The Venezuelan opposition reaches the deep end: part 1

There is a new crisis of "to vote or not to vote". And the opposition is falling into the same self destructive behaviors, opening the way for the final political push of chavismo. Which does not mean that Maduro will last, the economy is tanking. What I am talking about is a new self destruction episode of the opposition leaving no other option than a chavista replacing Maduro. Maybe.

Yet this time around the reasons are not the same, nor are the stakes as they happened in the last three elections.  The worse of the current mess is that we are already tearing each other over an election that not only has not been convoked but may never be.  Let's review the situation in this first installment, letting for the next one a possible opposition strategy that shall not happen.

Fantasy Thursday

So we are here Thursday night and as expected the regime still has not published the decrees and their application rules. That is, people had to either fire every body and close shop, or cross themselves and wait for the worse.  In other words, severance packages as of next Monday may become as high as 35 fold more than they are today, something quite impossible to meet.

Or is it so?

Amazing mess, how sweet you are

This will be short and sweet. It may be a couple of days before I can post again.

The results are in, the fraud is scandalous, again

So there are the official results so far:

Maduro 5,823,728
Falcon 1,820,522
Bertucci 925,042
Quijada 36,614

Participation, CNE RECOGNIZED, 46%

Participation from other sources range from a 32% for Reuters to a 17% for Meganalisis

Other data:
*the lowest electoral participation in a presidential election in 30 years, the lowest one was 56% in 2000. Note: as far as I know all previous presidential elections since 1958 have been above 56%. Venezuelan "democracy" at its worst showing.
*Falcon and Bertucci are not going to recognize the result, discovering suddenly that there was fraud.

Oh well....  Where should I start?

The electoral fraud day post

I used to have an election day post when there was some surprise to be expected, when I bothered in going around taking picture of voting centers, etc.  Now the international press covers all of that and my pen is not needed anymore.  And twitter does a good job covering everything, be it  from that German De Linke representative Simone Barrientos saying that the election today is wonderful, that people are voting with enthusiasm, to the pictures of empty voting stations.

So, how should we read the day?

We are already May 21

I was not planning on writing today. But three tweets sort of forced me to do so.  They are telling, among so many tweets these days, that we are turning a page, that Maduro with his beyond expected victory tomorrow is in fact is merely closing a cycle.

I shall not vote: the ethical thing to do

Again, not that it matters to most readers or to the regime. But I thought that I should give a reasoned account on why I am not voting.

The simple reason is that the system is so screwed up that voting or not makes no difference.  It is not that I am still registered in San Felipe though now forced to live in Caracas and too lazy to drive. Even if I were back in San Felipe I would not vote.

The ruin of Falcon Crest

What legacy will Henri Falcon's stunt leave us?  His ulterior motives at this point are of little interest. Many a speculation swirls, from him being Raul Castro choice to do the transition government, to him being an overambitious military a la Chavez.

Rather, let's look why his candidature was fraud since day one, and thus why his campaign is so flawed that even his victory will not be recognized. Next, as concise a summary as possible for those late in the game. (1)

First, his bid was born outside of the opposition electoral alliance MUD. His argument that there was no time to run a primary falls short. He could have sent an ultimatum to the MUD as to whether they decided to run and name a candidate or he would run anyway. Instead he registered discretely almost at the end of the registration period.

The Venezuelan opposition: what went wrong?

About one year ago in between tear gasses outings I thought that maybe the Maduro dictatorship was in its last throes, that the opposition in Venezuela was going to prevail. Today Maduro is coasting to reelection, fraud and all, with only the meekest of protest at home, around lack of food and medicine. The louder protest comes from overseas.

How can one explain such a stupendous change of fortunes? Hint: it is not due only to military repression.

The end is near

And it cannot be otherwise.

Prendre les gens pour des cons

The title is a French expressions that loosely mean "thinking that I/they am/are idiots" but way stronger.  Sorry, but tonight I cannot find the English words to qualify the campaigns of Maduro and Falcon, both campaigns abusing of the misery of the people and thinking that we shall not notice.  In all truth, I suppose, neither one is managing to rouse passions, so they need to resort to outright distribution of whatever is at hand so at least some people will attend their rallies. Two tweets from today.

First Maduro having his henchmen throwing food at people.

The red ants.
At @NicolasMaduro campaign rallies to make people attend there are free distribution of food.
I'll leave it to you for conclusions. https://t.co/HtMj9ZJoSq

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) May 12, 2018

And then the Falcon campaign, poorer by far but surprisingly (?) better funded than expected.  He had his own henchmen throwing banknotes at people like confetti. In truth the banknotes thrown are not worth much more than confetti, each one worth, say, 1/6.000 of a fully fledged good greenback.  Yes, that is right, the 100 banknote is forth less than 1/60th of a penny.  No wonder people gathered them but there was less enthusiasm than for the food air throwing of food.  What we are seeing flying are at best 100-200 hundred dollars.

And if you thought that @NicolasMaduro was bad enough throwing food at people to boost attendance at his campaign rallies there is @HenriFalconLara throwing banknotes. The ones that have zero value left, those of 50 and 100 when 1USD is 700.000
Chavista/exchavista same shit . https://t.co/hnNm3Yp04Z

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) May 12, 2018

Both only bring in me utter contempt for them, both chavista thinking so lowly of their followers. Juts herded cattle for them, just good enough to play the pantomime of an election. Well, one is an ex-chavista but the brain damage was done in him.

What shall I do next Sunday to keep busy?  Huuummm......

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.

Ñangaras in the mist

There are no new news in Venezuela. It is all a repeat performance, each time running lower in its theatrics.  Take for example the talk of the week, that three zeroes are going to be chopped off the currency reading because, well, some web pages cannot handle anymore the full extent of digits in large financial sums.  It would be funny if it were not so sad and dépassé. After all we did that in 2008 (I think). There you have your measure of chavismo fiasco, in ten years the currency has lost 99,9% of its value...

Thus ignoring that 1 Bolivar of 1998 is equal to 1.000.000 Bolivar of June 2018 let's see if there is something else worth talking about.  Worthy of discourse are lack of food and medicine and hospitals and security and cash and...  but nobody really cares. Except those protesting that are swiftly repressed while state TV says we are in the best of all possible worlds. No point discussing that again, I guess.

We are going somewhere

But we do not where, nor do we/I care much, to tell you the truth.

Yes, it is time for a quickie survey on how close to the abyss we stand. I shall be brief. Promise.

Chavismo is trying to make the coronation of Maduro palatable.

Idiots in NYC: or how Falcon sunk his presidencial run

Last post was hard to write, and the whirlwind of political news too hard to write about comprehensively. Thankfully procrastination does pay and today's picture from the UN plaza in NYC was worth the wait.  An epic photo-fail if ever.

From left to right, a kebab from hell:
Samuel Moncada, regime's ambassador to the UN and vice minister for foreign affairs;
Henri Falcon wanna-be Maduro successor; Felipe Mujica head of the near extinct weather vane MAS;
some hired help; and Pedro Pablo Fernandez, son of wanna-be foreign secretary to Falcon Eduardo Fernandez,
and probably aiming himself for some crumbs somewhere as no one in the MUD would be caught dead with him.

In this historic pose you can see how Henri Falcon sunk any chance he may have had to be elected president next May 20. By posing in front of the United Nations accompanied by the ambassador of Venezuela there, the much reviled and insufferable Samuel Moncada, Henri Falcon admits that his presidential candidature is wanted by the regime, and that he is in agreement with it.  That is, Henri Falcon and the scattered losers that support him are complicit with the regime in the fraudulent elections coming May 20.

PERIOD.

These people had the chutzpah to try to get a meeting with high members of the UN so as to force this one to send an observation team to validate the election of May 20.  That a serious observation requires at the very least 3 months of observation and more before for mere preparation is not computing with them.  Then again whoever low key UN member that received them ("the UN is under obligation to help Venezuela" was said by the traveling show)  had probably already read that.

There are some damage controls that are beyond reach.  A picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

Something shifted somewhere under someone's feet

Three things happened today that tells us something is brewing inside chavismo.

My important/favorite is defense minister Padrino announcing  that he is against armed colectivos.  You know, those colectivos which are nothing else but paramilitary thugs wearing red shirts and working for the regime. Chavismo version of storm troopers.

The reason was certainly the damaging video out of this weekend maneuvers that went viral and that I tweeted below (I am more active on Twitter than on Blog, the more so that it is easier now to make micro posts in Twitter)

A paramilitary group this week end in Caracas. It does not matter wether you underatand Spanish: the theatrics of violence, hate, intimidation and abuse are crystal clear.
Venezuela as the novel totalitarian state. https://t.co/XTLzRJqEsl

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) February 26, 2018

Falcon Crest? Millennium Falcon? The Maltese one?

Good news guys, the inscription for presidential election is over, we know all the names. They are all chavistas.  Even if the propaganda network TeleSur says without blushing that the opposition has registered ITS candidate under the name of Henri Falcon.

La oposición tiene su candidato. #VenezuelaDecide pic.twitter.com/761XdvCFh6

— Patricia Villegas (@pvillegas_tlSUR) February 27, 2018

So many things wrong with that picture......

Petrifying the turmoil

Two weeks without a post. Things have been difficult here. Never mind that by the time you feel like writing on something there is right there a new sound blast from the least expected corner.

So, a brief pick of the telling headlines will have to do. And not necessarily in chronological order as my tired mind has trouble keeping track of all that happens.

Dark options

I am writing this as I am listening to Górecki #3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs". You have been warned. (1)