A force fed agreement in Mexico

The Venezuelan opposition delegates met the chavista's ones in Mexico, in a supposed restart of negotiations interrupted months ago. A curious thing was that they went all the way to Mexico city to sign a document already negotiated behind closed doors in Caracas. So Mexico was an expensive show, they could have stayed in Caracas.....

This agreement started a storm in Venezuela even though people do not have access to all the information, even though it was already announced as a restart of negotiation, something far, very far from being a done thing.  The Venezuelan public is at the same time so polarized and so divided (schizo?) that little else could be expected. Chavistas wondered how come the opposition delegation was not in jail, the Venezuelan opposition reaction was worse. For them if the delegation does not include who they support and does not address their favorite cause then it is worthless, traitorous even.  That the good folks in tweeter let their ire run free is one thing but it is frightening when a leader of the opposition like Maria Corina Machado partakes in that lynching mood. 

Qué puede salir de una Mesa de “Negociación” que en la práctica ha sido una mesa de extorsión?
Una buena tajada para cada uno de los representados, incluyendo la ONU.
Quién representa allí a los venezolanos? Nadie.
Qué obtiene la gente? Nada.

— María Corina Machado (@MariaCorinaYA) November 27, 2022

There she says that those in Mexico are going to split the monies negotiated, and that even the UN will get its take. I'll stop .....

In front of such histeria it is important to go back to the plain facts. First, the content of the agreement. 3 billion dollars of frozen assets (mostly in the US?) will be given PROGRESSIVELY to the UN that will use them to try to alleviate the suffering of the Venezuelan people. The US oil giant Chevron will be allowed to operate in Venezuela on very limited objectives, namely to restart some of its production capacity and sell its oil only in the US without giving much to Venezuela. The oil to be produced by Chevron will be considered as repaying the debt Venezuela has toward them. That will last up to 6 months if the Venezuelan regime keeps its promises AND continues to negotiate AND advances toward free and fair elections in 2024.

That is all. No need to go berserk.

To understand better it is necessary to recap some of the current political and geopolitical situation. The Ukraine war has changed everything. In addition of trying to help the Chevron lobby, Biden is trying to find new sources of oil. Venezuela, on paper, could multiply by 4 its current production and place at least 2 million barrels on the market. That also explains why France's Macron sat in Paris the two sides and obtained from them to go back to Mexico to sign on what they had already agreed upon. 

The Maduro regime is in trouble. Its Russian ally and now its Iranian and Chinese ones are teetering and certainly in no mood to have Venezuela demand further attention. Cuba is flat broke and in much trouble of its own. And Maduro desperately needs money to grease his repression machinery. Nevermind that the "bodegonomics" miracle of partial dollarization of the country has reached its limits (1). Finally it downed in them that it may well be the last chance to negotiate before something collapses nastily. 

The Venezuelan opposition is cool. It has played the sanction card rather well (note: sanctions are taken by the US and Europe, NOT by the Venezuelan opposition whose role is advisory at most). Thus the promise of alleviating some of the sanctions in agreement with the US is a nice carrot for the regime. It is testimony of the obtuseness and corruption of the regime that they held so late before agreeing on something, a something rather insignificant if you ask me.

Yet, even though the agreement is small and should not be hard to abide by all the parts, there are many dark clouds on it.  First, the fast restart of oil production is a mirage. In the current situation of the country Chevron cannot hope to increase by much more than 30% its output for 2023. Significant increases will have to wait for the war in Ukraine may well be long over by the time Venezuela replaces part of Russian oil.

Second, organizing the humanitarian help will take time. This help was certainly pressed on by the US to try to stem the flow of immigration that apparently is now reaching 7 million Venezuelans! But the UN needs to decide on what to do, then set it up, and then get the providers, and more important establish adequate controls to protect that help from being stolen by the regime as was the case in previous attempts.

Do not expect any visible improvement in Venezuela until 2024 if all goes well. In fact already the divisions of chavismo are playing as Diosdado Cabello who has nothing to gain from any settlement, stated that it was going to be the regime that decides how the help will be shared. Within the regime many are scared at the idea of Cabello deciding on such things. 

At any rate the opposition is ready to bail out of this agreement as soon as the regime makes a move to undercut it. After all this time around it is the regime which has more to lose. 

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1) More than two years ago the regime with a damning hyperinflation decided to allow limited use of US dollars for import of goods that should be resold in Venezuela in dollars. This resulted in some economic improvement, made visible by the apparition of bodegones, stores specialized in selling outside of any price control and in US dollars. But the amount of dollars available for imports has not increased since the rest of the economic policies of the regime remain and these aim at controlling any free enterprise still in existence. Consequently for the past few months we start observing a stagnation of sorts that could only be avoided by increased production. Which I do not see happening in the near future.

There was an election a week ago

 After years of covering in detail Venezuelan elections I would be remiss not to mention last Sunday regional "elections" in Venezuela. Then again, as I put in a tweet, the same day Chilean elections seemed more important to follow. At least for me.

Once upon a time, say before 2015, one could still find enough information, enough semi reliable data to look for trends in Venezuelan voting results. I did not do too bad in my analysis predictions. But after the debacle of 2015 the regime made sure no vote meant anything anymore. I am not going to go into tiresome details. Remember, they are mostly pre electoral fraud, from happily banning candidates the regime dislikes to go all out and take over political parties. Amen of all the treachery in voter registration, excessive use of state means for chavista campaign, etc, etc. On election day you keep having all the unfair interventions from the army forcing people to vote, holding results, etc, etc.

All very commie banana republic.

Thus since 2015 I stopped wasting time in electoral analysis. The more so that in addition to the great heights in election treachery we have a large abstention movement and probably up to 4 million Venezuelan voters in exile, and thus with no option.

This being said, there are a few details worth commenting.

First, there was after many years the return of serious electoral observers. Namely proven and tested teams. There are only three sources of reliable electoral observation today: teams set up by the UN, the OAS or EU. Some countries I suppose would also do serious electoral observation, democratic countries like Japan or Canada. Maybe even the Carter Center. But that is all, and certainly not the countries that the regime invited previously for what is at best electoral tourism (Russia or Bolivia, for example).

Why did the regime accepted the European Union to send an observing team? This is the question, the more so that as expected the preliminary report under diplomatic language indicated that the vote of last Sunday was shit.  I suppose that the regime having survived three years of sanctions and pressures and general exhaustion about Venezuela assumed that the world would recognize Maduro if this one held semi palatable elections with a selected few handouts to the opposition, preferably to the opposition that it has tried to build through payoffs. Well, if that was the reason, it did not work out.

Another reason is the need for the regime to reach some form of agreement with the US so that some sanctions are lifted.  But the regime, to begin with, is incapable of seriousness when it is negotiation time. Whether the regime offers decent elections is not really an issue there, though it could help. But as the scorpion crossing the stream on the back of the toad, the regime cannot help itself and it will sabotage any opening, be it formal negotiations or semi fair elections.

This new PR failure behind us, what else can we rescue from last Sunday?  As expected the regime won handily but not that great. Abstention was here and with a copious dose of opposition division it still lost on the total vote but carried all states but 3, while loosing a bunch of town halls.  In fact that townhall fall back should be worrisome for the regime: for once the regime did better in big cities than in the country side towns where the opposition struck a few interesting wins. The provinces, apparently, are starting to be tired of being taken for granted.

Thus, in spite of all the treachery, the regime vote count keeps sliding down, fast enough that it cannot be hidden.

What else is worth noting? The opposition division. This one is basically 4 fold, believe it or not.

First, the 4 million + overseas. Where would those go were presidential elections carried tomorrow?

Second, the chronic abstention. Their number look good if you count in the 4 million abroad. But the fact of the matter is that some are starting to vote again. Why? Because the abstention promoters offer nothing in exchange, and people want solutions, not speeches on morality.

In third we have the pro Chavez opposition. Those are a set of individuals that came from the opposition but decided to try to reach political deals with the regime. All for naught of course, nobody is fooled. In last year parliamentary election the regime had to fudge some dubious vote count to make sure a handful of them would get elected! But they are very useful for the opposition in a way I am surprised people do not talk about. Last week they got more votes than what we could have expected. Me thinks that many chavistas voted for them as a protest vote against Maduro! And remember: when you have been attached for two decades to a political idea, the first vote against is the more difficult; it gets easier after. And those fake opposition parties are a good stepping stone for transitioning.

Finally we have the remains of the real opposition, those that did jail, were tortured, are in exile, whatever. They did not do too good, though they took 1/6 of townhalls and two states. That is, a little bit more than last time and in spite of abstention exile and divisions. For better or for worse, the so called G4 remains the true opposition and is still recognized as such after last Sunday show.

That is all.  We'll see what's next.