The day after: a press conference from hell, and the real winner of Sunday

I have serious broadband problems, just in the middle electoral data harvest. With a CNE page which must be slow this week with all the hits, I cannot start examining results. However from the little bit I can gather there is a really bad result: chavismo gained many municipal districts, all of them in a few states which is going to make it infinitely harder for the opposition to maintain a credible presence there. I need of course to see the why of this negative result and how bad it is, but I can already point one of the main reasons: opposition division. That cost us all districts in Yaracuy and most in Carabobo, including Valencia. In each case the division was due to the arrogant nature of its leaders: Lapi and Salas Feo who must be fully blamed for that loss.

However the news this morning is the press conference that Chavez held yesterday. If you had any doubt about how much chavismo was hurt last Sunday you just needed to watch the show of Chavez who lasted at least 4 hours, with foreign journalists taken as hostages, including CNN Patricia Janiot who was dressed down along her absent colleague Glenda Umaña who was called a liar. The maintain of Patricia Janiot in front of the slew of insults and innuendos was a perfect study in class and professionalism, Chavez looking more than ever like the barbarian he is. By the way, Chavez was having coffee served while all the journalists were confined to their chair for the whole time, no peepee break.

The motive of the press conference, for Chavez, was to explain in rich details why according to him the Sunday vote was a big success and why the foreign press was lying when it said it was not. Maybe, but for the life of me I cannot recall any world leader that had to spend 4 hours explaining, pen and paper in hand, why he won his election. Note: the HIS is on purpose because the explanation showed clearly that Chavez thinks of his new governors as HIS, as in an object, not a supporter.

The press conference, to give it a name, was littered with irrelevant pseudo historical references, and clogged with April 2002 interpretation. Apparently the obsession of Chavez for 2002 is much more than an electoral ploy to motivate his supporters, it is becoming a neurosis of its own for Chavez. Because of course a press conference it was not. Chavez started it, then called a cadena which lasted more than an hour so the whole country could see him lecturing the foreign journalists in a rather scandalous way and then closed the cadena when he finally acceded to reply to a few questions. VTV kept showing the show and I watched it at times. Any reply of Chavez was of course a monologue lasting around half an hour, peppered with dares to Obama, compliments to Castro, and threats to the opposition. All journalists could appreciate at length and leisure how often Chavez betrayed his totally undemocratic nature. Fascinating!

But of course the aim of Chavez was not at all to inform the foreign press, he is smart enough to know that hey all made their opinions long ago: he was addressing us, trying to convince us that the opposition did not get the strength to stop him from pursuing his attempt at eternal reelection. So when he explained in exquisite detail why he won so many small districts, it was almost touching to see him considering the Cua district as important as the Sucre district won by Carlos Ocariz. That defeat must has been particularly stinging for him. He went into exquisite detail in explaining how the most populous districts of Sucre voted for Chavez. Of course, we all know that, but in his explanation Chavez undid his whole argument, unbelievably. What anger does!!! He told us that the emblematic district of Caucaguita voted 62% for him. That is, in one of the poorest areas of Caracas 38% of the folks voted against him!!! He cannot even understand what a defeat that is for him when a socialist government should get in such a district at least 80% of the vote!!!!! He cannot replicate the lopsided margins in HIS alleged districts that Macaracuay gave against him (90%).

This is indeed what hurt him the most even though he cannot quite articulate it to himself: Sunday he lost his ability to rally massively the downtrodden masses and he cannot deal with that. That is where his pseudo revolution is being exposed and he hurts. Ocariz did a number on him and thus last night he was crowned as Sunday's hero even if his name might have never been mentioned last night.

-The end-