Rosales does Caracas, Chavez does red

Saturday’s Caracas crossing by Rosales is indeed a major campaign event. Coming shortly from the scandalous and fascist declaration of Ramirez, it served at once as a reply to chavismo crassest nature and a demonstration that too many Venezuelans are not like those who rule us.

Rosales feat this Saturday was truly awesome. Crossing, on foot for most of the way, the 26 Km of the Caracas valley is something that was not done since the best of the 2002 protest, or by any recent politician for that matter. It has been so long that Chavez’s foot as not graced the soil of Venezuela’s streets that Rosales surely got a boost out of his performance. All those people that must take a “buseta” everyday to cross the moonlike streets of Caracas know that Rosales has seen the streets they suffer through. He is the man.

Rosales left from a chavista stronghold and ended in another chavista stronghold. Where he ended, in Petare, he filled the area with his supporters, way more than what Chavez did a few days ago, all in red, most ferried there in buses. Rosales people came on foot, a multi colored tapestry. In fact, there might not be enough buses in Venezuela to carry half the people that walked along with Rosales.

The picture below is a montage I made out of three of Alek's pictures. He took them from above the media truck, at the intersection of the Ave. Los Ruices and the Francisco de Miranda, where the marches merged. Or tried too anyway, as the flow of people was so large that I doubt many folks from El Cafetal could make their way to Petare. What you see in these pictures, taken within seconds from each other, could be as much as 300,000 folks. But at least something between 100 and 200 thousand. Click to enlarge.

I have seen the marches of the opposition in the past, I have walked a few, but I never saw something like Saturday, even the one in October 2002 that is considered as the biggest one ever. I do not know the total numbers of this Saturday, half a million? A million? But even if it is less than half a million, it is half a million of people WALKING SEVERAL MILES! It is not just a mere rally; it is a crowd of willful individuals walking more in a day than what they walk in a week!

I am not so sure about the pollsters we get lately. We have the fake and crappy polls flashed around by chavistas like the pseudo-Zogby poll with illogical margins for Chavez. More serious Keller talks of a 48-52 % split in favor of Chavez as far as voter division are concerned. Hinterlaces thinks that 33% are for Rosales but already Chavez is down to 45% in his polls. The only thing that I know is that the 40% that voted against Chavez in 2004 have had no reason to change their vote this time around, and even less after the Ramirez speech has been leaked. It would be foolish to think otherwise. After this Saturday demonstration, can Rosales vote be possibly below 40%?

I also say that a candidate that was given no chance in Monagas or Amazonas, not even by yours truly, filled up impressively last week the main downtown areas of Maturin and Puerto Ayacucho in a way that I am not even sure Chavez did in 1998. In Amazonas there are 73 000 electros according to the CNE. There might have been 10 000 in front of Puerto Ayacucho main church. None could have come by buses or boat just for the meeting, Puerto Ayacucho is far from everywhere. Not even in the heat of the Recall Election were Maturin or Puerto Ayacucho so fervently anti Chavez.

Sunday, Lara, another problematic state for Rosales gave him a rousing welcome in Barquisimeto. At no time, as a neighbor following closely Lara activities, did I see such a show of support against Chavez in Barquisimeto streets as I saw today. It does not matter how many people were today at carrera 19 con calle 50, never had the anti Chavez crowd shown such strength there! In a state where all is stacked against Rosales, the supposed safest Chavez area with Aragua.

Something is going on and nobody is quite getting the picture but Chavez. Because he is getting it.

Saturday his reply to Rosales Caracas feat was to hold a rally, a mandatory rally that is, of all the PDVSA employees of Puerto La Cruz and surrounding areas (and their families?). After the Ramirez speech they all knew that they better show up, with a red shirt, if they wanted to have a job on Monday. VTV and VIVE were as they always do, showing the speech live (an image directly from my TV screen on the left). It was late in the afternoon, apparently one of those wonderful and wind swept evenings that we can have on the sea shores between Cumana and Puerto La Cruz where the air and the light have a unique quality in Venezuela. But the thermal winds did not land on something pleasant: the patio was looking like a red sea, reminding me of colder Nuremberg, or some Malecon in a godforsaken Caribbean long island. Even the huge anchor at the entrance, a probable remnant of an old tanker decommissioned years ago was painted in red (highlighted in pic). All was red, even the words as Chavez “ordered” his underlings to study a scenario on how to stop any oil export to the US in case they do not recognize Chavez victory on December 3. And Chavez, in a bad taste joke said that the army was “roja, rojita” and that so should be SENIAT (our IRS), CVG and other state biggies. All “roja, rojita”, pejorative, submissive to their master, humiliating. All public employees must have sensed the shiver going through their spine: unless you are not an ardent supporter of chavismo, and a totally uncritical one, your days at a public job are counted. The state will belong to an exclusive red elite and the rest can go and screw themselves. Eight long years of revolution and this yard in Puerto La Cruz is where it all ends.

Thus Chavez is throwing down his last card. He will radicalize as much as he can these last weeks of campaign. He will terrorize public workers into voting for him, not even abstain, vote for him or else. He will try even to insinuate that the vote is not secret, that they will have ways to know where your heart is anyway, that any suspicions of “disloyalty” will be taken at face value and you will be fired. “A carajazos”?

If this is so openly acknowledged, what else can we expect in these final days?

And if Chavez is going to get 10 million votes, why must he go on such an offensive? Are Rosales numbers that good in chavista pollsters? Is Chavez considering something else?

But Rosales will not be shut up, and this attempt at Chavez to regain a control on the agenda news failed once again. Rosales is growing every day as a leader. Today he grew another notch when he accused Chavez of insulting the army with his near sexual allusion of “roja, rojita”, and he replied that the Venezuelan Army, and PDVSA where proud “Red, Yellow and Blue” like our flag. And he asked to meet the armed forces chiefs of staff to start discussing transition plans.

The stakes are getting higher by the hour.