Fausta's Blog

According to star political consultant J.J. Rendón, “the most important of all” 27 presidential campaigns he’s been involved with.

Important enough he’s working pro-bono.

You can watch the interview in Spanish,
part 1,

part 2,

part 3,

Follow him on Twitter

In the interview, Rendón forecasted that Capriles will win by a wide enough margin that fraud won’t matter. Last October Capriles got 6 million votes.

The army’s setting up the polling places:

Venezuelan citizens living in Florida travelled to New Orleans to vote at that consulate.

I stand by my prediction, but I fervently hope J.J. Rendón is right.

UPDATE,
Right on time for the polls to open, Chavista gangs take over electrical power plants (my translation: if you use it, please link to this post and credit me),

The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, Venezuelan United Socialist Party, the chavistas) mobilized its militants to take over the electrical power plants, which it would do in complicity with the Army, as the government announced that the military were in charge of protecting the locations.

The article goes in detail on how the government is making sure Maduro is “elected.”

Linked by Extranos Alley. Thank you!

Ecuador Times:

Juan Aranda, head of campaign in the Tachira State of the current presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles, was killed on tuesday morning, after been kidnapped by two individuals who were impersonating police officers.

This is a warning to Capriles: if you disavow or challenge the result of the April 14th election, you’re dead.

As I said yesterday, the election is rigged. Capriles, who is no fool, is campaigning, knowing this. His only tactic, after the results are in, would be to challenge the results.

Former election board judge Ana Mercedes Diaz said as much in last night’s Bayly show (in Spanish),

Just yesterday National Assembly head Diosdado Cabello was saying that (starting at the 1:18 mark in the YouTube, my translation, if you use this, please credit me and link to this post)

“We want to make a healthy warning. Because for us, it’s very easy to have this information, locate each of these people, and we have located them, we know your names, last name, where they live, where they go, with whom they go, and in the moment they do, we let them do and we take action. Not a slap on the hand, no, drastic action against those who attempt to act against the nation’s peace and security.”

When asked how would anyone attempt to, Cabello specifically stated “by challenging the results of the election.”

Cabello says at the end of the clip,”We’re very clear on what we’ll do… we’ll do whatever we must do.”

Thug.

UPDATE,
Linked by Neoneocon. Thank you!

It’s no coincidence that the elevation of Hugo Chávez to idolatry status is timed to next Sunday’s election.

The cult of adoration reaches a fever pitch as next Sunday approaches, and the election’s timing is no coincidence, in what Caracas Chronicles named “the red canonization“.

Erik Svane of No Pasarán posts on how those frequenting the chavista-run shrine assert that “We Declare Ouselves the Apostles” of Saint Hugo Chávez, “the Christ of the Poor”.

Which brings us to the question, why April 14th?

Erik translates from Marie Delcas’s article in Le Monde (emphasis added)

This polling day turns out to be an important day in the Chávez calendar. Ousted by a coup on 11 April 2002, Hugo Chávez returned a hero on Sunday 14 early in the morning. For Nicolas Maduro, April 14 will be “the Sunday of Resurrection, the Sunday of popular victory, the Sunday of Christ the Redeemer of the poor in Latin America.”

The meaning of April 14th is the apotheosis of the newly-enshrined Hugo Chávez.

Henrique Capriles has been running a good campaign with huge turnout at the rallies,

where he asks his supporters to stay at the polls until after the ballots are counted, yet the race is tightening quickly, but not quickly enough for Capriles to win.

My prediction?

This is a game with loaded dice.

Maduro’s victory – starting with his naming the symbolic April 14th as election day – is accounted for, way ahead of time.

I hope I’m wrong.

UPDATE,
Venezuela: Timidity and Sub-Standard Election Observation

it is most likely that the upcoming electoral process in Venezuela will not have an international observer capable of condemning the unfair tactics of the incumbent government to prevent a free and fair contest.

Noticias24 posts the AFP graphic, with Caracas showing the highest rate,

Map of Violence in Venezuela
Venezuela boasts record numbers of violence and insecureness
2012: 20,692 dead

Click on photo to enlarge.

Compare with Mexico.

In preparation for Sunday’s election, the government prohibits carrying weapons, and liquor sales,

Se prohibe el porte de armas y venta de licoresMás información en breve por #VTV twitter.com/JAIVERLOPEZ/st… – @jaiverlopez

— VTVCANAL8 (@VTVcanal8) April 9, 2013

Last week Venezuela’s acting president and presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro officially inaugurated his campaign by publicly stating that Hugo Chavez had spoken to him in the form of a bird (but apparently not as a parrot). In the spirit of the occasion (all puns intended), and in keeping with a red Chavista shirt theme, I’m illustrating this week’s Carnival with the most famous red bird of all, the Angry Bird, instead of the usual map.

ARGENTINA
Argentina floods ‘catastrophe’ for La Plata, Buenos Aires
Emergency workers in Argentina continue to try to rescue residents stranded by flooding in Buenos Aires and La Plata

Pope Francis calls for aid for Argentina flood victims
Pope Francis has appealed for “civil and ecclesiastical institutions, as well as people of good will”, to provide help to the victims of devastating flooding in Argentina that has left dozens dead.

Fears Ease of a Default by Argentina

BOLIVIA
Colombianos manejan una red de préstamos en Santa Cruz de la Sierra

BRAZIL
Rio Charges Three Men With Attack on American, French Visitors
Rio de Janeiro police said they have arrested a third suspect and sidelined two police officers after the rape of an American woman over the weekend.

CHILE
Smoking in Latin America
Stubbed out
A bastion of tobacco addiction introduces a ban

COLOMBIA
Santos´ invisible and elitist cabinet

CUBA
Religious persecution in Cuba rises in 2012

Beyonce, Jay-Z turn heads in Havana

Washington’s 51-year embargo makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to visit Cuba for mere tourism, although tens of thousands of Americans travel there each year on academic, religious, journalistic or cultural exchange licenses.

Social Security says benefits can’t be sent to Havana
The U.S. Social Security Administration makes it clear that benefits cannot be collected in Cuba.

ECUADOR
Chevron Embargo Would Not Affect YPF Deal -Ecuador Plaintiffs
A freeze on Chevron’s funds in Argentina would not include any future investments the company would make in the country, according to a lawyer representing the Ecuadorian plaintiffs in the case behind the freeze.

GUATEMALA
Guatemala strongman trial hears litany of horrors

MEXICO
Are the Kaufman County Murders Connected To The Mexican Drug Cartels?

REPORT: MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS BEHIND INCREASING VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES

Mexico’s new president
Peña’s promising start
A lot done, and quickly, but much more still to do

PARAGUAY
Paraguay’s electoral alliances and land deals

PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico-Born Labrador Top Republican on Immigration

Puerto Rico moves to overhaul public pensions

URUGUAY
Controversia por dura frase de presidente de Uruguay sobre Cristina Fernández
El mandatario uruguayo no se dio cuenta que los micrófonos estaban abiertos y se escuchó en la transmisión en vivo de una conferencia de prensa al sentenciar: “Esta vieja es peor que el tuerto”

VENEZUELA
Venezuela’s snap election still pretty much all about Chavez

Nicolás Maduro Decide Solamente Decir “Chávez” Hasta Que Acaben Las Elecciones

Denuncian a Maduro de ser un agente de Cuba, fotos, video y audio

The week’s posts and podcast
Venezuela: And now the Macarapana curse

Uruguay: Open-mic fail

Cuba: Beyonce’s no-no

Maduro: Cuba’s Venezuelan Pawn

Cuba: More repression

Thursday night tango and blogging

Yoani Sanchez in Jaime Bayly’s show: en español

Crazy cult campaigning in Caracas: The shrine

Venezuela: Maduro opens his campaign by saying he talked to Chavez, who is now a bird UPDATED

Uruguay: Same-sex marriage approved by Senate

Argentina: Cristina’s discomfort

Podcast: Silvio Canto‘s

After saying that Hugo Chavez made Jesus choose an Argentinian Pope and later turned into a bird (Chavez, not Jesus or the Pope), now Maduro’s placed an oath on “anyone voting against” him.

He wore a funny hat for the occasion:

Wearing a local indigenous hat at a rally in Amazonas state, a largely jungle territory on the borders of Brazil and Colombia, Mr Maduro said: “If anyone among the people votes against Nicolas Maduro, he is voting against himself, and the curse of Maracapana is falling on him.”

He was referring to a 16th Century battle when Spanish colonial fighters defeated indigenous fighters decisively.

“If the bourgeoisie win, they are going to privatise health and education, they are going to take land from the Indians, the curse of Maracapana would come on you,” the candidate continued.

While he was at it, he claimed to be “the grandson of enslaved indian women.” Venezuela abolished slavery in 1854. Colombia abolished slavery in 1851. His mother was born in Colombia in 1929 and his father graduated from high school, also in Colombia, in 1947, so it is a physical impossibility for Maduro (born in 1960) to have had a grandmother at least 106 years old.

Either Maduro’s nuts, or he has such a void of ideas that the only things he’s got left to campaign on are ignorance and superstition.

You take your pick.

You would think the Cuban propaganda machine would have come up with something better, but then, they don’t do elections in Cuba, they only do “elections”.

But back to the curse, I’m not sure what the hey he’s talking about, either. The battle of Maracapana took place in 1567, when the Spanish army massacred thousands of indians. Unlike the legends around King Tut, there have been (as far as I could find as of the writing of this post), no legends associated with that specific massacre. This website says “the bourgeoisie is the curse”.

Which makes sense if you’re a Communist.

Whatever.

Getting under Maduro’s skin is the very clear-minded Puerto Rican musician Willie Colon, who has extensive ties to Venezuela and has become an indefatigable twitterer.

Para Capriles y Venezuela aqui te estoy mandando. ATACA FLACO! soundcloud.com/mentirafresca/… #mentirafresca

— Willie Colón (@williecolon) April 6, 2013

Willie’s written a song for Capriles’s campaign, where he calls Maduro “Fresh Lie”,

Hard-hitting, and you can dance to it, too!

I dedicate this post to Willie Colon. ¡Te dedico este post, Willie!

Hugo Chavez idolatry as a campaign tactic in the 23 de Enero slum in Caracas:
Shrine to mourn and celebrate Venezuela’s Chavez,

“He is our saint of the poor,” says Eva Garcia, 45, who tends to the shrine each day after her shift at the local municipal offices as a community organizer.

As I predicted months ago, Chavez is joining Che in the Communist Idol show.

The Maduro campaign manipulates the poor’s ignorance and superstition,

To each and every visitor, Garcia hands out a copy of Chavez’s official agenda for the 2013-2019 presidential term he won’t complete. She also offers a handbill with Chavez’s last public remarks in December, in which he named Maduro his chosen successor.

The red canonization continues,

The Maternity & Children’s Hospital in the Western Caracas neighborhood of El Valle (seen in the picture left) is set to finally be opened to the public after 23 years in construction (14 of them under current management).

If they followed the old custom and named it after the leader who started the job, they’d call it the Maternidad Carlos Andres Pérez Rodríguez Hospital. Ermm…no chance of that.

Can you guess the new name they’ve when it opens? Yup: Comandante Supremo Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías.

Meanwhile, Roy Chaderton, Venezuela’s Ambassador to the OAS, is bellyaching about the opposition’s unfair advantage in the campaign.

No birds were harmed in the writing of this post.

Here is Venezuela’s acting president and presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro (in Spanish), along with bird whistles and sound effects,

You can’t make this corny, stupid, silly stuff up:

Maduro Says Chavez as a Bird Blessed His Bid to Head Venezuela

“I felt his spirit,” Maduro said in a televised speech broadcast from Chavez’s former home in the town of Sabaneta. “I felt him there as though he were giving us a blessing, saying to us: ‘Today the battle begins. Onwards to victory. You have our blessing.’”

Maduro may be trying too hard to build a cult of adoration and making people believe that from the grave Chavez directs his people to vote for Maduro, so he’s not paying attention to how crazy that sounds to non-Chavistas.

In case you think Maduro’s little bird doesn’t sound crazy to Latin Americans, I guarantee you that, to other Latin Americans he sounds like he’s flying over the cuckoo’s nest – as we mentioned in yesterday’s podcast (audio starts right away). To Venezuelans, Caracas Chronicles stated,

In the last couple of weeks, it has become increasingly clear that the Maduro campaign has bought a one-way ticket on the Mental Express.

It took no time for Jaime Bayly to riff on it,

Venezuelan political satire website El Chiguirre Bipolar threw the towel and declared they can’t come up with a better joke.

So, it’s one of two things:
Either Maduro is so certain that the April 14 election outcome will not be affected by crazy talk,
Or, Maduro’s panicking.

Time will tell.

UPDATE

Largas colas para hablar con Maduro twitter.com/Fausta/status/…

— Fausta (@Fausta) April 4, 2013

Linked by HACER. Thank you!

Capriles is still governor of Miranda, but Venezuelans voted heavily for Chávez allies in regional elections
Allies of Venezuela President Hugo Chávez won almost all 23 governors’ races in elections on Sunday.

Venezuela’s ruling party had vowed to sweep the nation’s key governors’ race as a tribute to their stricken leader President Hugo Chávez who is convalescing in a Cuban hospital.

On Sunday, it made good on that promise, winning 20 of 23 states and punching into opposition strongholds, according to preliminary results.

“Chavismo, the force of the nation, won a crushing majority,” said Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the national campaign for the ruling Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela. “This is a victory for all of Venezuela but particularly a victory for Chávez.”

Boz posts,

Outside of that [Capriles's] one high profile race, the election was a disaster for the opposition. The PSUV won 20 of 23 governor races. The national opposition seems disheartened by its recent presidential election loss. Certain opposition leaders linked to old party structures failed to deliver. One key loser was Governor Pablo Perez in Zulia. The person who came in second place in the opposition presidential primary in February failed to deliver big for Capriles in the presidential election in October then lost his own reelection by a substantial margin in what should have been an opposition leaning state. His political career should be over at this point.

As of yesterday evening, “We still don’t know the official abstention number (40%+) and the total number of votes for each side.”

t was bad for the opposition to only win three Governorships. But Chavismo can’t feel good about the abstention level. From the numbers available, abstention was more than 40%. Much more than in 2008. The fact this happens so soon after the most successful election in terms of abstention for Chavismo and in the midst of Chavez’ recurrence, raises a lot of questions.

Caracas Chronicles looks at it on a state-by-state basis.

Hugo Chávez, as you may remember, is still in Cuba recuperating from his latest cancer surgery (his fourth).

As of the writing of this post, I could not find any public comments he might had made following his party’s overwhelming victory.

Dr. Jose Rafael Marquina, tweeting on Chavez’s condition, speculates that it’s “terminal cancer, life expectancy not beyond April,”

El cáncer es terminal y la expectativa de vida no es más allá de abril

— Jose Rafael Marquina (@marquina04) December 17, 2012

Chavez’s swearing-in for a new term is still scheduled for January 10. If he’s unable to serve, National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello, would take over temporarily until elections are held.

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.

Andres Oppenheimer writes about the most corrupt countries in our hemisphere (emphasis added):

among the world’s 20 least corrupt countries in the world are Germany (13th), Barbados (15th), the United Kingdom (17th) and the United States (19th), followed by Chile and Uruguay (tied in the 20th place). Bahamas is tied with France in the 22nd place.

Conversely, two thirds of Latin American countries are ranked in the bottom half of the list. Venezuela and Haiti are the most corrupt countries in the Americas and among the most corrupt in the world, tied in the 165th place with Chad, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe, according to the ranking.

Other countries in the region that fared pretty badly are Paraguay (150th), Honduras (133rd), Nicaragua (130th), Ecuador (118th), Mexico and Bolivia (tied in the 105th place) and Argentina (102nd).

Why are Barbados, Chile and Uruguay less corrupt than other countries in the region, I asked Alejandro Salas, a Transparency International official in charge of Latin America.

Salas told me that it’s mainly because these democracies have powerful systems of checks and balances, with independent judiciaries, assertive legislative branches, and a free press.

“There’s no mysterious formula, other than allowing democracy to work,” Salas said. “That’s why there is such a stark contrast between these three countries and Venezuela, where the opposite is taking place.”

Frequent readers of this blog know that Hugo Chavez controls all the branches of government, and has persecuted journalists who oppose him.

But now that Chavez “delegated” power for health reasons, what’s to come next? Monica Showalter of IBD answers that question,
Venezuela Without Chavez: Chaos The Most Likely Successor

Every critical institution in the country — from the courts, the congress and the media to the central bank, the state oil company and the largest industries — has long been suborned to Chavez’s will. No longer do they function on their own merits.

Much like Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, Venezuela is a classic case of what Nikita Khrushchev called a “cult of personality.”
As a result, these institutions are in ruins. The electricity company no longer functions, the oil company is losing production, the currency is poised to crash, industry is on its last legs and some 60% of the country’s oil earnings go to buying imports.

In short, Venezuela is headed for a hard fall, and the current shift in leadership will be — as one local observer put it — like switching bus drivers on a bus hurtling downhill without breaks and a broken steering wheel. The problem’s not just the driver, it’s the entire bus too.

The BBC looks at the issue of succession vis-a-vis the upcoming governorship election, since right now it’s unclear if Chavez himself would even be sworn in on January 10.

Uncertainty reigns in Venezuela.

Over in Bolivia, Sean Penn was at a prayer vigil for Hugo.

Sean ought to be praying for Venezuela.

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.