it the most!!!! Naturally, the directors of the CNE even if they have chavistas sympathies do not depend on Chavez for their future and are certainly not going to go all the way to cheat and deprive the opposition of a clear victory. They have made the road for the opposition as difficult as possible but this one rose to the challenge. Too bad for Chavez! Chavistas understand this very, very well, so under the guidance of the great leader, as seen on TV yesterday afternoon, other ways are being explored today.

The opposition is of course well aware of that and is not relenting on its effort. Since nobody knows how tough it will be to really validate the signatures, the Coordinadora Democratica (CD) is renewing its effort. A plan to ferry people to recollection centers is organized. The CD is not acting as if they did not have enough signatures, but instead is using the chavista arguments against themselves: “it is your right to sign up, do not give it up!” “Do not let them intimidate you! Your signature is as important today as Friday!” etc… Clearly, they want to reach the magical 4 million mark and secure their victory.

Thus it is going to be a delicate day as chavistas shamelessly call for all their troops to go to the polling centers and supervise THE FRAUD being conducted as we speak (well, type and read in our blog case). Translation: the opposition cannot be collecting that many signatures, it is a fraud, it is common knowledge that the real people is chavista, etc, etc…thus there is a gigantic fraud set up by these scoundrels of the opposition. Henceforth violence could be acceptable if necessary.

But some delicate undertones can already be detected. If on one side you have the TV hysteria of Dario Vivas, who as a neighborhood “agent provocateur” rose to assemblyman, courtesy of Chavez, you also have another face in Calixto Ortega, an assemblyman from Zulia. Mr. Ortega Saturday night was talking of fraud and all the normally expected key words. Sunday night he was talking about the failure of Zulia’s governor to deliver on the expected number of promised signatures. If Zulia’s governor in an act of braggadocio promised 50% of his state and will deliver only 30%, then HE FAILED! The opposition collection drive is a failure as IT MUST BE JUDGED against the promises made by politicians. Never mind that the 20% mark will be passed largely.

In this perverse reasoning Zulia’s governor is condemned as yet another lying politician (which he might well be but this is another issue). Translation again? For Calixto Ortega the result of the collection drive is quite clear: the opposition won. So he is already thinking about his own future and starts attacking his direct political adversary in Zulia in view of some future campaign there. Defense of Chavez will be now lip service, defense of his own assembly seat has become his priority. Ah! Politicians! You gotta lov’em!