Voting nowhere fast

I guess I need to write about the electoral campaign. Years ago this blog was flooded with entries on candidates, polls, statistics and predictions more accurate than wrong. But now the voting system is utterly rigged and for all that we know the percentile difference between Maduro and Falcon is already a given. Maduro will win by AT LEAST 15%. The only question is whether he will dare to have a higher percentile than Chavez top in 2006. My guess is that he will not resist the temptation.

Speaking of entries on candidates.  It is a sad spectacle to see how burned Falcon is. Oh!, not a surprise at all, but really, the guy has been found out and yet he persists in pretending that he is fooling us, that his defeat will be because of the opposition abstention, etc, etc, but never any self awareness that actually people cannot vote for him. Period.


This week two journalists wrote a devastating portrait on Falcon. One is the great Milagros Socorro with a piece titled "the candidate that does not smile".  The title says it all but still worthy to read if your Spanish can manage.

The second piece, in Spanish also, is by Naky Soto, "El Malo". The baddy? The lesser evil? She seems to have attended a press conference where Falcon spent more time in attacking the opposition that is not following him rather than attacking the regime or explaining how he would make sure the votes would be adequately counted (1).  Both journalists are not going to vote for him and both have the same speculation about the real intentions of Falcon, from different angles. And those intentions have little to do with defeating Maduro and mostly to do about positioning Falcon as the "official" opposition with the privileges that a regime may or may not offer.

Let's face it: the evidence that these elections are a sham, and by extension that the run by Falcon is also a sham cannot be ignored anymore by anyone inside the opposition. That you vote for Falcon out of despair is one thing, but that you vote for him because you believe in him is another. And that one is the reason that brings the less amount of votes to his total. This is not a matter of choosing the lesser evil, this is a matter of no choice, of a preordained result where Falcon will receive a reward. The devastating crisis that we suffer will be there on May 21 and will be the driving force no matter what totals the CNE fancies emitting. And we know now that they have no problems in fabricating a million of votes out of thin air. Even naming Falcon Vice president after the election will do nothing to change the situation. As long as the narco military complex remains in charge nothing will improve in Venezuela, only a few crumbs will be sent Falcon's way in the hope that sanctions are lessened.

They will not. Mike Pence was straight forward at the OAS speech the other day.

.@VP Mike Pence en la OEA: Hoy, en nombre del presidente Trump y del pueblo de los Estados Unidos, hago un llamado a sus naciones para que tomen tres acciones concretas: pic.twitter.com/xqtgXP02gI

— USA en Español (@USAenEspanol) May 7, 2018

The thread is unfortunately in Spanish, but in short Pence says that Venezuela is becoming a problem to other countries, even sending new diseases to other countries through its refugees.  In addition of the charges of corruption, drug traffic and what not. For Pence it is time that other countries start taking real sanctions against Venezuelan political personnel and that the OAS kicks Venezuela out.  The OAS has been very inefficient in dealing with Venezuela because there are enough shitty (and corrupt) islands that Chavez bought long ago. The vote of Dominica is equal to the vote of the US or Brazil. And speaking of Dominica this is the tweet I sent to its prime minister that of course will remain without an answer. But you are invited to retweet it extensively so he will get a boost in his ratings, one that he may not be happy to receive.

Un ejemplo ese @SkerritR primer ministro. En un extenso reportaje @Le_Figaro de Francia publica este 27 de abril las rutas de cocaína por las islitas incluyendo este mapa.
Será por eso que ese sinvergüenza apoya tanto a Maduro? pic.twitter.com/sUv8zInYBD

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) May 8, 2018

An example is Roosevelt Skerrit prime minister (of Dominica). An extensive inquiry in France's Le Figaro published April 27 shows the routes of cocaine (from Venezuela) through these little islands as shown on this map (which establishes that small fishing/yatchs boats can go from Dominica to the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique and from there reach France more easily because the flights in between Paris and Pointe à Pitre are less monitored, considered to be intra territorial). Is that the reason this asshole supports Maduro so strongly?

So it does not look well for Maduro. Even less now that Trump for internal domestic reasons, wants to be though man, revoking the Iran deal because in part it supports Hezbollah which has been linked this week to Venezuela's vice president in an extensive report of ABC in Spain. Front page, by the way.

Whether Maduro is bound to stare down stone faced international contempt or have Falcon give a cleaner face to the regime, there is one fact that seems to escape the regime: the large countries of the world CANNOT accept an official narco state in their midst. Even Cuba took pains to be a not too obvious drug traffic player, but in Venezuela the regime had no such qualms.
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1) an example of why Falcon has such a lack of credibility. From past experiences the opposition needs to have a witness structure at ALL AND EVERY single polling station to monitor and report electoral abuses. This has to be in place, at least at 90%, TODAY considering that we vote in less than a fortnight. Not only the training and logistics of the 90% would still require a lot of fixes and fine touches, but training that last 10% in rather pro Chavez areas, is already too short of a time. Falcon offered no details. Of course, that he cannot do that unless the opposition is united behind him is the excuse he uses to justify in advance his coming defeat and, in a very (ex?) chavista style blaming others. But still, he should at least reassure his supporters that he will be able to monitor enough centers so that the statistics of the regime could be challenged. Not even that we are getting, nor will we get.