Vene-Suelo

Win for Chavez, big win for Venezuela

Of all the outcomes of the Venezuelan election, this one surprised me the most:

Broad-based international and local support.

I can't explain it, but as far as I can tell the news coverage and political reaction to the Chavez victory has been overwhelmingly positive. For instance, the ap feed and BBC coverage has been unbiased or positive. Even the NYT article takes a positive stance, despite its negative title:

Venezuelans Give Chávez a Mandate to Tighten His Grip

Sometimes the editors pick titles that are contrary to the news itself.

In Venezuela, there is comparative calm, and even the opposition media outlets have accepted the defeat of their guy, Rosales. In fact, he lost in every state, and even in Caracas. He even lost his own home state, which is one of the richest in Venezuela.

There's more good news: the voting system in Venezuela works. In fact, it works very very well. First of all, voter abstention was down to 25%, which means on the ground that nearly half the general population of the country got up and went to the polls on Sunday. That is a feat in and of itself, in a country where abstention hovered at nearly 80% for some time.

They've also succeeded in getting the % of null votes, a big question mark for voting systems under scrutiny, down to an impressive 1.36% (based on the latest reported CNE figures). That is yet another impressive accomplishment. Today, in many ways, the Venezuelan voting system has far surpassed the US voting system. The Venezuelan system is more accurate, more technologically advanced, faster, and more engaging (based on abstention rate) than our own.

Finally, even our own state dept. has been cautiously optimist about the results. That leaves only the bitter Peruvian government, who went on record saying they won't congratulate Chavez.

So - Chavez won big at home, and is winning big abroad. In his pocket are countries including Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and everyone in OPEC. Other buddies include Russia, China, Vietnam, Iran, and a laundry list of enemies of the US. The US continues to alienate the world, and now Chavez has a mandate to unite it.

Hot News - Chavez Wins

Ap, Reuters, MSNBC, and all the MSM report Chavez wins tonight by a huge margin. They also report Rosales has conceded. The exact stats are yet to come, but this looks like a big win. On a cursory report, the American news sources seem to give Chavez a fair shake. I Haven't read fox news yet, though.

Not so surprisingly, Globovision.com reports nothing on this - and says Rosales challenges the results. El Universal has the concession speech here. "No somos bobos" indeed.

The Votes are in!

As far as anyone can tell, the votes are in, the polls are closed, and Venezuela may have pulled off a violence-free exercise in direct democracy today.

Here are some photos of the day's events: click. (please enjoy the picture "introducing the Chavezmobile, borrowed from El Universal - p.s. - I can't believe the chavezmobile is rocking rims, that is pretty awesome)

Big Media is covering the story. The NYT's Simon Romero made an interesting point that I've hammered home before, after commenting on the high-flying state capitalist economy of Venezuela, he notes:

Neither candidate in Sunday’s election seems to acknowledge the growing consumerism in rich and poor households as one of the main reasons Mr. Chávez has resilient popularity ratings after eight years as president. Most opinion polls give him a double-digit lead over Mr. Rosales, governor of the oil-producing Zulia State in the west.

It is a decent point to consider, especially in the big city.

It may be a little early still to ridicule the 8 months of headlines about plan B and violent coup attempts on voting day - but hopefully we'll have results tomorrow morning (or even later tonight) without a hitch.

Here comes the news wave

Venezuelans go to the polls this Sunday, and the intl. news media will be right behind them. Already, you can find articles in English about the security and quality of the voting systems in Venezuela. For example:

Unlike with most U.S. electronic voting machines, Venezuelans will get paper receipts that verify their choices were properly recorded, and must deposit them into boxes before leaving the polls. After Sunday’s vote, election officials monitored by representatives of each candidate will count millions of the paper receipts for comparison to the electronic totals. (from the Boston Herald)

Having been physically stationed in Venezuela during the run-up to this election, and having voted in the November US election, I can personally vouch for the sophistication of the Venezuelan system. As for other factors that could weigh in on the validity of the vote and vote-counting process, I can only say that the Venezuelan has a central-command system that was ostensibly enacted to minimize political control. Venezuela in fact, has an entirely separate branch of government devoted entirely to elections. However, that does leave the system (arguably) more susceptible to large-scale fraud than the diffuse US system. To counter this possibility, Venezuela is about to meet every vote-auditing official on the face of this planet this weekend.

So - in a nutshell - this should be a valid vote. We'll see how this goes, and more importantly, how it is covered by the news (for instance - the headline of the Boston Herald article I excerpted to show the quality of the Venezuela voting system sneakily reads: "electronic vote distrusted in Venezuela")

IS Chavez bad for business?

Hardly.

Articles abound with stories of ridiculous wealth in Venezuela. I can attest personally to excessive spending on flashy cell phones, cars, and whiskey in the East of Caracas. Plus, Caraquenos have a high cost of real estate to keep in mind - some families own homes in Florida, but can't afford apartments in Caracas.

So - Chavez is good for business, but what about the middle class? Chavez isn't good for the middle class, but instead of good - he's different. Under Chavez, the upper class has expanded, and the lower class has received vastly improved services. The middle class has largely disappeared, but that may relate more closely to the oil boom than the ascendant Chavez presidency.

The middle class that does exist are hustlers - successful buhoneros (street vendors), car salesmen,  teachers,  and shopkeepers, among others. Lots of these folks live in the informal economy, without taxes, reporting, etc. Is that a good thing? Depends on who you ask.

socialism / populism / americanism

Social programs are the flagship of the Chavez administration's popularity parade. They are the daily reminder that Chavez is for the people, and actively working for the people. When you get involved in working for or benefiting from these services, you generally get a red Chavez supporting T-shirt. How popular are these programs?

The opposition candidate has them as well. Check em out for yourself - Rosales, the governor of Zulia and main opposition candidate, has Zulia's bizarro social programs in response to Chavez. For example, instead of Mision Mercal (cheaper govt. subsidized supermarkets), Zulia has Mezul (same thing I should assume). Instead of the wildly popular Barrio Adentro medical clinics, Zulia has Barrio a Barrio (the same, ostensibly).

What does all this mean? Simple. In order to run in Venezuela you must tilt left, and offer social programs. It's almost ironic that Rosales is the candidate offering the free debit cards, Mi Negra, to people filled with free, delicious, populist kickback money. Is Rosales more left than Chavez? Hardly, but it is a commentary on where the Venezuelan electorate is thought to be now.

More on plan B and the coming conflict

Here's a great article on the coming crisis, written from the Chavista point of view.

I should start with a disclaimer - the author is a friend of mine. Here we go - Chris poses a great question in his piece:

"how can they claim fraud when dozens of surveys taken over the last few months show that the election won't even be a close contest?  And secondly, why would the Chavez government commit fraud when it is obvious that they will easily win?  The answer: it is all part of a plan to overthrow the government in the days following the December 3rd election."

I agree with the question, however I would question the answer more carefully.

Chavez is the man, myth, and mystery all wrapped into one. Like his counterpart in Cuba, he is the cult of personality the press makes him out to be. The Chavez movement realistically doesn't exist without Chavez himself. He is the icon.

That said - we may have an alternate reason to fix the vote. Even if the vote isn't close ( and I do agree it is not likely to be close), controlling the vote is laying a foundation of control. It's the same reason the Democrats fix the vote in Chicago, as much today as last century. They don't just want to win, they demand total control of the system. To control totally is to get high. It is to have the mandate, it is to be the lord high executioner. President Bush called his short-lived dominance "political capitol," and then swiftly moved to overturn actions of the Supreme Court, Congress, and anyone else who dare stand in his way. Chavez has done the same, just heading in the other political direction.

So - we come back to the elections. Is there fraud? Maybe. Is there a plan to riot? probably.

Is there US funding and involvement? Definitely. Too much oil sitting in Venezuela to believe anything else.

So, readers, what do you think?

Get your plan together, Caracas!

Plan A, B, or C? Or no plan? That is the question right now in terms of the Venezuelan elections.

Despite my unfortunately rigorous personal schedule, I will make a mad-dashing attempt to update this blog on the coming Venezuelan elections, and their aftermath.

I found an interesting English-language review of the mess that will be the coming elections here.

The bottom line right now looks like this: the opposition candidate will fall short of winning elections, and both parties are scrambling to handle the aftermath. The opposition is working on discrediting the election system, and launching massive strikes and blockades. As for Chavez? Here's a quote:

Chávez himself has echoed       this sentiment more recently in a speech on November 17th, in       which he asks of the opposition: "don't force me to take       drastic measures to safeguard the sovereignty and the stability       of the country." Attempts at destabilization would be met       with firmness, since "that permissive Chávez was       left behind that night in 2002." Chávez concludes:       "We won't allow Venezuela to be filled with bloodshed again."

That is officially called plan CH(e), asking the people to flood the streets and take the law into their own hands. If I were still in Venezuela, I don't know that I would look forward to either of these plans coming into action.

I believe I've written on the groundwork for this throughout my time in the ground on Caracas - that the opposition and revolutionaries all have neighborhoods that exist as bunkers, and they are completely outside of any tinge of central government control. As goes Caracas, so goes Venezuela, it would seem.

So - as we lead up to the polls, the majority of Venezuelans are about to cast votes, only to be silenced by armed radicals on both sides. Regardless of which side of the process you sympathize with, this should strike you as patently unfair to "the people." When I talk about the people, I don't mean the radicalized chunk of voters on either side, like most Venezuelans do when they speak the same. I mean the huge (and growing) chunk of disaffected Venezuelan citizens with no way out of impending political strife.

So, forget the politicians, lets talk about the economy??
       

The Comedian is out

http://www.eluniversal.com/2006/11/15/elecc_ava_15A804127.shtml

The Venezuelan presidential race is heating up, sort of. The most popular third party candidate, The Count of Guacharo, dropped out of the race today. He didn't throw his support to any candidate.

That basically leaves Chavez and Rosales, about to go to the finish line in December. More on that as November proceeds, but articles abound in international sources like the Guardian about the Venezuelan boom economy, and its strange-bedfellows relationship to averred socialism.

Also today - the TSJ (Supreme Court) will review whether digital fingerprint capture machines are-a-go for this year's elections. Stay tuned.

Chavez Chavez Chavez Chavez Chavez Chavez Chavez Chavez Chavez Chavez Chavez Chavez

WOW! Its Chavez mania.

For the first time ever,  the whacky lefties, liberals, and anti-war people are joined by the general public in talking about Hugo Chavez. Everyone else finally got an earful of the response to US hegemony by the South American government with the biggest mouth: Venezuela (pic, taken by me, from Ave. Baralt in Caracas. The ladies selling fried pork laughed at me when I snapped it).

In America, the mood seems to swing from disdain (how dare he call our president the devil) to admiration (good speach!). I enjoyed the speach so much, I was pretty surprised to find some friends of mine railing against it as inflammatory and disparaging. Sometimes I forget that many Americans, for reasons nobody can explain, still virulently support President Bush. It seems to me that even those who don't heavily support the President, but also don't have a strong opinion about the war, found Chavez's words disparaging.

In any case, the world this week got to see something I was lucky enough to see from the ground level up starting in (for me) 2004. There is a globe-spanning anti-US movement, and its gaining ground fast, and its not built on extremism. Its frighteningly built on a calculated belief that the United States is bad: bad for business, bad for human rights, bad for peace, and bad for humanity. As an American, its fine to have a knee-jerk reaction against such accusations, and I can honestly say I did have that reaction in 2004.

As I travelled around, talked to people, read the news from the other side of things, and saw entire US-backed governments crumble under popular pressure, I realized the weight that anti-american speach has in the world outside the stars and stripes. All across South America, people were putting plans in action to wake up and take control of their destinies, and put a stop to US intervention and control of their governments, bank accounts, and lives. I'm not just talking about the peasant farmers from Bolivia, I'm also talking about the bankers in Argentina, industrialists in Brazil, and the entire government of Venezuela. The movement is strong, its well-funded, its varied, and its devoted to fairness and equality - at the expense of the USA. There is one other key note - its broad-based. Jordanian street-vendors sell "Che" t-shirts at a fast clip. Bolivian bus-drivers put Osama Bin Laden on their rides and cruise through town. 187 nations met in Cuba to complain about subjugation. This thing is gaining steam, its organized, and its worldwide.

Speaking broadly, the US is not in a no-win situation. However, our government, as Chavez warns, needs to wake up and smell the not so free trade coffee. American exceptionalism has gotten to such an astounding level that an organized anti-US movement is likely overdue. We can undermine such a movement, simply, by being civil with developing countries. For example, less forced aerial drug spraying and more mulilateral drug policy work. Less bilaterial free trade agreements where we dump chicken leg quarters on unsuspecting countries with lots of chickens (Colombia, Russia), and more bilaterally positive agreements.

In any case, all of this is unlikely under the Bush administration, which is so out of touch it doesn't realize how badly it lost the battle of 'hearts and minds' this week at the UN. The US is a nation of great people, but the world is tired of holding its breath waiting for our government to live up to that promise.

So, I'd like to join other pundits tonight and predict a very dangerous course for the US in the near-future, unless there is a significant policy shift. We've seen exactly who will be aligned against us, and even if they aren't threatening militarily, they certainly should be numerically.