My right to vote

Next Sunday there are local elections, just for the town hall councils. Not even the mayors. And thus, even in the best of the circumstances, these elections who should actually be the most important of all (there are about the guys that pick up the garbage and sweep the street on your door step) are expected to have a high abstention number, even reaching a 50% or more!

Yet, some people are making a campaign to promote further abstention, as if this would solve the problems of Venezuela. Although I do not agree with them, they do have, for once, a point. Let's look, in a simple and hopefully objective way, what is it all about.

The electoral condition

There has been enough evidence presented to affirm that the Venezuelan electoral system is pretty close to a sham (here, here and here, for example) That is, for the opposition to win, 50% + 1 is not enough. The machinery, and resources, and finances of the state are now all in gear to support any candidate that runs in Chavez name. The official advantage is simply obscene, no matter what the opposition does, plans, runs on. Something that even grudgingly is acknowledged in the OAS and Carter Center reports for the August 2004 referendum. Well, if things were already bad then, one thing is certain: it has not improved at all. If it is not as obvious for the casual external observer it is simply due to the fact that opposition disarray exempts the government from requiring applying all the advantages it has forged. But make no mistake, as soon as any significant challenge to Chavez rule raises its electoral head, the crushing machinery will be activated.

The abstention option

The argument advanced by abstention promoters is of course that if one participates in something so obviously rigged, one would thus be lending its good name to the regime, even if voting against all of Chavez list of candidates. Thus the option is for all to stay home and demonstrate with empty street, with the absence of lines at polling stations that all of Chavez support is just a show, that he has no majority in the country, never had.

It is easy to punch holes in this theory. To begin with, Chavez does not care about abstention: the 1999 constitution is based on the 1999 April referendum where the opposition advocated for abstention since the referendum called was illegal; and still with less than 50% of electors voting Yes, the election for a new constitutional assembly went ahead in July. One would wonder as to whether the abstention promoters do remember this not so long ago moment. So, whether 60% vote on Sunday or only 30%, the only thing that matters for Chavez is that he gets 60% or more of the cast ballots.

More holes can be punched. For example, how could be abstention alone be successful, in particular in an election which all know, in every country, that it has high rates of no shows? Further, abstention alone is not enough. The people that want to prove their protest must be out on election day, protesting at street corners, demonstrating that there are more people demonstrating than people voting. But this blogger sees no sign of such massive protest preparation, just mostly politicians with little to lose, some to gain if the abstention is truly impressive. And it will not as there is always the possibility that the CNE "arranges things", not to mention that chavismo will ferry people to the polling stations if they want to ever cash on a Mision again. And let me remind them that even in the lowest polls chavismo still runs a 45% and is united.

Then comes the last, and really only argument: personal ethics, the inability to go with such a sham exercise. Nice indeed and I share it. But unfortunately by itself it will not get us rid of the nightmare we are living under. We are facing an enemy with no ethics, no scruples. That does not mean we must become sleaze bags, but ethics do not impress chavistas who only take advantage of it. Foreign observers might be more sympathetic to ethics, but that will still not land the marines in La Güaira.

The voting option

This time this option is hardly more palatable. Assuming that one thinks that voting still can do something positive, the idea of supporting the political parties that behaved so lousily these past few years, that failed to apologize for their errors through the 2004 campaign and for accepting unacceptable rules for the referendum, that refused to renew their discredited leadership, that claim fraud but at the same time asked us to vote in October as if nothing, not even pursuing their initial fraud claim, is truly discouraging.

Yet, can we abandon the few mayors still dedicated to preserve our immediate living spaces from the abuse, incompetence and down right larceny? Can we even abandon our right to vote to a regime that has made mockery of a democracy to remain in power against all odds and all infamy?

What we should have done?

Simply call to vote, even if not quite united, to defend all the town hall councils that are still in the hands of the opposition. At the same time, we should not have run nor supported any candidate that dared to run in chavista held cities. This would have complicated considerably the cheating abilities of chavismo as the opposition could have got organized to send its witnesses even where it was not running a real list, thus giving some significant meaning to abstention by comparing the two types of districts. But of course this would have meant strong coordination and forgetting about petty interests. Too much to ask for example to AD who is much more interested in burying Primero Justicia than fight chavismo, as the Saturday show of Sobella Mejia (from AD) seems to indicate (1).

No matter what, Monday morning both sides, the abstention and the voting site will wake up badly bruised. Let's hope that this time they will learn their lesson as there is still time in the next two weeks to put a real strategy for December. Otherwise all is lost. Foreign countries, even if they agree that Chavez is a dictator in the making, will not come to help us if we do not help ourselves. How long did Saddam last? How come Qaddafy is still in office? And not to mention all sorts of African Kinglets such as Mugabe?

What this blogger will do

Well, he will go and vote because his mayor is under siege, and he is fighting back as hard as he can and thus deserve his constituent support contrary to some other wimps. Because his mayor removed the buhoneros (2) of San Felipe and the ones that wants to remove him from office on some suspicious electoral fraud claim (imagine that! with the CNE in their favor chavismo still dares to use the electoral fraud claim when they do not win a seat!) are bad news for San Felipe. Heck! When ballots were recounted (6 months after the October election!!!!) buhoneros were already drawing with chalk on the side walks the spaces they were planning to squatter again.

But this blogger will also vote because Monday 8 he will be able to say, if necessary, that his vote has been stolen. And he is not going to renounce to his right to vote fair and square, no matter what sleazy chavistas might think.

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(1) Sobella Mejias actions on Saturday have been very criticized. We have been told that she knew the march was coming, she knew when it would arrive, she could watch it all on TV anyway. Her tardiness to meet the marchers and receive their written claims is just inexcusable and her words ringed fake. Some leaders of the march are not afraid to state that she was in cohorts with the rest of the CNE. As an ex AD one cannot fail to wonder what is Mejias doing in the CNE still, unless she is working "on something". The reader may speculate as wished, but this blogger repeats what he has stated long ago, Mejias is not to be trusted whatsoever, and that she is probably at best trying to favor AD against anyone else in the opposition and at worse, well, she joined Chavez.

(2) Buhoneros are street vendors in Venezuela that over the years have squatted the major side walks of the major cities, become the bane of Venezuela. Chavismo has promoted them extensively for two reasons: 1) it helps somewhat to disguise the jobless rate and 2) at least in Caracas it allows them to keep up a floating population of populace easily convoked to attack any opposition legal protest (see for example what happened last Saturday, how in a few minutes suddenly chavista "spontaneous supporters" were able to mount small barricades with enough stones to smack down any Chavez opponent.