Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Electoral Board Stories --The Head of the Electoral Board (CNE) said before the vote last Sunday that he had polls that said that 75% of Venezuelans trusted the CNE and this represented a high number. I disagree. There should be NO reasons for people not to trust the Electoral Board. If the CNE acted impartially, without confrontation, split decisions and had listened to everyone, that approval rating should be in the upper nineties, like it was in the past. This is another arrogant statement by Mr. Rodriguez, who shows by just saying it that he has very low standards for the job he is doing. Additionally, I believe that part of the large abstention that we saw on Sunday was due to this mistrust in the CNE by both pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez forces. (A poll today suggested 68% of the people do not trust the CNE) --There is still no explanation of why it took so long to give out the results of Sunday’s election. The whole point of making the whole process electronic (the cost was 20 bucks a vote!) was that results would be given out immediately removing a possible source of mistrust that the results were being tampered with. In fact, it was very strange that before the polls had closed at 7 PM, Mr. Rodriguez gave out the precise real-time number of how many people had voted between 4 PM and the time he was speaking but it took over 12 hours to give us very basis incomplete results. How can anyone explain this? What was going on? --Yesterday I heard a lady on TV from the infamous Tupamaros group, questioning the results of the election. She was actually a candidate for city councilman (woman), but incredibly got zero votes according to the CNE. She said that her whole family had voted for her, but the one thing she was sure of was that she herself voted her name in So, she was asking, how could I get no votes at all? Good question, but don’t expect an answer to it. 7:42:10 PM    comment []

To the young people at the Festival by Teodoro Petkoff To the young people at the Festival by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual Hugo Chávez would have loved to issue a decree that would create a Bolivar Square in every town of Venezuela, but they all exist since long before him. There is a Bolivar Peak, but it was not Chávez that baptized it. There is also a Bolivar State and it was not Hugo that named it that way, nor was he the one that named Ciudad Bolivar the old city of Angostura. There are Bolivar municipalities all over the place and no town lacks a Bolivar Street or Avenue, or in its absence, one called Libertador, which Bolivar is by antonomasia. Chavez was not the one either that established that our currency would have the name of the great man from Caracas. Unfortunately for the ego of the President, the use and benefit from the figure of "El Libertador" has been around for over one hundred years. Even worse, several of our tyrants and/or autocrats protected their excesses and abuses behind the sacred name of Don Simón (Bolívar) and his cult, definitely, was implanted by guys with few credentials. Thus, youth of the world, if they want to make you believe-as it is probable, because Chavez wants to rewrite our history-that he rescued the "Father of the homeland" of the oblivion that the "oligarchy" had submerged him in, well, simply, they are lying to you. If you stay a few more days you will not take long to realize that a lie is a structural feature of this regime. Perhaps they will take you around the country. Ask if the great dams of Guri or those of the three Macaguas were built by the revolution. You will be surprised. Don't believe either that Sidor (Steel works) and the aluminum companies are the work of chavismo. Don't be surprised in the face of the superb Cryogenic Complex of the East, nor in front of the petrochemical plants of Morón and El Tablazo: that were not built by the current Government either. It was not Chavez either that nationalized oil and iron, even though by now they probably have attempted to have you pass that fast one on you. You will see public schools even in the towns that are the furthest apart. There are 23 thousand of them, as well as thousands of high schools; in six and a half years this Government has not even built ten of those and not one of these. We have 118 institutions of higher education, between universities, technical schools and colleges. This Government has only created one University, which is not operational, and from which even the desks have been stolen by now. There are 260 hospitals and 3,600 ambulatories. The "revolution" has not built a single one of them. What it has done is to allow for them to deteriorate even further than they already had. Chavez did not build the Caracas subway, nor did he initiate the two new lines of this one in the capital city, nor the Maracaibo and Valencia subways, nor the second bridge over the Orinoco River, nor the Caruachi dam, nor the Tuy railroad, great public Works that were begun during the Government before the one of "I, the Supreme", more than eight years ago. He has limited himself to continue them but at the pace of the pet tortoise of his daughter Rosines. If you see the bridge over Lake Maracaibo and the one in Angostura, don't believe the lie that they wee built by Chávez. Don't even ask about housing programs. Chávez himself has devoted his time to crucify on TV his Minister of Housing and Habitat (Pompous name, if there ever was one) for being incompetent. In six and a half years this Government has handed over the same number of housing units that the worst of the prior Governments would hand over in only one year. In this country, there are 150 thousand kilometers of paved roads and highways. This Government has not built, in six and a half years, but some hundreds of Kilometers of that road network. Find out, by the way, about the Macuro road, which was a famous promise of Chávez, like the one to solve the problem of homeless street kids. Ask, you will be left livid in the face of such "efficacy" Those streets filled with street vendors are not a picturesque aspect of the revolution, but a sample of the unemployment and sub employment that agglomerates 60% of the population of working age. The garbage you see in the streets, particularly in the barrios, please don't believe that it has been there since the previous Government. It has been manufactured integrally by chavismo. In fact, Chavez' has by now become the "previous Government" to which the national political folklore always credited to be the cause of all ills. In the end, boys and girls, ask yourselves whether the huge amount of money that it cost to bring, house, and feed you, has not been anything but another artifice to widen the living pedestal of "the refounder of the homeland", whose birth date (28th of July), don't be surprised that in the Chavista Calendar of Saints, will be moved "just a few days" to make it coincide with the 24th of July, the day in which Bolivar was born. Our most shady tyrant of the last century, Juan Vicente Gomez, was so "Bolivarian" that he boasted, look at that coincidence, we were born that same day. 12:35:06 PM    comment []