El Rematazo
Another weird turn in Venezuela wild road to an election, any election

Saturday evening

This in "Venezuelan Spanish" means loosely "nailing it and some more". That was the code name for today's event, a run trial of the signature verification process. As a follow up from el firmazo and el reafirmazo.

I wrote yesterday that the Coordinadora Democratica, CD, needed to mobilize at least 1 million people to demonstrate that late this months it would be able to "re-validate" at least 600 000 signatures. Well, I am just listening the declarations of Enrique Mendoza, and he seems very happy.

At 8 PM, with many centers still having people lining up, the CD and Sumate announced that more than 1 million of people did show up today. Mendoza also said that he would not give many details as some of the information that they are gaining today must remain confidential to avoid giving away their strategy to chavismo. Translation: among this 1 million plus there are people that are already valid (like myself), people who need to validate in a few weeks, and people who are not allowed to validate but are complaining to be allowed to do so (and already many have had their status switched as some of the reasons presented by the pro Chavez CNE are unsustainable). Indeed it is a good idea that the CD does not give away the ratio of these numbers, one for psychological reasons against a foe who uses all sorts of psychological pressures from firing public servants to Chavez calling people "traitors the fatherland" if they signed. The CD needs to keep confidential how many people it is guessing will show up to revalidate. Even more if they are optimistic about the final numbers as this would be such a blow for chavismo and would be an excellent stepping stone for the Recall Election campaign.

It was raining in Yaracuy. I went to check out things at 1 PM just before I left for Caracas. As it was lunch hour there were not many people. Still, 4 people were ahead of me. I was dealt with in barely 1 minute since I was only there to confirm that I was not planning to withdraw my signature. The three people that were ahead of me did need to go to re-validate. The fun detail is that the young lady that attended me was one of the people filling up the forms in November. Well, she told me that the forms that she filled up were mostly approved but that her very own signature is not allowed to even go to revalidation process!!!!!!!! These stories of people who cannot repair, or are even just plain missing, abound in newspapers these days, or one can just pick them up in the street by talking to people around!

I did observe the books where people were signing today. This time an address was required so people could get the information if their status changed. As far as I can tell people had no objections giving their address!!! Talk about right of secrecy when voting! If Chavez wants it, he could have all these books seized and have the name and address of all his opponents. We are indeed a brave people!

I was the first person to verify my status and report in my own page, but I saw other pages: some had already almost half of the items filled up. Some only a few items. Considering that more than half of the people are already "valid" and most of them unlikely to show up, I thought then that an average of a third of the items filled up today would be rather good. Well, that was at 1 PM, on a rainy day in Yaracuy and still 6 hours to go. I can believe that Mr. Mendoza has reasons to cheer up, his comments match and more my own unscientific but rain-pessimistic predictions.

By the way, chavismo's "Commando Ayacucho", its own version of Sumate, had of course planned a counter media show. Supposedly they were going to go door to door today and "convince" people to withdraw their signatures. Well, tonight in Caracas I am watching the state TV, VTV, showing a documentary on the "media manipulation" instead of reporting on the results of their own maneuvers. Well, what do I know? Maybe they did knock at my door once I had left for Caracas?