3 days to election day

El Carabobeno reports about the military caudillo in Carabobo

Today is supposed to be the last day of the campaign. The military caudillo went to Valencia, Venezuela's third largest city, to promote his candidates for the general assembly. Completely against the rule of law, the regime is using in the most shameless way state resources to gain votes: the mayor of Valencia sent all his workers to clean the city (he doesn't do it otherwise), to "motivate people", to distribute propaganda.

Tomorrow, the national government will sell food at well below market prices in all municipalities of Carabobo. It will do the same in all the other key regions where it is not sure about obtaining enough seats.

The caudillo said the Sunday elections are just a prelude for his reelection in 2012 and for "recovering" the governments of San Diego and Naguanagua's municipalities as well as the Carabobo governorship in the regional elections of the same year.

The Electoral Council said it would not do ballot checks for the votes going to list candidates- the only ones that give a proportional representation-. It only wants to carry out "random" checks for the nominal lists, which are the product of gerrymander. If 54% of Carabobo's people vote for the alternative parties, they may end up getting only 2 of the 10 representatives for the state and the military regime would end up getting the other 8 representatives (thus 80%) with just 46% of the votes.

If the alternative forces manage to perform a miracle in Southern Valencia and Libertador and the CNE does not steal too many votes, we could get 6 seats.

What to expect?

This will happen:

• the military will cajole as usual the alternative forces everywhere and specially in the areas where they have less representatives.
• the military forces will prevent the counting of votes in many places in Valencia's South and in Tocuyito, in Guacara and Puerto Cabello as well as in similar areas all around Venezuela.
• the CNE will punish the alternative forces for any formality, no matter how ridiculous and no matter how shameless the military regime behaves.
• the CNE will try to refuse the presence of observers in the key centres at state and national level.
• the CNE will simply not pay attention to complains about military misconducts and about shameless use of state resources to favour Chávez candidates.
• Chávez hordes will attack opposition strongholds specially in key areas such as Valencia and San Diego once results are announced and they will try to do as much harm as possible as the regional polices will have to remain in their headquarters unarmed and the military forces will turn a blind eye to the Chávez Sturmtruppen.
• The CNE will be late at publishing results if it sees they are not favourable enough for the military regime.
• The CNE will try to forget about counting votes of Venezuelans abroad and Venezuelans abroad will have to denounce the military regime for results to appear.

In spite of all this, I ask Venezuelans in the country and abroad to go massively to vote, to document any abuse by the military regime, by the CNE and state authorities and to prepare themselves to defend the state of law.

Daniel Duquenal has carried out forecasts about possible results and he just published a general analysis of the nation's mood and his.

Below you see the puppet Asamblea we have now. Less than a dozen representatives form some form of opposition to the military regime.

Daniel predicts the alternative forces will get about 69 seats now - only 69 because of all the gerrymandering, cajoling and the rest. I think we can very well get more, but it will only be possible if we all make an extra effort to motivate people in the key areas and if we make clear to the regime we will document every single violation of the law and human rights.

In any case, the military regime will try to emasculate the National Assembly. The alternative forces should not see 26 September as anything but the first step towards taking Venezuela onto the path of democracy and sustainable development.

Until the start of 2012 we will have a puppet National Assembly

Let's bring pluralism and real debates