The result

Jorge Rodriguez is declaring as I type.

Participation: around 25%!!!

They acknowledge 75% abstention!!!!

Disaster for chavismo, as yours truly had asserted.

Where are the 10 million? (there is no way with the preliminary result that they will even reach 4 million!)

Where is the pro Chavez 70% of the country?

PS: he keeps talking so I keep typing.

He is announcing the results of the direct vote for representatives of the Latin Parliament. He starts by saying that the system did not have time to update the programs and thus he will have to read ALL the results. He explains that the individual parties should realize that "later" they will become "null" votes. Of course, he does not need to read that, his technicians in 5 minutes could make the adjustments with pencil and paper by crossing the appropriate lines and redoing the percentage with a cheap calculator. But Rodriguez is not going to lose a chance to pretend to humiliate all the people that despise him. So he goes on reading the 1 % here, 0.3 5 there.

However even as he relishes the moment he lets go that the unified chavista coalition did not even reach the 90% of the cast votes... Lots of disgruntled public employees it seems... time to do some more purges.

PS2: Rodriguez ends his cadena by saying that the media are allowed now to publish their results as long as they do not contradict his. What?

PS3: You have got to love this. Aristobulo Isturiz, education minister, was giving a few minutes ago a party hack speech. Let's go beyond the fact that he is violating the law, that this type of role is barred to sitting ministers. But let's look at the "logic" of the education minister, that is right, the education ninister, it is important to keep this in mind as you read the next part.

He thinks that the opposition was following orders from the empire (so, any other argument there?). That he tried to use the shameful advantage of an historical 60% abstention in legislative contests (which remains to be demosntrated).

Let's assume that indeed, the normal abstention is 60%. With 75% abstention, that means 15% for the opposition. And chavismo gets about 90% of the 25% who voted. So the total oppo is around, in the twisted mind of the minister, 15 + (0.1 x 25) = 17.5% to chavismo 0.9 x 25 = 22.5%.

So, in the mind of the education minister it is OK that 22.5% of the people of a country get 100% of the seats of the Assembly to control an oppo which is, in his own artithmetic, 43.8 % of the "non abstention" voters (meaning that chavismo with 56.2% is faaaaaar from the hoped for 2/3 majority). Not to mention that this 22.5% will be imposing its will on 77.5% of the country.

Democracy, where is thy sting?

This is the guy in charge of educating all of Venezuela's children.