The Day after: the Recall Election announcement sequels

Friday 4, June 2004

I was away at a business meeting all day and I am just back home. I did not even buy the papers! Thus I have only a few things to say, kind of chronologically as I learned about them.

I drove to Barquisimeto last night listening to Chavez "cadena". He was in one of his "good Chavez days". I must admit that when he gets into these moods he becomes rather hypnotic and after a while you start wondering if he really is that bad. This moment of clouded mind lasts for only a couple seconds as words come back to mind quickly: Semerucos, February 27, the opposition is f****d, etc, etc...

At least he accepted the idea that the signatures were there, though of course he is waiting for the final results. It is hard to break the bad news to people upon whom one has been piling up lies for 6 months with an alleged "megafraud".

I did check in my hotel and finished to watch the "cadena" from my room. Chavez cadenas tend to last for at the very least one hour. He was nattyly dressed up, kind of a smile sutured on his face, as many possible reassuring elements as he could put around. He ended up calling for a new Santa Ines campaign, one of the multiple campaigns of our XIX century civil wars, made notorious by a Llanero poem, "Florentino y el Diablo", Florentino and the Devil. Appropriate indeed...........

Can we believe him? Not at all. Last night he said he will be fighting the referendum on his tenure. But we all know that he will be watching closely the polls, the divisions within his followers and the opposition and any time he could resign and call for general elections. All at his convenience. Not to mention that the cadena was followed by the news of all that happened in downtown Caracas through Thursday: two newspapers attacked with significant damage, Caracas metropolitan Town Hall sacked again, cars and trucks burnt, street fighting, one dead, injuries including one opposition assemblyman that ended up with 5 hours of surgery. With supporters like that Chavez needs to don the sheep clothing.

In fact the news of today illustrates the maneuvers ALREADY taking place even though the official number of signatures has not yet being announced. The new objective of the Electoral Board is to postpone the Recall Election from August 8 to August 15. This is very important since it seems that Chavez will be "recalled" ONLY after the official announcement of the Recall votes by the CNE. That announcement from an August 15 election could easily be postponed to August 20 (see at the multiple unaccountable delays of the CNE since last September!!!!!!!). And then the vice president of Chavez has in office would rule for two years...

Another trick already under work is the wording of the Recall Election question (it is a referendum after all!). The opposition has been campaigning under a YES! leitmotiv (yes to remove Chavez from office). Well apparently a carefully worded question would make the opposition switch to a NO! slogan! No one less than Ezequiel Zamora came out on TV today to try a preemptive strike from chavismo, demonstrating once again that the CNE has ceased to function as a collegial body, its final collapse expected any time soon.

Needless to say that listening to this on my way back home was not very encouraging. Interestingly the big meeting that I attended was rather silent on the political situation, as if we were all heartsick and in need of a mental break.

To close as I type I am listening to "30 minutos". Cesar Miguel Rondon has as a guest a psychiatrist that comes on occasion to "evaluate" Chavez. An interesting exercise, even more so with Chavez. Well, the shrink is not afraid of words. He even observed "the careful fresh manicure" of Chavez. According to him, last night cadena was carefully orchestrated by a psycopath. Anger and rage were hard to hide. Not a word was genuine. The shrink said that, not me!!!! But who I am to disagree as a famous Eurhythmics song had long ago....