Those little genocidal moments

About every 6 weeks or so I need to take the S.O. to pick up his treatments at the IVSS high cost medicine.  By law in Venezuela a whole series of medications, usually expensive, cannot be sold and must be administered by the state (from rulings BEFORE the Chavez era, mind you, least you'd think that Chavez invented each and every social programs; 1).

This notable initiative has, of course, turned into a bureaucratic nightmare which with the current crisis has tuned out to become a nightmare of genocidal proportions. Today's story.

Venezuela is installing a constituent assembly

And I am not going to talk about that.  Except for one comment: that assembly is illegitimate because it was convoked using a REGRESSION of human and civil rights respective to the constitutional assembly convocation of 1999. That is, you cannot convoke a constitutional assembly under less rights than the constitution you want to replace. Period. Anything else is discussing what is the sex of angels when they live under a dictatorship.

Tintinophiles need no translation

This being said, today the question is what is the opposition going to do about running on regional elections in December. The decision must be, like, today because by Monday it will not be possible to register candidates anymore (note that chavismo has not registered anyone but they usually wait to the last minute anyway).

The problem is that electoral board CNE has been shown to commit a major fraud last Sunday, a fraud that could cover up to 50% of the votes allegedly cast.

Mas idioteces de Arreaza, una vergüenza de vice presidente

Ya tuve que narrar unas cuantas imbecilidades del vice presidente que nos gastamos en Venezuela estos días. Pero el tipo insiste. Ahora va a amarrar la pata a los mesones de trabajo de los investigadores para evitar la fuga de cerebros.

En la cumbre Iberoamericana de Veracruz hace unos días Arreaza se quejo de la fuga de cerebros de América Latina, llegando a decir palabras destinadas al inmortal diccionario de los perfectos idiotas (expresión ya vieja en cuanto se refiere a cierta izquierda latinoamericana).

Maduro's "El Sacudón" or the fine art of doing nothing

So Maduro had a "cadena" tonight to announce his new cabinet, new measures, etc...  As usual since he is legally but not legitimately president I have not followed it. Through Tweeter and a few articles I get all what I really need. See, once you have understood that the regime cannot change because it would collapse, then there is nothing to expect anymore but more repression, more controls, more intervention. All becomes very predictable and tonight was no exception.

The real game in town?

For example he announced the usual Castro like slogan of now 5 revolutions inside the revolution because apparently after 15 years of Chavez public administration is still controlled by bourgeoisie. He is right on that last one except that it is the chavista corrupt bourgeoisie carefully nurtured over the last decade so as to have a body of public servants corrupt and henceforth subject blackmail. That helps insure the survival of the regime. Thus the 5 new revolutions are nothing more but yet a new attempt at a parallel control system of government such as it was the case for the Misiones, the comunas, the milicia, the colectivos, etc..

No economic measures of significance were announced. Things keep getting worse, oil price fail to increase to save the regime in spite of multiple wars, so this one has decided to light a candle, pray to lord Chavez and hope for a miracle rather than devaluate, increase the price of oil, free at least some sectors of the economy to lower scarcity of at least a couple of basic items.

Por que con el chavismo no se va a llegar nunca a nada: fracasará Misión Transporte

El grandísimo problema del chavismo mas allá de corrupción, violencia y otras especies es que es incapaz de llegar a concretar algo durable en el tiempo. A ver, traten de buscar un ejemplo de algo sustentable que haya logrado el chavismo, alguna Misión que todavía existe sin haber tenido que ser relanzada ni cambiada de nombre.

Hoy Maduro hizo otra cadena donde lanzo una tal Misión Transporte. Yo no veo cadenas hace tiempo. Hugo no me lo calaba en visual pero a veces escuchaba la radio o la tele a modo de radio. Pero con Maburro Maduro no puedo ni verlo ni escucharlo, todo en él ofende lo poco de inteligencia que sobrevivió estos 15 años. No puedo. Los periódicos tendrán que bastar para ponerme al tanto. Pues leyendo la reseña del Periodiquito basta para saber que Misión Transporte esta prometida y condenada al fracaso. Sufre de un conjuro inescapable que ni con todas las Cortes de Sorte...

Maduro/Giordani idiotic "measures" seen from ground zero: more corruption to come

Capriles and the Pope, the real
news of Wednesday

Wednesday Maduro made a cadena to announce "economic measures" that were mere administrative measures. Nothing is changed, the country's economy is tanking and the regime finds nothing better but to increase further the controls which have proven to be fail sure since 2005 at the very least, not to say ever in Venezuela.

I am not going to go into the official announcements which were in reality of a political nature, timed to hide from view that Capriles
has been received by the Pope yesterday. Instead I am going to go into what it means for me, a small businessman.  I will pick up a some of  them to dissect and you will be able on your own to infer that things are going to get worse, faster.  Besides the opposition has a detailed answer on the expected failure and experts like Santos are on it.

Back to paradise. NOT!

Sigamos Juntos: let's stay together (vote for me airport welcome)

Today when you arrive at Maiquetia you are welcomed by two things: a deficient do-it-yourself immigration for Venezuelans only and a gigantic poster of Chavez asking athletes and kids to stick with him, violating who knows how many tenets of the constitution and electoral laws.  I am sorry that it does not show any better since my blackberry had limitations from the distant line I was forced to follow. On the right the bottom of one of the many pendant of TVES promoting its "exclusive" Olympics coverage, because, you know, CADIVI makes sure that only TVES has the dollar to pay for the rights.

Thugocracy in crisis: mystery disease and cancelled summits for Chavez

Whatever is going on with Hugo Chavez, it is not going very well.  The latest installment of the saga is the cancellation of the Latin American summit in Margarita Island which was to be the crowing achievement of the bicentennial celebration of Venezuela next July 5th, to the glory of our local caudillo, of course.  In fact, although most people assume that one way or the other Chavez will appear for the July 5th celebrations, if partially only, the delicate situation and dangerous implications are now unavoidable for all: the regime is in crisis.

On a day to day basis nothing changes, with or without Chavez at home: food scarcity, electric blackouts, crime, unemployment, infrastructure degradation, health care worker strikes, etc, keep their steady progression.  This is what happens in a thugocracy, this novel variant of autocracy that is been revealed to us this June.  Indeed, for all the adjectives we were applying to describe the Chavez regime the one that fitted it best was the government of thugs, by thugs, for thugs, or thugocracy.

Carta abierta a Rafael Ramírez y SU Micomandantepresidente

Asunto: racionamiento de gasolina.

Con ese cuchillo de palo no nos van a cortar. Si hay algún de los problemas de Venezuela en donde se pueden identificar precisamente a dos culpables, esos dos son ustedes, el presidente y su alcahuete en PDVSA. ¡Coño!, Ni a Giordani le podemos achacar mucha de esta culpa, por más que queramos hacerlo. Por si no lo saben, o no lo quieren entender, les voy a explicar las razones por la cual hoy en día hay que racionar/aumentar/importar/lo-que-sea la gasolina.

• El que dijo que bajo su gobierno no se iba a aumentar la gasolina fue micomandantepresidente. Ahora, después de 12 años, de un sinfín de devaluaciones, de una inflación creciente, no le queda sino atragantarse con esas palabras, como un pendejo.

Falcon under water, Chavez swiming against the tide, once again

Globovision has a photo gallery of some areas of Falcon under water after a small damn cracked and let a lot of water out (fortunately it did not collapse and did not send a true wave, or so I understand).

And yet for all the dramatic news and scenery an air of dejà vu pervades the whole thing.  In spite of the major disaster of 1999, in spite of the warning of 2005, it seems that once again the regime is caught pants down, nothing prepared, not even able to raise supplies to the point that it has to steal food and water from charitable and other political organizations to distribute them as if it were its own.

The fact of the matter is that the regime is worried because besides a rainy wet interior minister, the lone politician of a sinistered state that is repeatedly wading through flood water is Miranda Governor, Capriles Radonski, unshaven now for a few days.  The "pueblo" is wading besides him....

So irksome it is for the regime that Tal Cual reports today that firebrand Iris Varela is even accusing Capriles of all sorts of declarations for which there is no record.  That is, they accuse him of anything hoping that something will stick.  Elias Jaua the Vice President went as far as saying that Capriles was not doing shit, in spite of pictures proving otherwise; and despite the well known fact that Capriles cannot do more than what he does because his revenues have been slashed by the regime and a lot of the state equipment for natural disasters was taken away by Diosdado Cabello when he lost his reelection bid two years ago.  Capriles is, well, rubbing the regimes nose in its incompetence, and I guess that a lot of people in Miranda state are not going to buy the regime's line against Capriles, as we can see already from some reports.  His reelection is probably now a given..

It is raining, a lot.....

We are starting to face an emergency.  Not as bad by far as the one in 1999, but impressive nevertheless. 

Puerto Cabello News and Views

A few days ago I had to go on an errand that took me into the bowels of Puerto Cabello, ground Zero of the now at least 150,000 tons of food that went bad because the government imported them without any control, the officials importing it only worried about their paybacks and not at all about distributing the food, etc, etc...  I am not going to let you know what I had to do there because, well, I do not want to take any risk for the success of my errand.  Neither do I have pictures to show you even though I had my camera.  Thing went too fast when it was interesting to shoot, or too full of Nazional Guards and all sorts of Red shirted employees now that all the private sector service for the harbor has been banned.  Still, I will have a short tale worth of your interest I hope.

"Magical realism" in Venezuela, Chavez talks to his base, Arria talks to the world

Today we got examples of what is effective long term action and what is a mere silly rant.  Let's us start with the later.

We are a miserable country and we deserve what we get

UPDATE: This morning the government claimed it was all under control courtesy of the wonderful equipment, organization, people, etc, etc...  tonight the mountain is still burning.  They do not even have the decency to shut up for a few hours....
 ------------------------------
I cannot describe my mood tonight as I learn that my beloved mountain, Caracas Avila National Park is going up in flames.  Not only that, but the part actually burning in part, so far, is one that had not burnt in a century or more, carrying vestiges of the rain forest before the Spaniards moved in, not that Native Americans did not burn woodland on their own.

That the Avila should burn should not surprise anyone as the government of Chavez has been remiss with the care of all of Venezuela's National Parks and natural areas, be them the Upper Caroni basin where the military does business tolerating illegal garimpeiro strip mining which is increasing the mercury levels of the Guri dam to letting the National Parks near Caracas and Valencia be invaded by squatters.

Oh, but Chavez is great at changing the names of National Parks!  The Avila now supposedly wears the Native name of Guaraira Repano which no one for sure knows exactly what it means or what Natives used it and for what. But someone within chavismo decided that the words described the park or the mountain or something and that was all what it took.  Just as the hour was arbitrarily advanced by thirty minutes while the government stubbornly refuses to consider retrograding 30 minutes which could save quite a lot of the electricity that the Guri is producing.

The electricity mess of Chavez for dummies

Finally the Chavez administration has decided to act more decisively on the issue of the Guri damn running dry and shutting down most of the electric generation of Venezuela. Thus a punitive decree was issued where people who are unable to save a certain amount of electricity at home will be punished with amounts as high as twice their electricity bill. That is right, Chavez and his government screwed up big time but it is the consumer that will be punished as Chavez is unable to accept his part of responsibility in the crisis. True, were he to accept, it would bring additional political trouble, but the way he is proceeding could well bring an outright uprising which is what, after all is said and done, it seems he is seeking.

But I digress. The objective of this post is to go on the electric crisis history point by point for the reader to clear up the B.S., floating around (from the chavista propaganda to the anti Chavez one only too willing to exaggerate chavismo woes, something admittedly difficult to do).

A cornered regime, bereft of ideas and talent. Or something else?

The title of this post is in fact deliberately misleading because it would be too easy to describe the regime as such based on a simple reading of last night brutal 180º turn on electricity shortages.

Just as it happened with the shopping malls shut down to save electricity, the application of the new electricity rationing plan did not even last 48 hours. True, it was so stupid, so harebrained a scheme that we all knew that its application could not last long.  But barely 24 hours?

Something stinks here.  Let's speculate at some of the possible reasons.

Update on mall closings: when improvisation is a state policy

Today shopping centers and malls were in havoc: the government yesterday gave sign of backtracking from its December decision and nobody knew really what was going on.

The reality behind Venezuelan electricity shortages: a further drop in GDP (and more problems)

Yesterday's front pages carried the news that shopping malls had their schedule curtailed to save electricity.  We had cute stories of people standing in line to wait for the mall to open, or people complaining that there was no more late movies for them to catch.  But all of this quaintness hides a major problem for Venezuela: the electricity production drop, long announced and never dealt with by the government, too busy to solve other country's electricity problem, is set to aggravate our economic problems for years.

The first thing we need to understand is that for a government that has made minimization of problems and outright lies a state policy, to recognize that indeed we need to cut down energy consumption by 20% can only mean that in fact we should cut it down considerably more.  Who will suffer the cuts the most?  All of us because of the implied drop in production that this implies.  Let's look at the direct implications for a few sectors.

Daniel’s unwilling hunger strike

Hunger strike has been a fashionable way to protest, from the students in front of the OAS offices in Caracas to the Saharoui activist in Lanzarote. Now I have a fine appreciation of what it is to be almost a week with barely a few liquids for sustenance.

Two weeks ago I came down with dengue, the fashionable tropical disease, a virus transmitted by a specific mosquito. I already had it once, ten years ago and thus as expected the second time was to be much harder. My platelets went down to 3,500 which means that I was at the mercy of something as trivial as gum bleeding. It was that close. And yet the whole ordeal allowed me for a keen understanding of the mess Venezuela’s health system is at. Mind you, I went through it with the private sector, but I saw first hand how the negative policies of the Chavez administration are affecting all sectors, making me really wonder how low the quality of public sector service has fallen.

It all started in San Felipe where a slight fever the night before required next morning a visit to the emergency room of a local clinic. I spent the day there and was asked to take all sorts of test, from HIV to Epstein Bar, but not dengue. No privacy at anytime, my results would have been handled by whomever came across my papers. I was in bad shape enough that I was given I.V. fever medicine. At the end of the day I was sent back home, asked to come back next day to see whether my platelets would go down, the only dengue criteria available.

Next day was hell. I could not sleep that night, acetaminophen had stopped working. I needed a friend from Valencia to come and check out the situation. Upon her arrival she knew that things were bad, took me back to the clinic for them to stabilize me while she organized ambulance service. See, the people of San Felipe were in the best disposition to help me but all of San Felipe private sector is saturated due to the public central hospital collapse; thus they had no room for me…. At any rate it was wiser to go back to Caracas where I had more people to help me.

I think we left San Felipe around 4 PM. I am not sure because by then I was semi delirious as the evidence of dengue forbade any strong fever medicine. I was fit with my I.V. line and tossed in the only vehicle available in the area, an ambulance of a certain age with a very defective suspension. Thus I was able to enjoy for almost 4 hours every pothole that chavismo has allowed to flourish everywhere for the past ten years. It was hell, and made the worse as the paramedics could not even listen to the radio as Chavez was in cadena.

We reached Caracas at night. In spite of all the preparations my relatives had tried to take the Clinica Metropolitana was collapsing at its emergency and I was left for quite a while in a hallway as the paramedics were trying to have at least me switch to another stretcher so they could recover theirs and leave for another urgency somewhere in Maracay. Finally they tossed me into a trauma room where the other bed was occupied by another dengue case from Valle de la Pascua. The poor guy had been confused for an infection case, plied with antibiotics until finally some relatives decided to seek more competent doctors as there was no improvement.

I was to stay in emergency for 48 hours since I was too critical to be put in a room. I was stuck with all sorts of lines for constant monitoring while eventually the doctors ordered platelets transfusion, something easier said than done. See, of the 10 or so potential donors we managed to line up only 3 were approved and I got the platelets from one of my brothers since he happened to be the first at hand and same blood group.

For 48 hours I was given to observe up close as a participant sport the life of an emergency room. Activity all the time, in that basement you do not know whether it is day light. I must say that I was rather impressed. In spite of an edge of chaos feel, things run, attention does not waver, and people seem composed and knowledgeable enough. And doctors also seemed quite good. I caught myself wondering how good these people could indeed become. When you think at the difficult life we have now in Caracas, when you think about the overflow from the defeated public sector where in spite of Chavez words ministries discretely keep contracting private heath insurance, it is a miracle that the show runs so well. But think a little bit further: if these doctors did not have to spend at least 2 hours a day in traffic, if they did not have to deal with the rain of sanctions and intromissions from the state who resent their success while the state is flunking its own duties, in other words if these doctors had the means to do more research, the Metropolitana could be our own little Mayo Clinic. The experience and the talent they have, still. What they need is the time and means.

I also learned in these hours that there is a dengue epidemic and that you would never learn about it from the state media (and even more unaccountably so from the private media, scared of certain news). The Metropolitana itself is getting 5 cases a week at least. If we add the other major private establishments of Caracas it is easy to speculate that the cases of dengue are in the several dozens a week, enough to justify a major fumigation and prevention campaign. As far as I know only the municipality of Baruta manages some light spraying, the other without the means to do so. Meanwhile the state spends its energy in sending a vulgar and blurting Chavez to Copenhagen when the price of that wasted trip would be enough to spray all of Caracas green areas.

Things are worse than what you think. Once I was in a room, with my neurons firing a little bit again, the scientist in me wanted to know more. See, normally when a dengue case diagnosis is reported the INH (or whatever the name of the epidemiology state system is today) is supposed to visit the patient to ask epidemiological question. You know, to try to locate the focus, fumigate and whatnot. In fact they should even take a blood sample if early enough in the disease to establish the dengue strain. The INH not only has stopped visiting clinics and hospitals for that matter but no official epidemiological bulletin has been published in years. The Caracas doctors and clinics have to rely on themselves for any prevision they might want to take! As far as chavismo is concerned there is no dengue epidemic. Maybe they see epidemiological diseases as just a “sensacion” as the state ombudsman likes to qualify any intractable social problem, a media creation to provoke a feeling of insecurity, food shortage or dengue. I can witness myself first hand on how remiss of its essential obligations the Venezuelan state is, not only unable to heal people, but unable even to do the basic documentation so that other people could help. Make no mistake, if in the private sector dengue is such a problem I let you imagine what is going on in public hospitals and barrio adentro. Never mind the real numbers of swine flu.

And yes, I qualify myself as being a victim of Chavez in this regard, as my disease got worse for the difficulty in accessing care, even private care, as my contagion comes from a general degree in decay in infrastructure and water works allowing for the return of plagues such as paludism, malaria, tuberculosis and others, diseases we thought we had under control 20 years ago.

There was an interesting detail which in a way could explain in part that state indifference to the pandemic. Apparently there are 4 strains of dengue. 1, 2 and 4 have now been long established in Venezuela but 3 is a rather recent arrival. If I understand well it was not documented in Venezuela 10 years ago. The curious detail of that strain is that it is reported to have come to the Caribbean through the Cuban soldiers when they were fighting in Angola three decades ago. The Cubans arrived with Chavez when he turned Venezuela into a Cuban colony. You may draw your own conclusions.

The rest of the story is not as exciting. After 48 hours in emergency with people wondering whether I was going to make it, my body started reacting and I was sent into a room where slowly I waited for my platelets to climb back to 100,000. My only distraction was to enjoy the beautiful Caracas December light though my window, after spending the night trying to find a way to sleep around my IV line (I spent 8 days with all sorts of drips as dengue also does havoc with your electrolyte balance, amen of a liver lesion which will keep me away from booze for at least a month). Not even that much TV, and not looking forward visitors as I tire very fast. I did manage to contact Miguel who very graciously made an announcement. I wish to thank every one who wrote, hoping you understand it might still be a while until I can thank you all properly for your concern. But be assured, what is ahead is only a long rest, maybe up to a month. That I can type again may bring me relief from boredom by posting regularly, if infrequently, soon.

Meanwhile you can take as a home lesson that any numbers emitted from the government on any social affliction are, well, [feel in the blank word]. There is no reliable statistics coming from Venezuelan institutions, the creepier the topic, the less reliable the published number. What is left for us is to figure out what are outright lies and simply “enhanced” numbers. And make sure you have good medical contact and coverage with relatives willing to stand in line for you for hours in case you need to lay on a stretcher.

They all knew about electrical woes for at least 7 years

I am not going to translate it, no time today but below you can read in Spanish the Tal Cual article that explains how the government knew about the coming electrical crisis since at least 2002, and even before had they been paying attention. There is ONLY one guilty party for the current energy mess and it is Hugo Chavez.


Edelca advirtió la crisis
El presidente Hugo Chávez y sus ministros de economía conocieron todos y cada uno de los informes sobre una inminente crisis eléctrica en el país

Damián Prat, Guayana

L eer y analizar los informes de los ingenieros de Edelca ­que nos muestra el ex gobernador Andrés Velásquez- hechos en 2002 advirtiendo lo que ocurriría "entre 2009 y 2010" de no tomarse las medidas adecuadas junto con hacer un plan de inversiones que ellos detallaron, es comprender la causa de la actual crisis de energía eléctrica.

Mas claro si se consultan dos informes de los ingenieros de Cadafe. Uno de 1997 y otro de 1999 ya con Chávez en el gobierno.

Sin ser la empresa especialista hay un cuarto informe, de un equipo profesional de Bauxilum, también de 2002 y 2003, que ofrece parecidos análisis y conclusiones semejantes.

Todo estaba dicho. Nada quedó sin analizarse. Casa cosa estaba prevista sin tratarse de predicciones de brujo, sino análisis con la experticia profesional y usando los datos y estudios de años.

La Venezuela que comenzaba a ser gobernada por Chávez usaba la colosal inversión en hidroelectricidad, transmisión y distribución de energía hecha en continuidad administrativa por ocho gobiernos anteriores junto con la de empresas privadas como La Electricidad de Caracas.

Y disponía de siete años para continuar la línea de desarrollo en inversiones a fin de no romper el equilibrio entre la oferta de energía de origen hidroeléctrica y la térmica, así como para evitar que los requerimientos de energía no tuvieran respuesta en la disponibilidad de la misma con el margen suficiente hasta para cubrir "años malos" por sequías.

El presidente Hugo Chávez conoció todos y cada uno de esos informes. Todos llegaron a sus manos y a las de los de sus ministros de la economía, los presidentes de CVG, Pdvsa, los de Edelca y mas recientemente al de Corpoelec.

Es mas, ocasionalmente, Chávez se refería a algunos de esos proyectos cuando hacía promesas dominicales, lanzando discursos gradielocuentes o colocaba "piedras fundacionales". Lo que estaba era relatando los proyectos de aquellas listas, pero aderezándolos con su verbo, como si fuesen "ideas nuevas".

La recuperación de Planta Centro, las nuevas de EDC y de Oriente, las dos hidroeléctricas de Los Andes y Centro Occidente, la ampliación completa de Enelven en Zulia, entre otras.

Chávez y los jerarcas de su gobierno siempre supieron -durante los últimos siete años- que ese plan de inversiones en plantas termoeléctricas, unas para recuperarlas y otras para sumarlas a las existentes era indispensable o habría crisis "entre 2009 y 2010".

Y que el sistema de líneas de 800 y 400 kv que llevan la energía desde Guayana a toda Venezuela debía seguir creciendo ­nunca paralizarse como ocurrió en este septenio- para adaptarse al crecimiento.

SIEMPRE LO SUPO TODO
Dinero jamás le faltó pues justamente ese período fue el de la mayor bonanza de ingresos petroleros de nuestra historia. Poder político e institucional tampoco era problema. Todos los poderes e instituciones han estado en sus manos obedientemente.

Y sin embargo, al día de hoy, transcurridos esos siete años, estamos en la más profunda crisis de energía eléctrica de nuestra historia moderna.

Muy poco de aquel plan de inversiones se ejecutó. Casi nada.

Lo más relevante fue que no "inventó" con Edelca en los primeros años y las obras de Caruachi continuaron y su gobierno las concluyó.

Muchos proyectos ni siquiera se iniciaron. Ni en las termoeléctricas destinadas a ser recuperadas ni en las nuevas. De Planta Centro apenas funciona a medias uno de cinco generadores. Tampoco en los sistemas de transmisión. Peor aún, se le metió "plomo en el ala" a la otrora eficiente Edelca al partidizarla y luego al quitarle toda su autonomía, tras centralizar en la burocrática Corpoelec.

Por eso está Guri, por vez primera en su historia, con seis de sus 20 unidades generadoras paralizadas.

Por eso anda Planta Centro más "en el suelo" que nunca, con una sola unidad funcionando a medias y las otras cuatro paradas.

Estatizada EDC, se paralizaron las inversiones en la nueva termoeléctrica de esa empresa que debía sumarse a Tacoa.

Por eso ahora Chávez hace discursos y "cadenas" tratando de "inventar un enemigo" y desviar las culpas hacia "el Sambil y los Malls" (que en realidad gastan apenas el 0.3% del déficit actual) o hacia "el derroche de los venezolanos". Para tratar de ocultar sus propias culpas.

Por eso estamos "de apagón en alumbrón" en medio país y el gobierno imponiendo un plan de reducción de la demanda, que incluye arruinar más a Sidor recortando las horas de uso de sus hornos eléctricos y manteniendo en la ruina a las destartaladas empresas del aluminio dejando sin reparar sus más de 300 celdas de reducción de aluminio dañadas para que no consuman.

"Chávez no puede pretender hacerle creer al país que el problema es el despilfarro en lugar de confesar la verdad: el problema está en la desinversión de su gobierno en la generación de energía", remata Andrés Velásquez.

"El tiene que responder por los serios daños colaterales a la calidad de vida de las personas por el racionamiento residencial y al comercio. Los serios daños a la industria estatal y a la privada. En nuestras cuentas se han regalado unos 47 mil millones de dólares en el exterior. Con menos de un tercio de eso se habrían hecho todas las inversiones eléctricas y mas", señala mostrando los informes.

Y finaliza: "incluso el proyecto Tocoma ­con todo y ser financiado por el BID- tiene retraso de al menos dos años".

-The end-