So, after
ten rounds, Guatemala pulled
ahead of Venezuela
once again in the vote to occupy a seat in the UN Security Council. Supposedly
in the complex language of diplomacy, these ups and down are part of a birds of
paradise mating ritual in which the loser is being told to get out of the way,
even if we still may like you. But even if former Foreign Minister Roy
Chaderton should have the experience to understand such language, his mind has
by now been embedded for too long in the empty desert of Chavista rhetoric and
ideas, which are quite capable of erasing any signs of intelligence for the
sheer absurdity of it all.
Unfortunately
or fortunately for Venezuela,
all the largesse, all the generosity, all the waste and all the promises, does
not appear to have been enough. The Security Council Elections are not
organized by a partial electoral Board, a
la CNE, which makes up rules or changes them as the process moves along. There
are no fingerprint machines at the UN and the vote is so secret that the
corresponding nations have no idea as to whether their Ambassador is voting for
their choice. It is just a matter of trust. Thus, Guatemala, a country with few embassies in Asia
or Africa, which does not even recognize China
as the true representative of the Chinese people, a poor country, managed to
stay ahead of Venezuela,
a country that has offered favors, contracts, aid and bribes to anyone that would
pay attention. And the silly revolutionaries believed the promises and were
sure they would top one hundred votes in the first round, a number not reached by
far in any of the ten rounds today. Venezuela used to get more votes
doing nothing! But you
could tell the whole plan was in trouble when even those that have tried to
back the autocrat, found no alternative but to pull out. Madame Bachelet in Chile said only a few weeks ago that it was "natural"
for her country to vote for Venezuela;
until Venezuelan built military bases in Bolivia would have made it
supernatural for that vote to stay the course. And all signs are that her hear
was with the revolution, but realpolitik won. And even the
naie and sometime silly, Spanish Primer Minister Zapatero, had no recourse but
to back out of supporting Chavez, and surprising everyone by
announcing that country's vote for Guatemala. Not that Zapatero is
pro-US as his recent snub
of the US flag shows, but it is difficult to defend Chavez' democratic credentials
by now. You see, setting aside recent sulphuric and somewhat satanic performances
at the recent UN meeting, Chavez' Government has simply refused to recognize the
elections in Peru and Mexico, establishing
a new and spurious criteria of only accepting the elections of his friends and buddies. A
peculiar form of democracy and democratic ideals indeed. Thus, the
world is slowly watching and discovering what Venezuelans have known all long
and has been the subject of this blog for four years. This Government knows how
to buy democracy, but not how to practice it. Witness this weekends rushed
inauguration
of the Caracas-Tuy train system. A train that stops nowhere, except at the endpoints,
because the other stations are simply not ready. A train that will only
function a few hours in the morning and the same in the afternoon, because not
even the personnel is trained yet. But it had to be readied for electoral
purposes. Oh yes! The
train is free! But not for the reason you are thinking with your dirty mind. It is not populism. It is free for the simple reason that the token/ticketing system is
not ready yet, it has not been finished. A country that managed to install the most complex, efficient,
intimidating and useless fingerprint electoral system in the world in only six
weeks in 2004, is incapable of doing the same thing for a simple pay-and-spit-the-token-system
for the trains. It is just a matter of priorities and devious attention to the
right problem. Politics always rules. It just sounds neat to make it free, to
the jealousy of most of Venezuela
who could care less about that train. And we
come down to the subject of accountability. Will the Venezuelan people make the
Government pay for it? How much did this experiment in making the Lieutenant
grandiose cost us? How many promises? How much was promised? How much was paid? Of course, we will never know who reneged on their promises. What was
clear is that we as a country have lost many, many friends in the last few weeks. Hopefully,
the Lieutenant will lose an equal fraction of intended votes between now and
Dec. 3d. He deserves it.
8:21:12 PM 
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