Chavismo dim light bulbs

These recent days we have been able to see how come Chavez keeps running into trouble in spite of his good intentions (assuming they are good, of course). The reason? One cannot get good help these days.

Maduro and Ecuador

As heard on TV. National Assembly president Nicolas Maduro declared that it was Bush who gave the order to oust Gutierrez in Ecuador. Huh? A president that was willing to negotiate a trade deal with the US? A president of the only dollarized country in South America? A president that was rather right wing? Obviously Maduro must have sources in the CIA that report directly to him.

Not to remain behind, his companion and also representative from Caracas, Celia Flores, chimed in saying that she was not sure that Gutierrez had resigned and that he could well be back "we have seen that before". Obviously not realizing that indeed Gutierrez had not resigned, he was fired.

It is a good thing that this power couple is not in the foreign relations committee...

Tascon the self appointed avenger

You have to give it to Tascon: as a street rabble, he is not afraid to fight back even if all is against him. Now he is vowing to become the defender of all of those who got hurt by his infamous list. That is right, in a turn of events that will give a new meaning to passive aggressive, Tascon will start a "crusade" to defend people victim of political prosecution. I really am out of words on this.

But it gets even better. If at least he recognized that the apartheid list cannot be destroyed anymore, he went ahead and proposed new legislation to protect the confidentiality of those who signed. Adding thus a new meaning to chutzpah. Scarlet O'Hara had it easy when Rhett Buttler forced her to wear a red dress for Melanie's party...

I saw him last night in Alo Ciudadano, practicing the time honored tradition of the rats caught in a political hole, repeat a lie constantly until people think it is true. The show host had the greatest trouble in the world to even try to ask Tascon pertinent questions as Tascon was obviously there to repeat again his new tale, and only that. Among the many gems that he threw, it is now SUMATE's fault that the list existed. He only put it up on his web site as a public service. He never meant any harm.

For those who do not know, the real truth is that it was indeed a mole inside SUMATE that started publishing part of the people who signed and then that partial list was used to put political pressure. Soon enough the pro Chavez CNE provided the complete list to Tascon people and up it went on the web page. Tascon never answered the pressing question of the talk show host as to who really benefited from holding the list: the government.

But the anxiety of Tascon is understandable as he has been thrown to the wolves by his boss. Trade unions and diverse personalities are about to press charges in international forums. To add one more nail to Tascon political coffin, Teodoro Petkof takes to task the General Prosecutor to go and nail Tascon and all public employees that used the list for political prosecution. No excuses as:

This is now beyond doubt, because Chavez even described the modus operandi. There was a crime. Its intellectual author confessed.

This has to be one of the clearest cases ever handled to a prosecutor office. I am not holding my breath of course as justice as long become a mockery in Venezuela.


Electoral fraud within chavismo

It seems that chavistas are not only unable to hold internal fair elections, but they are unable to do electoral fraud in a discrete enough way. Makes one wonder who managed really the electoral fraud of August 15 2004. Cubans? Hackers?

Reports are now abundant of such fraud and miscontent. Yesterday I was already reporting on crowds bitching at Bernal in Caracas. But this goes much further. In Zulia, the key state for Chavez final hegemony as the governor might be arrested anytime soon, the battle for positions is rather heated, and accusations fly in chavistas very own civil war there. The tale repeats itself in Anzoategui. To all of these reports we only got lame declarations from the ineffable William Lara who "was not aware" of the problems. He needs only to read the translation of an article by Ms. Diaz to see that MVR is acting just the way AD was acting in the past when it tried to renew the local party cadres. Plus ça chance et plus c'est la même chose.

It is kind of fun to see all of these folks entangled in their web of lies, ignorance and moral decay. If it were not so bad for the future of the country one would even enjoy it.