Do you want to support more transparency in Venezuela?

Check out the Esdata site. They are doing a very valuable work. This year we will go back to the election centres and they will help us count the votes.

Because people don't keep asking the right questions

A few days ago Richard Javier Díaz Sequera, a 31-year old policeman from the state police in Carabobo, a state in central Venezuela, was murdered. Although a very tragic incident, this is nothing extraordinary in the former Land of Grace. Venezuela's murder rate is about 70 murders per 100 000 inhabitants, twice as much as the second most dangerous country in South America, Colombia. Policemen also die like flies in a country that will account for over 17 thousand murders this year.

But the governor of Carabobo, Henrique Salas, asked a good question: where did the gun that killed that policeman come from? Salas is not my cup of tea, but I have to say: hey, people, do try to give an answer to that question or keep demanding from those who should know to give an answer. Ask very loudly. And do not stop asking.

For the gun that tore apart agent Díaz's vest was a Belgian FN FAL, one like of those the Venezuelan army has.

And this is no exception. Venezuelan jails, which have been horrendous since time immemorial, are now completely lawless places, a farce of a "security institution"... and the few controls carried out there every single time massacres occur reveal a huge amount of heavy weapony, from grenades to Kalashnikovs and other automatic rifles.

The origin of most of those guns is clear: the Guardia Nacional and the Venezuelan Army.

But this question the governor is asking will be seen as just a rhetorical question or just a question people don't need to keep asking because: what's the point?

Well: the point is your  life, our life, the life of our children and friends.

Will the head of the Guardia Nacional answer? Will the minister of Defence say something clear about this?

They will not.

How many politicians will dare ask this question at the National Assembly?

I am afraid no one.

It would be too dangerous.

So: where do we end up?

The Chinese are going for gold in our jungles

中国中信集团公司, get use to it

Chávez himself has given a concession for a hugely important gold mine - Las Cristinas - to the Chinese corporation CITIC with shortly before leaving for Cuba to be operated yet again. Las Cristinas is located close to El Dorado, not far from the border with Guyana, in a territory the British invaded in the mid of the XIX century.

Now the Chinese company that is building houses for Venezuelans who apparently can't build houses, the same Chinese company that has become one of the main providers of equipment for oil production, is going to be in charge of getting gold from the territory of the Pemon indians. They just got in time to get that concession from Chávez before that uncertain trip of his.

The military caudillo had expropriated Las Cristinas from Cristallex some time ago. Journalist Bodzin had written a lot about the mine (see for instance, here).

There was no Parima Lake with gold as Spaniards thought, but there is El Dorado and it only hurts and destroys

In 2010 Cristallex had made a strategic partnership with the Resource Subsidiary of China Railway Engineering Corporation, I suppose trying to get a "non imperialist player" on the game. That didn't move forward. The Russian Rusoro also had intentions to go into the business (dating back from 2009), but after yet a new empty declaration of "nationalization of mining resources" in 2011 it pulled out. I say it was an empty declaration because in reality there has been a law since Colonial times stating earth resources belong to the State and can only be given on concession...Rusoro may have really given up because they realised Chávez does "lo que le da la gana". For a time they did have some hope they could exploit Venezuela's most promising gold mine.

I had always a very bad feeling about the work of mining companies in one of the most delicate natural reserves of the world. Stay tuned. The Chinese are in.

Bizarre Venezuela

The head of the CICPC, the Venezuelan National Police Agency, declared his organisation detained last year 1601 persons for cases of homicide. This statement doesn't tell us much about what happened to them and how many of them killed how many others.

Now, as I said in my German post yesterday, more than 18000 persons have been murdered in Venezuela in the same period. There are many murderers who kill several people, but there will be also cases where several people are involved in murdering one person. In any case, we can assume the Venezuelan police is only capable of detaining less than 1 out of 10 murderers.

If this is not failure and incompetence, I don't know what it is.

The head of the CICPC also said now the police will be tracking down guns and munition to find out the sources. I am perplexed: and what the hell were they doing all this time? Weren't they doing that? When I was a child several decades ago I thought police everywhere in the world were doing that as part of their work, for prevention and more. What has the Venezuelan police being doing in the last 13 years, in a period when the murder rate has more than tripled? Did their directors have their heads stuck in the sand?

Ideas for Venezuela: what about transparency? The Access to Information Act

Take a look at this BBC article on the Access to Information Act. That legislation will enshrine in the Brazilian constitution the right of citizens to request information from public officials on their administration and to receive prompt response. The article also contains some references to new movements that promote transparency elsewhere, particularly in the EU.

As Edward Eastwick, an English visitor to dilapidated Venezuela during the aftermath of the Federal War wrote, the main problem in my country is not the lack of law but the absolute disregard of it. Back then a Venezuelan told him the reasons and the possible solutions to overcome that mess: education and more education. And yet we keep talking about education today and things haven't changed. Education became a senseless mantra. Education improved somewhat in the XX century, but it became diluted. Old habits never died: education for most people became more rote learning than ever, non-actionable data to be wasted after a few years. And people just got used to think Venezuela is what it is: corruption and dependency on oil is here to stay.

How can we overcome this? Is it possible at all or will Venezuela become more and more the failed state living off oil until the next energy age?

The Chávez government, we have seen this already, is absolutely reluctant to allow Venezuela to take part in transparency mechanisms such as the PISA programme on education measurement. The military caudillo in power is resolute to avoid any public debate - when Peruvian writer challenged him to a debate, Chávez said he, Chávez, "was just a soldier", later to say he would only participate in a debate if his "intellectuals" - sycophants like Britto García, and others also take part in it - i.e. he would stand behind them.

What can the democratic movement do?

Venezuela's resources for the military regime and its honchos

• We need to keep challenging the caudillo time after time to have an open, fair series of debates between him and the elected candidate from February's elections - no parallel monologues.
• We need to distribute information across the secondary cities of Venezuela about how other countries implement transparency measures and what they are doing right now to improve transparency and accountability.
• We have to distribute information about how the government is misusing the unprecedented petrodollar stream (not even the seventies come close to it). This last part is a hard task. You cannot just go on a TV channel that can only be watched by 30% of the population and start throwing numbers at people. You need to go to them and explain things in a very visual way.

Those are some of the things we need to do next year.

And I wish you a successful 2012 to you all!

Venezuela's Comptroller died. Who will disqualify the opposition candidates now?

Yesterday minister for the Popular Power of Information, Andrés Izarra, aka The Jackal, (as usual, he is from a military clan, even if he is not a military himself)  tweeted about Clodosbaldo Russian's death. Russian was the General Comptroller and he was very notorious for the way he "legally" disqualified Chávez's enemies with some potential from taking part in political activities. Russian was 72 years old at the time he died (in Cuba, as Venezuelans do not seem to have the right hospitals). 

Russian was well-known, among many other things, for being the only Venezuelan citizen who could get a pension for his work as professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and at the same time a salary for his work as General Comptroller. This was only possible through a special law passed by the red-ver-red Supreme Tribunal. He was also known for declaring that capitalism was the cause of corruption. This means Venezuela is the most capitalist country in America.

Corruption Perception Index

Who is going to follow him and keep on disqualifying opponents? Expect another of Chávez's puppets, no matter what.

Democracy Index from The Economist

Democracy in Venezuela now

Today the president of Venezuela, will talk to the Venezuelan National Assembly and have his "state of the Nation". He will talk about what he claims to have done and what he claims to want to do. Foreign apologists of the Venezuelan regime have claimed for years that it is fine if there is the possibility of indefinite reelection in Venezuela because you have that in European countries and elsewhere. What these people forget is that Venezuela does NOT have a parliamentarian system. So now Venezuela joins Cuba, Iran and Surinam in the club of countries having a president who can be indefinitely nominated, in a system that is controlled by him as it is not possible in parliamentarian systems.

I have written before about this, but today we have a concrete example of the differences between the responsabilities of a president in the Venezuelan way now and a prime minister. The president of Venezuela has to talk, but it is up to him to say what he wants, he does not have to answer anything. According to the constitution,

"237: Annually, within the first ten days following the installation of the National Assembly, in ordinary session, the President of the Republic shall present personally to the Assembly a message by which he will account for the economic, social and administrative aspects of his administration during the previous year."

Unlike prime ministers, the president in Venezuela can always maintain a monologue. Even though ministers sometimes also try to avoid answering (in some countries more than others), but sooner or later there is no way around for them.

I am for a Parliamentarian system for Venezuela. Before we get one, I would propose calling for a referendum where we propose that heads of state, governors and some others have to answer regularly and in person to the questions of the opposition.

Today Hugo of Sabaneta will talk and talk and lie and lie and he will render no account, just tell his story. There is no way of cornering him as one can do in the German, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, Dutch or even the British system. This is not possible in Venezuela now:

Between the lines: destroying the Indian territories

based on a map from this great site














Yesterday Venezuelan and Colombian media outlets reported some 392 Colombian and Brazilian citizens were forced to leave Venezuela, where they working in a mine near San Fernando de Atabapo. Now they are in Inírida, capital of the Colombian department of Guainía. Some 400 more are expected soon.

Venezuelan news are saying those minders were illegal. Colombians are saying the expulsion of so many people is causing a big problem for Inírida and that it is just inhumane. This event takes place on the context of the increasing tension between Chávez and Uribe.

Orinoco meets Casiquiare: in spite of the brown colour they always had, they were clean until mining and other uncontrolled industries arrived.

I do not know why Hugo decided to throw out the Colombian miners now: does the Venezuelan military want the resources to be exploited by someone else? Who then? Or were they just finally trying to put some order in the plundering of the Amazonas region? Or is it something else?

What I do know and see here anyhow is what people on either side don't discuss: this event shows once again the absolute lack of governance, the absolute chaos and the complete lack accountability on both sides.

• Fact: they were working illegally indeed.

• Fact: they are not the only ones, illegal mining is happening everywhere in the Amazonas state and in Bolívar state, it is done by Venezuelans and foreigners alike.

• Fact: they are using mercury, mercury that goes into the rivers (the Río Negro, the Casiquiare and the Orinoco, among many others), mercury that is highly poisonous to all forms of life and which is almost impossible to clean up.

• Fact: those miners, together with lots of Venezuelan miners from poor and not so poor regions, are getting into native American territory, they are making native Americans again a minority in the last regions native Americans have left.

• Fact: military on both sides just control those they want, not those they should.
  

Below you have a map of the Venezuelan Amazonas State showing population density (inhabitants/km2). San Fernando de Atabapo and its whole municipality have less than 15000 inhabitants. Around that city you have the territories of some very small First Nations who until now have had very little contact with alcohol, Western diseases and so on.

















Here a look at the other side, the neighbouring departments and the estimate population there.
Many of the miners, according to sources from the Colombian side, are not from those departments but from other regions of Colombia.



















The Colombian departments on the other side of the Orinoco and Río Negro have a much higher population and there is a civil war going on there. The Venezuelan government seems to be siding with the guerrillas for many years already.

Some NGOs say there are around 3 million illegal Colombians in Venezuela. That is over 10% of Venezuela's population. In Venezuela there is no reliable registry of population. On one side, for some years now you have to tell your ID number to any vendor in Venezuela when you buy (not just sell) anything but a hot dog. This is supposedly for VAT reasons. On the other side the government does not know really who lives where and estimates for population in many municipalities are just wild guesses.

Everybody - the opposition in Venezuela, the government, the Colombian government and the Colombian opposition - should openly talk about possible solutions to uncontrolled movements of populations, present transparent mechanisms to improve the security situation on both sides of the border and work on detailed plans for a sustainable development of the region. That is very unlikely to happen now. The native Americans - the Puinave, the Piapoco and others - as well as the natural resources are the ones who are suffering.

Geez...we so badly need shadow ministers in Venezuela that show Venezuelans there are solutions, we need them now, even in the middle of the emerging dictatorship.

Oops...apologies to the Piapocos, I mispelt their name in the map below

There are so many shocking things these days...

that we all are overlooking one important piece of news about Venezuela:
as The Guardian reports, the United Nations has expelled Venezuela from the Kemberley process of nonblood diamonds. What does that mean? For many years now the Venezuelan government has not provided information about where its diamonds are going. That means Venezuela could be using the diamond revenues to finance illegal arm conflicts somewhere. Could you think of any such group the Venezuelan government might be financing?