Priorities for Venezuela's socialist regime

The Venezuelan regime knows where its priorities are. That's why it is spending $480,000,000 in maintenance for its Russian war planes. It will also spend Bs 6,000,000,000 in goodies for the military caste. That is equivalent to $944,000,000 or $7,600,000, depending on what exchange rate you use (I know how mental the range is).

In my city a huge amount of public schools similar to where I was as a child do not have teachers and pupils are getting their time wasted. A teacher in Venezuela doesn't earn enough to buy food for a family, much less to rent a tiny flat in a poor neighbourhood.

If this is not criminal, I do not know what is.

Bear in mind the military caste is the key element in logistics for the upcoming elections.

No wonder the regime does not want independent international observers.

Dying on Venezuela's roads

A few days back a relative of mine was murdered on the road. Some criminals threw stones to his car from a bridge. He crashed, they robbed the car. They were not found and it is highly unlikely they will be found. That bridge is well known for that kind of crimes. Many other times people die because they driving while drunk, because they drive too fast, because they do not know how to drive, because the cars are breaking apart, because the roads are full of holes.

In any case, Venezuela registered the second highest rate of traffic fatalities on Earth a few years back. What about now?

Well, now the regime has simply decided not to provide the data. This year Venezuela is, together with Ukraine and South Sudan, one of the few countries that did not report how many people die on the road.

Now, if you go to the previous report of 2013, where Venezuela still appeared, you will see Venezuela's enforcement of seat belt was among the lowest reported: 2 out of 10 times. Also, 3/4 of all fatality types are classified as "other", as opposed to "pedestrians, drivers" or the like, a figure that is usually less than 15% for other countries. It seems as if Venezuelan authorities didn't have a clue about who died why. Venezuelans do not like rules, they do not calculate risks.

This is not a joke: ministry of trade in Venezuela

Since Maduro has been in power - since early 2013 - Venezuela has had five ministers of trade:

• Alejandro Fleming
• José Khan
• Dante Rivas
• Isabel Delgado and
• David Cabello, Diosdado Cabello's brother

Diosdado Cabello's wife is the minister of tourism, by the way.

The average term for a minister in today's Venezuela is less than a year. For this ministry the average is exactly six months. That is quite shocking considering the change comes from the same functionary, not from a newly constituted government. My estimate is that David is going to outlast the previous ministers, though: the top military coupsters of 1992 and their relatives tend to last longer at any ministry than the average. 

Even Brazil is not sending official observers to Venezuela's elections in early December because there is no guarantee they would be able to do their work.

Venezuela's Electoral Council, Fraud and the Doppelgänger

Tal Cual and Efecto Cocuyo wrote about one of the many cases in which the Electoral Council, a tool of Chavismo, wants to manipulate the elections in Venezuela one more time. In one sentence: a party with a name almost exactly the same as the opposition option for a key circuit appears in the ballot box just next to the opposition and the candidate's name is exactly the same as the opposition politician. 

If you vote for one of these, you vote for the opposition. If you vote for the other, you vote against the opposition

The opposition candidate is Ismael García, for the Mesa de la Unidad or MUD in Spanish. 

As Tal Cual managed to find out, the other Ismael García, for the MinUnidad, is a 28-year old guy working at a parking lot for a pitance of a salary and with absolutely no past political activity known.

I wanted to get a better sense of what the probabilities are, really, given all the Ismael Garcías in Venezuela. I looked at all the voters' names for 2011 (we have them because the government was forced to publish them) and I saw there were 123 people called Ismael García in the whole country, only 11 in Aragua, in that region (out of about 1200000 persons who can potentially run). The chances that two people with the same name appear in the ballot next to each other with parties that share the same acronyms are, for any practical reason, zero.

So, what happened was that the regime looked for one of the 11 persons with Ismael García's name in that region and paid him to do this. And the Electoral Council, a vulgar tool for Chavismo, agreed to accept this.

This is one of the many ways Chavismo will cheat. No wonder the only "international" observers the regime wants are of those South American countries that still have a big surplus with Venezuela.

OK, I obviously got it wrong with you!

8 out of 18 persons answering to my last poll said the nationality they had when they were born was from one of the European countries I did not mention. One of the major European countries with strong links to Venezuela is Italy. Another one is the UK. Are you from there? From some other European country not mentioned in the list? I'd like to hear aobut you and where your interest for Venezuela comes from!

Venezuelas Wirtschaft 7 Wochen vor den Pseudowahlen

Die venezolanische Zentralbank hat seit Ende 2014 keine Daten zu Inflation oder Wachstum veröffentlicht. Sie kann es nicht, weil sie völlig von der Zentralregierung unter Kontrolle steht. Venezolaner haben jetzt kein Recht auf Zugang zu den Wirtschaftsdaten ihres Landes.

Da die venezolanische Regierung mit Bonds in Dollars handelt und darum gezwungen ist, einmal im Jahr den US-Amerikanern Rechenschaft zu geben, musste sie aber in einem Bericht in den Vereinigten Staaten ihre frühere Aussage relativieren, wonach die Wirtschaft im Jahr 2014 um 4% gesunken wäre. Eigentlich soll sich diese Zahl nur auf die Daten bis September handeln. Also: es ist wahrscheinlich, dass die Wirtschaft im letzten Jahr viel mehr schrumpfte als bis jetzt angegeben.

Der Vorsitzende der Zentralbank, Nelson Merentes, hatte Anfang 2014 gesagt, die Wirtschaft würde um 4% wachsen. Dieses Jahr wird noch schwieriger sein.

Maduro kundigte jetzt die Erhöhung des Mindesteinkommens um 30% an. Das ist 16399 Bolívares. Venezuela hat drei offizielle Wechselkurse, die aber kaum nützlich sind, um eine Idee zu haben, was man mit diesem Einkommen machen kann. Die Miete einer Einzimmerwohnung in einem heruntergekommenen Viertel würde mehr als doppelt so viel kosten. Mit diesem Geld könnte man nicht eine Familie von 4 Personen nicht mal 2 Wochen ernähren. Nur Benzin scheint fast kostenlos zu sein. Die meisten Menschen könnten sich aber nicht mal 2 Reifen eines Autos leisten.

Ein Professor an der Universität verdient zur Zeit höchstens dreimal so viel wie das, im Durchschnitt würde ein Informatikerdozent mit 5 Jahren Erfahrung weniger als 36000 Bolívares im Monat verdienen.

Die Politikerin von Extremlinks Sarah Wagenknecht wird wahrscheinlich sagen, dass der Kapitalismus die Schuld trägt und dass Venezuela unter einem Wirtschaftskrieg leidet.

Bald kommen die Pseudowahlen der Nationalversammlung. Man würde denken, dass die Regierung verloren hat. Das ist nicht so deutlich. Ich werde bald erklären was das Regime machen wird, um seine Macht weiter zu verteidigen.

Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas wins the Federico García Lorca Prize

This is just so cool! One of my favourite Venezuelan poets, Rafael Cadenas, from Barquisimeto, just got the prize.

Here you can read - in the language of God - an interview with him.

Congratulations, Mr Cadenas!

El Maestro Cadenas