No, I am not going to focus on the latest internal fights, from the scandalous actions of the Salas clan in Carabobo to the petulance of the Goicoechea/Marquina contest in a Miranda district (was not Marquina a representative of Carupano in the last legislature? What the heck is he doing in Caracas Metro now instead of regaining his Sucre State seat?).
The fact of the matter is that in spite of all the supposedly reassuring talk of "do not to worry, we are going to make it to unity", the opposition negotiation table for single coalition candidates (MUD) is not only sinking but it is dreadfully late. The big consequence of that, my biggest worry, is that the little bit of credibility the opposition had managed to regain in the last couple of years is evaporating fast. For one I am so disgusted that it took me until today to write about it and to confess that the way things are going I might advance my early fall vacation/business trip to travel before September 26 and not to have to vote.
If yours truly is having such états d'âme big time, you can imagine what is going on with the opposition hoi polloi....
I went back to look at some of my old posts of last year about the 2010 elections. What a deception this MUD is turning out to be! In this post, to give you an example, I was self congratulating about the good news coming then, on November 19 2009. I wrote, for example, commenting the calendar of activities offered by the MUD:
- An electoral program will be nailed down and presented to the country in late March.
- In January nomination of the candidates that gather a consensus around them
- Primaries held from February to April 30
Naively I even wrote "April 30 is late but if already a sizable number of candidates are chosen by March 31 it is not too bad."
As you can see all my reluctant hope then has been blown away without any single excuse from the MUD which keeps repeating that those are minor delays, that all is almost tied up when not a single official candidate has been declared to date!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let me you give an appreciation of how dire our situation is:
- Chavez has been in full campaign for 4 months now, with not much success so far but perhaps setting the basis for an electoral recovery.
- The opposition has no means to match Chavez prolific and obscene campaign spending and media abuse. Its candidates can count only on their two legs and time to visit every single potential constituent they can manage to meet.
How come we do not have at least a minimal ten clear points platform for a 5 year legislature? What is the hold? Please, can someone give me A REAL EXCUSE?
Maybe even worse, how come there is no official spokespersons yet to attack Chavez on electricity, the burning down of the Avila, the new Russian weapon purchases, corruption, the making of Venezuela into a Cuban colony, calling Chavez to account for the murders in Cuban jails, etc, etc....
I concluded in the November 15 post as follows:
In spite of all the difficulties existing right now the election is for the opposition to lose. I know that 9 months is a long time but my opinion is that the opposition will win or lose the election by Easter 2010. Any fake economic recovery that chavismo might be able to coax through Venezuelan debt impossible to pay off will take effect as of March or April. If by then the opposition has not been able to articulate a plan and a team, it will be over as enough people will simply swallow the Chavez line once again turning away from of a squabbling alternative. You read it here first, remember.At least I am perversely happy to write that the electricity crisis of Venezuela makes one part of this conclusion moot (¿por ahora?) as I do not think Chavez will be able to engineer any fake provisional recovery. Yet the MUD is helping him mightily in recent weeks.
Again: You read it here first. May I stand corrected!!!!!!
Daniel
ReplyDeleteI hope that you are dead wrong but you are probably not!
You see, even in ideal conditions, the MUD does not have enough people to supervise electoral tables, specially in poorer areas. In past elections, Chavez simply bought the sole opposition representative and after the polls close, increased his tally substantially. I suspect, that was the way fraud was perpetrated so no electronic fix was necessary. This time around, he has plenty new "polling places" in places he knows there will be no supervision or one he can buy.
Our only chance wad that the MUD would inspire such hope that people actually fought for their votes and I don't see that happening now.
I never had much expectations for the MUD, but keep hoping that the immensity of Chavez mistakes would eventually tilt things our way but to be sincere, our opposition looks much more incompetent than he does now days, so I am going to go on a limb and agree with you that Chavez will win, the opposition will get maybe 40 seats in the AN but the big winner will be the Chavista renegades, Falcon & Co., with a good showing and a clear candidacy for Henry in 2012.
Karl
ReplyDeleteYou supplement quite well my post. I could have written a post way longer than the one above with non-partisan complaints, just do your job complaints. That is why the MUD is losing any credibility it had late last year. And going.
Hombre, muy buena entrada. You should write it in Spanish and send it to all those politicians. I
ReplyDeletehave written about some of the points to some politicians in PJ and one of them wrote back confirming he agrees on those concerns. The rest? They just don't react. The opposition seems to be a catatonic state.
The thing is that when we were writing about that we were accused of "dividing the opposition".
Is it possible Daniel, that there are people who are loyal to Chavez, that are working within the opposition to delay or destroy any possibility of a united opposition ?
ReplyDeleteJust a thought.
Sounds like a mess though.
looks like that MUD is mud.
ReplyDeleteI am sure that Chavez has the idea to win no matter what which is why I think he always has a good chance of winning- no matter what the circumstances are.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can see the opposition does not have this same kind of drive, and never did.
Experience is a poor teacher.Foresight is an excellent one.We could have prevented so much with a bit of strategic planning, and proper timing.
But in Venezuela there is always this 'let's wait and see and then react attitude'.People are always looking for a precedent before acting instead of creating them.
We have refused to see how bad things really are and how bad they can get,and we reach the right conclusions too late.
This is a war and Chavez calls it a democracy.Chavez has silently declared war against Venezuela and calls for elections to hide this fact.