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General Vzla. politics thread
I get the feeling there'll be lots to update from now on.
Maduro can now enact enabling laws.
He is Carlos Flores, who will be known to history as Deputee 99, who betrayed the nation for thirty silver coins.
By the way, a couple days ago some shelved accusations were dismissed, about corruption cases involving Diosdado as governor, obviously part of the bargain.
Edit: To elaborate, he's deputee María Aranguren's substitute, who had her immunity revoked two days ago. Both were elected through red votes (representing 48% of the electorate, dead or not), so I guess he isn't exactly a traitor. Deputees Hernan Núñez, Jesús Paraqueima and William "o Judas" Ojeda are, however.
Comments
I looked at the title and thought it would be about vuvuzela politics.
So I take it the local government election didn't go well?
I don't actually understand the division of power with the committee that approved his godmodding powers; with the first vote they were able to have him slashing prices/enforcing said pricecuts with the military, so what did the second vote do exactly? Just this?
It probably didn't, but what I'm getting at is that that 48% figure, the nationwide percent of red votes, includes however many dead voters there were (and multi-voters and all that).
The prices thing doesn't have to do with Maduro's enabling laws, or any other law for that matter, it's just an arbitrariety he's committing.
Also, apparently a bunch of people including me was wrong and the second vote for those laws is still pending, expected to be this Tuesday.
Edit: However, one of the future enabling laws he's spouting about is precisely to stop that, charging excessively profiting prices ("usury"). This may be were your confusion is coming from.
So congrats to Maduro then?
So, the first Enabling Law is here, for limiting profit margins (varies per sector, max is 30% (the usual retort is to tell them to sell oil at ~$15 per barrel)), the next law will be to monopolize foreign trade (which will make this look insignificant).
So I guess it's finally happened, the next few months will decide if socialism is here to stay. Assuming these get enforced (many don't), it'll be protest time...
Fitting that it'd happen on University Students' Day, commemorating such a protest.
* There's now an eutv.net internet TV channel, made by El Universal, one of the most prominent (opposition) newspapers. I haven't heard a thing from that other upcoming opposition internet TV channel lately, though.
* Violence reported at a manifestation for the receivement of municipal MUD candidate Miguel Cocchiola, with socialist thugs shootings, burning shit (including attempting to burn Capriles' bus) and once again the National Bolivarian Guard attacking and detaining a reporter. AFAIK nobody was seriously injured.
* While we're on it, Capriles' campaign travel manager was abruptly arrested in the wee hours through a police operation thing, released later that day. Presumably as a form of intimidation for the opposition at large, which was having a nationwide manifestation that day, against government bullshit in general. If you're curious, there's ambivalence as to how successful that manifestation was.
* Just now, candidate for councilman José Chirinos has been killed.
Is the death of candidates something unusual or normal? Serious question.
Not normal. "For now."
Mind you, he was "just" a councilman candidate, it's likely that the central government didn't have to do with this (except indirectly through impunity) or that he was a victim of criminality (which also makes the central government indirectly responsible by neglecting it). I'm bringing it up since it adds to the recent ramp up in political violence.
Regardless there are a bunch of instances of candidates having bullshit cases opened against them, getting them unelectable for public positions (no sentence otherwise). Just last week it happened to mayor candidate David Uzcátegui (dunno how justifiable his charge was). 2012's presidential precandidate Leopoldo López is another notable example (unjustifiably charged).
While we're talking about that sort of thing, there was this noteworthy case of Manuel Rosales (then mayor of Maracaibo, an important municipality, had been presidential candidate) who was accused of conspiring to kill chabes, prompting him to famously declare "if I'm killed and I die, I responsibilize this government", before fleeing to Perú.
(His wife won the upcoming elections, suckers.)
Also, about that shooting thing, I remember there was another incident earlier this year with shootings during a civic assembly Capriles was in (again, nobody was seriously injured), in the same state as the one above, whose red governor is said to have a bunch of mafia connections (more than usual). Hmmm...
MUD campaign managers were wise to make their slogan for these elections be "May nothing stop you."
Edit: That detained reporter above has been released.
For the record, there's also been a bunch of cases of important public functionaries being assaulted, just yesterday there was this case with one of their most important candidates and minister of information and communication until a few months ago.
Regardless, yesterday MUD manager and retired general Ramón Lozada Saavedra was kidnapped, reportedly by intelligence agents.
There was also this recent case of a banker (one of the few openly oppository ones) having his home raided by other intelligence agents, state police and "people's power", a bunch of random people they found around to accuse him of conspiring.
On a different note, the military has had their wages raised, again. I think it's the third time this year.
Edit: Of course, all that violent rethoric and scapegoating should probably add to cases of government-sponsored political violence.
Would you say this level of instability is roughly normal, slightly above normal, or severely above normal?
It's been a really crazy year in many ways, things didn't feel unstable at all before, not since 2007 at least. Let's see:
* Protests are more common now, specially from officialist sectors, though mostly disconnected ones over specific stuff.
* About the military thing, it's kind of a mystery inside there but I can't really remember such obvious attempts at appeasing them. Dunno what to make out of the Guyana thing.
* The government seems disjointed in many ways, with inner purges and functionaries publicly contradicting each other within hours. It's kind of weird.
* The reds have really ramped up the militaristic rethoric, confrontation, intimidation and polarization (socialists call it "class struggle"), all of which were bad enough to begin with, interpreted by many as signs of weakness.
* Then there was the government-sponsored looting, which they apparently felt was getting out hand.
* I think it's also worth pointing out that the opposition is much more radical now, as you can tell from my change in posting habits. There are now protests (if modest) not against things the government issues, but against the government itself, something that didn't happen since its de-radicalization ages ago, and the MUD is opening up to that form of active opposition, if timidly.
So, I guess I don't know how unstable things really are, after all I'm relying on rumors and the assumption that a bunch of these hints are what they look like to the extent they look like. So... somewhat more unstable as normal I guess.
Also, whatever I tell you will have considerably changed by early 2014 after our economic situation becomes substantially worse. While we're at it, I know I've been wishing for an economic nicollapse, but I've kinda internalized the fact that it wouldn't necessarily imply the regime's downfall. Oh well...
Well, at the very least it seems that people are quite a bit more open with their dissatisfaction about various things.
That there is. Then again, governments tend to answer complaints with either debates or bullets. Really hope it's the former.
There's also agreeing with protestors to conditions you won't fulfill, mounting parallel representatives of protesting groups, demonization, intimidation, judicial threats, or just ignoring protests for as long as possible. If protestors can put up through that, they often do get their wishes granted. We university folk will probably have to put up through it again soon. Good times.
While we're talking about putting up with bullshit, a governor is going to implement another rationing system, over border smuggling. It's the third time they bring the idea up (including that one over which I raged at IJBMer Updates), being rejected the other times. I hope it goes the same way now.
*Colonel Emilio Méndez was reportedly kidnapped by Direction of Military Intelligence agents, and was later released on the streets all gagged up. According to the rumor mill, Sergeant Jesús Pérez and Major (as in military rank) José Parra have disappeared too. General Ramón Lozada Saavedra hasn't shown up either. That's four militarymen disappearing recently, all are supposedly close to the very controversial now-oppositor General Raúl Baduel.
* There was another call for manifestations (three so far) by the #SelfConvoked (i.e. Twitter oppositors). Apparently there was violence at Caracas' assembly by officialist thugs. As expected, not many people attended since it wasn't convoked by a big name, but we gave out fliers at the one I went to so that has to count for something.
* There's now going to be price controls on comercial center slots and cars. (That last one has been on the table for a long while.)
* So, it's the final lap for municipal elections this sunday. Considered a plebiscite on Maduro's performance, a red defeat would theoretically look bad on Maduro's leadership within the PUSv, which is a good thing. Theoretically. Anyhow, considering the crazy shit they've been up to, they're apparently very important for them. I'm nervous about the outcome. It'll also be the first time I'll be able to vote (bureaucratic issues). Whatever the outcome, I'm wondering what will the MUD do during 2014 since assuming there's no call for a referendum it'll be the first year opposition parties don't have to deal with any election since forever (the two previous non-electoral years were 2011 when they had to deal with their primaries' campaign, and 2003). They're criticized a lot for being too electoralist (I agree) so I hope they don't just idle around.
About updates, uhhh, there another nationwide blackout I guess. It lasted 7 hours at home. Annoying, but a mostly uneventful week, all things considered.
Well, I'm going off to vote in a couple hours, maybe this afternoon. All in all, I don't really think we're going to get good results. With reddy red Globovisión, the hyper-populist "don't leave anything on storeshelves", higher abstention and lower oppository budget due to it being municipal elections (they have a movilization advantage due to media and logistics, plus each abstainee is a chance for a fraudulent vote), and that they probably had more dead voters prepared in case of another upset like 14-A's campaign, and overall pessimistic atmosphere, well, with all that I don't feel the prospects are good. I'd be glad to be proven wrong again. I must say it's weird how serious-business these municipal elections have become.
On a more uplifting note, the other day I went to a supply store, the storeowner had a bunch of electoral stuff plastered on the door, including one of the flyers I was giving out
Anyhow, down and left!
Back from voting.
As expected, there's a shitload of proselitism going on, both in media and in meatspace. I guess at least they didn't have Maradona advertising their side this time around. In the interest of fairness I'll mention there were a couple people around my voting center wearing a Cap-riles.
Anyhow, I can tell you in advance that absention, real absention, is huge.
Their ballot boxes are actually cardboard boxes.
I mean, this is probably very first-worldy of me to point this out, but something screams "security flaw" about it, to me.
The National Electoral Council rectors would call it a security feature.
About the first-worldy thing, elections here are actually very expensive since they're electronic. (That paper was printed by a machine, which stores data to be sent later. Needless to say, that is very controversial.)
Also apparently reportedly there's been a lot of intimidation in the past hours.
Also globalvisiontv.net
Edit: If you're wondering, the MUD swears over and over that there's no "electronic fraud" and each vote cast (legitimately or not) is a counted vote, although there are still a shitload of other issues with it and it's just plain not good having.
Results:
Note: Colored text refers to party/coalition/group colors.
Recap: The MUD had been touting these elections as a plebiscite on the central government seeking landslide participation from oppositors and disappointed ex-officialists based on their terrible, terrible performance at managing the country, having Henrique Capriles Radonski, Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado aircraft carry their candidates, and voting under a single card (MUD's), all this seeking to defeat government advantages and dead and multi voters. The PSUV has been scapegoating the shit out of everything, repression, media lockout, smokescreens, intimidation, promoting absention, having elections day be on the day Chávez did his last speech, "don't leave anything on storeshelves", downright denying voter secrecy, etc. Worth noting that many candidates completely avoided being asociated with Maduro or even the PSUV altogether, and some looked into a surrogate aircraft carrier (e.g. the governor).
Results, with 97.52% of votes and with a definite results for 257 municipalities (out of 335):
Great Patriotic Pole (GPP): 49.24%, resulting in 196 mayorships (mostly rural ones).
Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) and allies: 42.72%, resulting in 53 mayorships (mostly populous ones).
Other: 8.03%, resulting in 8 mayorships.
Abstention/Null: 41.08%
(I think by MUD allies it referes to MUD parties that did not run under the MUD card.)
Remarkable mayorships:
(Note: All the following red candidates (not counting Antonio Ecarri) are from the PSUV, the only GPP party that matters. All other candidates are MUD affiliated. If a candidate is this shade of blue, they're MUD affiliated but don't belong to any party. "Inc." stands for incumbent.)
* Maracaibo (Zulia, here):
Eveling Trejo de Rosales (Inc.) vs. Miguel Pérez Pirela
** Pérez Pirela is a parachute candidate. Also anchorman for a show full of red bullshit.
** There was controversy over who'd be the MUD candidate, it'd been agreed that it'd be Eveling de Rosales, but she'd fallen in popularity while Juan Pablo Guanipa wanted to run, eventually relenting.
Results:
Eveling de Rosales - 51.8%
Pérez Pirela - 46,62%
* Barquisimeto (Lara):
Luis Bohórquez vs. Alfredo Ramos
Results:
Alfredo Ramos - 53.12%
Luis Bohórquez - 45,89%
* Valencia (Carabobo):
Miguel Flores vs. Miguel Cocchiola
Results:
Miguel Cocchiola - 55.87%
Miguel Flores - 44,25%
* Sucre (Miranda):
Carlos Ocariz (Inc.) vs. Antonio "The Calf" Álvarez
** The Calf is another parachute candidate. Also baseball player and reggaeton singer.
Results:
Carlos Ocariz - 52,80%
The Calf - 44,51%
* El Hatillo (Miranda):
Elias Sayegh vs. David Smolansky vs. Diana D'Agostino vs. Hector Catalán vs. Miguel Ángel Mariño
** The MUD free-for-all is because candidate José Manuel Hernández passed away shortly after winning their primaries. They were expecting to win anyways so no further primaries.
** Elias Sayegh is controversial for asphalting roads as his electoral campaign, and that's before getting into unknown funding or not being the current mayor.
Results:
David Smolansky - 43,81%
Elias Sayegh- 31,01%
Miguel Ángel Mariño - 11,83%
* Baruta (Miranda and Capital District):
Gerardo Blyde (Inc.) vs. Winston Vallenilla
** The MUD candidate at first was going to be David Uzcátegui, controversial for running while having a sentence against him (don't know if justifiably) that would make him unelectable if the Supreme Tribunal of Justice decided so, which it did about three weeks before elections day.
** Winston Vallenilla is yet another parachute candidate. Also TV announcer. Had been one at RCTV, in fact.
Results:
Gerardo Blyde - 79,74% (!)
Winston Vallenilla - 19,28%
* Libertador (Capital District):
Jorge Rodríguez (Inc.) vs. Ismael "Maisanta" García
** Noteworthy that Antonio Ecarri (MUD affiliated) was going to be a controversial third candidate until three weeks or so before elections day (eventful week).
Results:
Jorge Rodríguez - 54.55%
Ismael Garcia - 43,34%
* Greater Mayorship (some sort of Caracas governorship, until they stripped it of much of its authority anyways after Antonio Ledezma won it):
Antonio Ledezma (Inc.) vs. Ernesto Villegas
Results:
Antonio Ledezma - 50.8%
Ernesto Villegas - 47,26%
So... a lot will be said about who is victorious, how much of a difference fraudulent votes and miscellaneous government bullshit make, how emblematic those emblematic municipalities were, how to count independent votes, how much of an advancement for the MUD it is, and all that, but all in all due to the popular vote defeat I consider this a considerable failure for us...
Do the MUD and its allies now control mayorships serving a majority of the people? If not, how close have they come?
I've been trying to find that out all day long, to no avail. I'll tell you when I do
Anyhow, some notes:
* As usual, a bunch of irregularities were reported around closing time for voting centers. Not to mention a shooting with two casualties.
* For some reason I really liked using that color coding. I'm going to keep at it for a while.
* 41% (official) abstention is actually what would be expected for municipal/regional elections standards. Apparently people followed the MUD's recommended voting schedules for scattered assistance (to deter fraud) and things reportedly looked up later throughout the afternoon.
* Barinas (Barinas), officialist symbol and capital of the state chabes was born in, was won by José Luis Machín. On the Day of Loyalty to Chávez. Good job, and do your best!
* Eveling is not that good. Maybe if they'd chosen somebody more mayorly, less hateable than Pérez Pirela, they'd have gotten it, which would've been bad because it's an oppository bastion. She better picks up, or...
* I don't think I've mentioned this yet. One of the PSUV' obsessions are "communes", paramunicipalities (in line with a bunch of other parallel institutions). "For now" they're just some hypothetical, but...
* Anyhow, reading what other oppositors have to say, I'm feeling somewhat better now. We didn't lose any mayor in any important municipality, won a few important ones, renewed councilmen (for some reason the last time they were elected was 2004), Barinas, and increase in absolute number of municipalities. Also, I don't know what that "Other" coalition is that I've never heard of, but I wouldn't be surprised if it includes a good chunk of the MUD and none of the GPP, can't wait for someone to unravel it up. Overall, I think the results ended up in the optimistic side of what I was expecting under the negative outlook I had earlier. The economic mess isn't making people wish for a change as much as it should, which is terrible in itself, but however slowly, this shows that the opposition is still advancing despite all the roadblocks (or burning the bus altogether). Plus, Winston's face probably looked like this:
Reminds me of how, for a while, George W. Bush was represented by a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
If these parties also show up in a parliamentary system, I expect some hostage-taking over particular issues in order to form a governing coalition, if no one has an outright majority.
Officialists have a majority (out of 165 seats, 98 plus a Deputee 99).
Regardless, what I'm getting at is that there's no info on what exactly are these votes. (Non-MUD cards voting for MUD candidates? MUD-party-cards voting for non-MUD candidates? Are they tallied analogously for the GPP?)
Edit: And for good measure, what about candidates from MUD parties running outside the MUD?
Small update:
* Not 24 hours after elections, they're talking about raising those prices. You know, those. Gasoline prices.
* For a consolation price, Ernesto Villegas has been declared Minister for the Transformation of Caracas. Making him minister number thirty-something.
* Also worth noting that the MUD lost many municipalities in Miranda. Maybe it had to do with Capriles campaigning elsewhere rather than being their governor?
Anyhow, I'm worried that these might be the last elections we'll have. One of the many parts of Mario Silva's audio that I'll forever remember is this:
So, I've been thinking how handy elections have been and specially the latest ones. Even though I don't think a presidential electoral victory would go as smoothly as Mario puts it, but the government has had to spend an arm and a leg so as to please the electorate (like the gasoline subsidy), money that doesn't go to clientelist purposes, increasing state control, or funding their expansionist project. And hey, perhaps Coma Andante Chávez is rotting now because he was too stubbornly busy on last year's campaign to get treatment. So yeah, they're pretty useful, but the reds now have plenty of time to do something about those little hindrances, so as usual, I'm worried.
y r u saign such nast htigns about the Commander (woot! ^_^) you capatilist FASSIST?!!!!1
Also, earlier today Maduro threatened Capriles (making it the 24924th officialist threat recently) for exactly that reason, mocking the Galactic Commander (more specifically, pointing out that Maduro, Villegas and co. that he was fine and dandy shortly before his official death announcement).
Some stuff:
According to this often-well-infomed journalist, they at the National Electoral Council had orders to fudge up numbers a bit and work around the "other" category so as to show an officialist victory. I wonder why AFAIK nobody has bothered tallying votes by card, candidate affiliation, etc. yet.
Villegas is actually minister #40
And finally, General Lozada has been found.
(Also, I've wanted to use that macro since forever.)
Edit: To clarify, what Maduro threatened Capriles with was imprisonment.
Huh, the Central Bank hasn't given inflation figures yet, three days past its deadline. Anyhow, those elections really gave much to talk about.
As expected, that dialogue between municipal and central governments that Maduro talked about doesn't seem like it's going to happen.
Pérez Pirela has been assigned "Maracaibo's Protector", so that's another municipality with a parallel mayorship (and with Ernesto Villegas', the Metropolitan Mayorship has two).
Valencia's mayorship (the one Cocchiola won) had some dependencies stripped from it, and had accountability books, bills, contracts and other corruption evidence taken away.
Barquismeto's mayorship (the one Alfredo Ramos won) had a bunch of equipment and goods taken from it.
On the this side of the fence, there was also this case of Sosa's mayorship seat building being burnt after Wilfredo Guevara got reelected.
Some numbers (updated, but still incomplete) on election results. If we take each tendency's votes to mean votes for parties that clearly favoured one tendency in their candidates... the opposition actually lost by a greater percentage (51.70% vs. 41.77% vs. 6.53%).
And I must say I'm dissappointed that something like organized looting really works out for them...
Anyhow, after the shit that's been going on there's going to be reorganization within the MUD and a possible change in management and leadership, and the MUD's secretary general Ramón Guillermo Aveledo (old elections guy) has talked about resigning. I guess they don't consider it much of a victory. So yeah, things are going to change quite a bit. I'm nervous. Whatever comes next, at the very least I hope they get more involved in assisting civil society in fighting back government abuses, it's often very infuriating how passive they are towards that. And of course, it's also important that they don't disband.
So, I'm not feeling well...
So... the ones who increasingly stand up within the MUD besides Capriles are Leopoldo López and María Corina, the other parts of the Trilogy of Evil. If you're curious about them I'll describe them a bit, if you're not curious ignore:
* Henrique Capriles Radonski, ex-mayor and current governor president, speaks about progress, change, national unity, tolerance regardless of political affiliation, not getting extorted by the state (specially public employees), how terrible officialists have been at governing, gladly taking the cheap/free shit the government offers for elections and still voting against them, etc., is rather populist (but less so than the reds, it's hard not to), has a "cool guy" image, as you can tell from how he dresses or from his trademark tricoloured cap above (which by now is something of an general opposition symbol), is head of the currently largest MUD party Primero Justicia (Justice First, progressivists, their members are called Justice Keepers). Overall is on the softie side of the opposition, mostly focusing on electoral campaigns by trying to convince people who simply want a better quality of life to vote for his side. Gets called a gay CIA agent very often.
* Leopoldo López, ex-mayor, somewhat similar to Capriles but more proactive, more eager to criticize the government's arbitrarieties, dresses normally, promotes and calls for protests and has been speaking in terms of civil resistance recently, something of a "rebel guy", created and manages the major MUD party Voluntad Popular (Popular Will, progressivists, my favourites, splintered from Justice First, sometimes organize protests, put more focus on social revindications, slowly but surely form networks reaching out to rural areas that the opposition has had hard time getting to, as these elections demonstrated). Might have been 2012's presidential candidate if they hadn't made him unelectable. Capriles' Vice-President. Looks like a stoner.
* María Corina Machado, most-voted deputee, by far the most outspoken oppositor of note (example), one of the few right-wingers within the MUD (is she one? my political compass might be messed up) and is their foreign relations manager and head of their parliamentary block, had been presidential precandidate, promotes protests (but doesn't call for or organize them) and openly sees them as a possible "non-electoral way out" of the regime (after all, she's a signatory of the infamous Carmona Decree), she's one way or another heavily involved with Vente Venezuela (Come Venezuela, small and not a party, liberals or something, their members are called Ventezuelans
). All in all, she represents the radical side of the opposition, in stark contrast with the rest of the MUD. As you can guess, not many chavists like her, which would be a problem.
So, as things get more civil resistancey, Leopoldo and MariCori have been getting more prominent (it's hard not to after this). Of course, someone else entirely could take the reins. Or disband.
2014 is going to be an eventful year...
Edit: I'd like to remind you that Wikipedia pages for contentious issues are unreliable, and although that one above is a page which I accept, it doesn't get more contentious than April 2002. Citing Eva Golinger unironically...