The Sumate hide and seek hearings

A couple of days ago I reported that Jose Albornoz, one of the sleaziest characters of the regime, had decided to hold a parliamentarian hearing on how Sumate, the electoral NGO gets its funding. I will spare the reader the rehashing of the reasons of this low life maneuver, preferring to focus on today events that validate faster than I could have hoped for my assessment of this most despicable action.

First, Albornoz decided to cite the accountant. On such an important matter one wonders how come only the accountant can be cited, but the revolution works in mysterious ways.

Today the two leaders of Sumate showed up, sans accountant. They stated simply that they were the ones that knew about all the finances of Sumate. Which I certainly can believe: the donations are given to them after all, the checks are approved by them, the accountant just makes sure that it all adds up. What corporation has its accountants know how the sales department gets the sales done? Accountants only care about the checks they receive, and the expense accounts. The ones that approve the expense account are the high management.

The Albornoz commission refused to receive Maria Corina Machado and Alejandro Plaz. I mean, they have the leaders at their door, they can quiz them as they please in front of the world's cameras and they decide not to do so. Huh?

So Albornoz tries to bail out by saying that he wants the accountant, that he never cited the other guys, that he does not care that the accountant was a volunteer. That is right, the accountant of Sumate is a volunteer and justly the bosses of Sumate did not want to subject a volunteer to the National Assembly circus. This interesting detail (in English here) shows us two things: 1) Albornoz knows chavista assemblymen do not have the stature to face Machado or Plaz. The hearings to Ravell and Granier a couple of months ago showed the poor material of the new crop, ending in a major ridicule moment for chavismo. Thus Albornoz preferred to play it safe and humiliate a simple volunteer in public. 2) The idea that there were that many volunteers in an opposition NGO is inconceivable in chavismo where anyone "volunteering" in chavismo groups gets some cash payment through some mision.

But wait, it gets better! The Albornoz commission wants to have closed hearings. In front of the parliament Machado and Plaz want open, wide open hearings. They say they have nothing to hide and want all to listen to all the accusations and how they refute them. Still, they are not received and the hearings suspended.

You thought the farce was over? You were wrong. A little bit later the speaker of the house himself, ex failed trade union bus driver Maduro comes out to tell us that today's events showed that Sumate was scared. Yeah, right....

The cowardice of chavista underlings will never cease to amaze me. Even more when they entrap themselves in the stupidest of maneuvers.