As we mentioned earlier, Jimmy Carter, who honestly thinks he is making a better job as ex president than what he did as president, said Venezuela has the best voting system on Earth.
It's because of the paper trail and the fancy "voting machines".
In the picture above you can see a couple of the hundreds of PDVSA - i.e. state- vehicles that were kept for weeks at the PDVSA petrol distribution centre in Yagua, Carabobo. This picture was taken when state officials were about to distribute those vans all around Carabobo and neighbouring states for general campaigning and above all for the election day, when state employees and the military case will be involved in taking possible Chávez sympathizers to vote.
Although the opposition has repeatedly said the print machines used in Venezuelan elections are not connected to the voting machines proper, many people are not sure about that and fear the government can find out about their voting decision once they put their finger for scanning and go right away to the other machine. This is another obstacle democracy has to face now.
This is the kind of tricks the BBC journalist does not report about because she is basically interviewing people in Caracas, thank you very much.
Jungle Mom from Paraguay ( not sure if you will remember me) dropping by to say hello and catch up on your thoughts about the upcoming election.
ReplyDeleteHi, Jungle Mom. I hope you are fine. Results will be tight.
ReplyDeleteYou see in my posts and elsewhere how Chavismo is yet again going for very dirty methods to improve its chances: full use of state resources to get its logistics moving, forcing state employees to become propaganda workers time after time, changing the ballots in such a way that people can select Capriles' face and yet vote against him (the one party that "changed its mind" and the ballots cannot be changed), etc.
Still, Chávez will have a much harder time than he has ever had.
Whatever the outcome, it will be hard for Venezuelans. Chavistas are people prone to violence. They have always been so. If they lose, they will go into a plundering spree at a faster pace than now. They will get more weapons out of the police and the military than they have done now. They will plan possible violent actions, provoke, infiltrate (have done that previously).
If they were to win or "win", things will depend on whether we keep a cool blood and keep denouncing the massive misuse of funds and demanding pluralism and free speech or whether we panic and split. Chavismo is such an incompetent lot that the economy has to give sooner than later. And people will resent that then.
Now they don't. Now those who voted for him still have money, even if inflation has hit them as well. They won't see long term and they won't understand that whereas Caldera II had higher inflation for Venezuela, most of Latin America back then had even higher inflation but now we are absolutely in another league in Spanish America with our 22-30% inflation in spite of price control and import dumping.