Venezuelan Election: Chavez's Opponent Manuel Rosales Gains Ground in Race (Translation)

El Universal ( Caracas, Venezuela ) ^ | September 25, 2006 | Elvia Gomez ( translated by self )

[roses of sharon]

Thanks again for getting us this information.

[jazusamo]

Excellent idea, all the blame America crowd could hob nob with Hugo and Jimmah while his "democratic" government guarantees their safety.

[conservative in nyc]

Venezuelan State Population figures from Wikipedia (Rosales claimed leading states in bold). If the figures are correct, Rosales claims to lead in states with about 48% of the Venezuelan population, and be technically tied in states with another 8.25% or so:

By population # State Population (2005 estimates)

1 Zulia 3,520,376 13.1
2 Miranda 2,789,073 10.3
3 Ven.Cap.Dist. 2,284,291 8.5
4 Carabobo 2,106,264 8.38
5 Lara 1,751,625 6.75
6 Aragua 1,629,433 6.28
7 Bolívar 1,490,612 5.58
8 Anzoátegui 1,440,876 5.3
9 Táchira 1,145,374 4.5
10 Sucre 895,978 3.53
11 Falcón 877,386 3.45
12 Portuguesa 848,259 3.34
13 Monagas 828,363 3.26
14 Mérida 819,760 3.1
15 Barinas 730,407 2.87
16 Guárico 723,965 2.85
17 Trujillo 691,908 2.58
18 Yaracuy 499,049 2.16
19 Apure 457,685 1.79
20 Nueva Esparta 426,337 1.66
21 Vargas 329,447 1.29
22 Cojedes 291,234 1,14
23 Delta Amacuro 149,427 0.42
24 Amazonas 136,506 0.3

[StJacques]

Wow, why didn't I think to check the Wikipedia population figures? I just Googled a quick "Venezuela Population States" search, landed on the DOS page and posted that.

Thank you very much conservative in nyc! You've had a habit of being most helpful.

[Antoninus]

Elections in Venezuela are a joke. The only way Chugo will ever leave office is in a box after receiving hot lead therapy. He's a commie. Rule #1 for commie dictators is "Don't leave office voluntarily."

[freedumb2003]

Thanks St J!

[conservative in nyc]

Obviously, how much Rosales is ahead in the 9 states and how far behind he is in the other states matters a great deal. Winning 9 states 51%-49% won't do much if Chavez wins/steals 99% of the vote in the remaining 13.

[zbigreddogz]

Umm, it wouldn't matter if he were 80pts ahead. Elections in Venezuela have been corrupted beyond recognition in Venezuela. They had problems before Chavez, but he basically ruined them.

It's amazing how much easier it is to win when your political appointees run every polling place and you can add fictitious names to the voter rolls anytime you want.

[Shuttle Shucker]

Hi Saint:
Although I need to focus exclusively on Mexico due to time-constraints, I welcome being on any ping list you have for our neighbor. Meanwhile, for the sigh column... a fight between PANistas & ObraGorians just ensued where Felipe was...

http://www.el-universal.com.mx/notas/377532.html

[StJacques]

Yeah, I saw that. I think that AMLO's peaceful civil resistance movement has now shown its true colors; violent intimidation. Over time this will make them very unpopular. Everyone in Mexico knows that the PRD had to journey to Guanajuato to pick that fight.

[kesg]

There is going to be an election in Venezuela? That's news to me. It would be even bigger news if it was actually fair and honest under current conditions.

[Shuttle Shucker]

I don't know if you're aware of this ping list index but if not, yours definitely warrant being included:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1608368/posts

[StJacques]

Thank you for that info Shuttle Shucker. I have just FreepMailed cgk suggesting that he create a new "Foreign Affairs" category and that my two lists should be entitled the "Mexican Affairs" and "Latin American Left Watch" lists.

[Founding Father]

>>>BTW, any Venezuelan bloggers out there blogging about the election...in an honest fashion?<<<<

Try this one:

http://www.caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/

---

Focus, damn it, focus!

Sorry to carp, but seeing this story about Rosales's campaign on Globovision's website made me despair all over again.

The Globo journo had to write up five - count them, FIVE - different themes in a five paragraph piece to cover what Rosales had said. So what's a poor voter to make of it? Is this campaign about how much Rosales loves Jesus? Or is it about maintaining the misiones? or opposing the fingerpring scanners? Or about public employees' pay? or is it about poll numbers?

The problem is that Rosales doesn't have an elevator speech - he has six or seven of them, which he mixes and matches in a not-very-coherent way. The guy needs to settle on ONE elevator speech, and he needs to be much, much more focused on it as he campaigns.

Because the torrent of different themes, with no connecting thread running through them, just dillutes his message. It stops him from imposing his vision of what this campaign is about. And it wastes the very narrow window of opportunity he has to win over people outside his already committed base.

Message discipline is as much about what you deliberately don't say - to avoid drawing attention away from your elevator speech - as it is about the elevator speech itself. No doubt many voters will find it heartwarming that he intends to govern under divine guidance, but that is not in his elevator speech so he should not be talking about it.

Staying on message when fielding questions
Granted, Rosales was fielding questions at an impromptu press huddle. Still, if he can't wrestle control of the agenda when talking to stenographing journos, what chance does he have against Chávez? A key part of message discipline is learning to answer any question anyone throws at you in a way that brings the discussion back to your elevator speech.
Q: Do you think Bush is the devil?
A: I think Chavez said that to distract our attention. After all, he promised to distribute oil rents to everyone's benefit, but he didn't follow through. Too much oil money is going to other countries and to corrupt officials, and common people only get their hands on it if they wear a red t-shirt...

Q: What about collective bargaining for public employees' pay?
A: The public employees have been subjected to the same political exclusions everyone else has. In my presidency, we will make sure that oil money is distributed fairly and cleanly, with no exclusions.

Q: What about the fingerprint scanners?
A: The government still thinks it can intimidate people into voting the way they want, because no one wants to risk their mision money. They're holding the people's oil money hostage, and that's wrong. Venezuelans are tired of this kind of exclusion, they're tired of having to put on a red t-shirt just to make ends meet. With Mi Negra everyone will get an equal share of the pie: chavistas, non chavistas, and everyone in between.

Q: Will you keep the misiones?
A: Of course we will, but they will be better. Everybody knows that too much Mision money is being stolen by corrupt officials, or funding hospitals and housing in other countries. In my presidency, we will make sure that doesn't happen.

Q: How about the polls?
A: The polls show that every day, more people agree that Chavez did not keep his promise to spend our oil money for every Venezuelan's benefit...etc.

This is a basic political skill, folks, almost a stereotype. A candidate should never answer the question he's asked; he must always answer the question he wanted to be asked.

Looking at it from Pepe Apolítico's standpoint...
Why is this important? Because the vast majority of people - and especially of NiNis - spend far less time thinking about politics than you and me.

The people Rosales needs to win over do not sit down to read the newspaper, much less a political website. When the news comes on the radio, they instinctively reach for the dial to scan for music.

They do not seek out political information, and they do not absorb it in big long chunks. They get it in little shards. A few seconds of news overheard on the radio. A glimpsed headline. A couple of soundbytes from the TV news report. That's your window of opportunity for reaching them. And you can't waste even a second of that, because CNE has limited paid ads on TV to just 4 per day!

Unless you focus on a single storyline, the information such voters get becomes totally muddled.

In today's little shard, Pepe Apolítico hears that guy from Zulia talking about how much he loves Jesus. The day before, he heard him going on about some voting machines. Before that, something about some black girl in his family - didn't understand what that was about. Maybe tomorrow he talks about collective bargaining for public employees - but hell, he's a buhonero, collective bargaining has exactly no meaning for him.

Messages conveyed in this way do not help to build up a narrative, a coherent storyline that answers, in Pepe Apolítico's mind, the question of what this campaign is about.

Only if the message is focused can Pepe Apolítico really take on board the storyline Rosales wants to establish as THE thing that's at stake in this election. And if Rosales can't seize control of the agenda, it'll be very hard for him to win.

---

The story referred was in Spanish so I couldn't translate and my kids that do speak and read it are unavailable.

[Founding Father]

>>BTW, any Venezuelan bloggers out there blogging about the election...in an honest fashion?<<

...and another:


http://vcrisis.com/index.php?content=home

---

He only offers fear

Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

The candidate of continuity is feeling in his spine the chill of uncertainty and the fear of losing. He feels the ground moving and that his gunpowder is wet. Up to now, he has only made two new electoral offers, the creation of a single party and his indefinite reelection. Everything else is the same scratched vinyl that not even his supporters listen to anymore. But, besides this, in the face of this empty electoral offer, he resorts without shame to the use of fear as an electoral instrument. Not happy with having created a generalized atmosphere of fear in the whole country, he now devotes his time to scare his own voters. His last witticism was that of “warning” that if Rosales wins “the Cubans” (That’s exactly what he said, he did not even mention the doctors) would be kicked out of the country and Barrio Adentro would be eliminated.

One would think that such a ridiculous argument would be left aside by the candidate of continuity and given to his minions of fourth or fifth level and he would continue navigating the skies of the debate of ideas that VP Rangel is calling for. The squalidness of his last “massive” rallies, his reluctance to visit the popular barrios, the certainty that recently he has been screwing up way above his usual standards on that matter, have led him to personally assume the handling of the campaign of fear.

He is going to fail. He is sub estimating the intelligence of his listeners; nobody can be that stupid to believe that Rosales, who has presented a social program (“Mi Negra”) aimed at taking care of the needs of the poorest sectors of our society, at the same time that he implements economic and employment programs to promote investment and create jobs, could have in mind eliminating social programs. In fact, the Zulia Governorship maintains a whole set of them, much better implemented than those of the central government, which represent the best counter argument to the strategy of fear.

With respect to the social programs (“Misiones”), the policy will be one of assembling them with “Mi Negra”, freeing them of the corruption, waste and political sectarianism that accompanies them today, to guarantee their clean management and that access to them is not conditioned to any sort of party toll.

Barrio Adentro will be opened to Venezuelan medical doctors, to base it on Venezuelans and not on foreign professionals.

As long as the presence of these is necessary (because the substitution of such numerous personnel is not possible overnight), their contract with them will no longer be a mystery and will be made in an open and clearly budgeted way. Only someone brain dead would eliminate a primary medical assistance system like Barrio Adentro. But you can be sure that Barrio Afuera, that is the hospitals and health clinics that are today bare, will be the subject of a special program for their recovery and endowment.

The serpent has bitten its own tail. Fear has now reached the Great Terrorizer of the county.

---

This blogger is probably on the optimistic side.

[Founding Father]

Would you like to be fingerprinted?

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/


Finger printing the Venezuelan voter


There are some debates that I try to avoid as I deem them “trapos rojos” (decoys), thrown by chavismo (and some time opposition) to distract people from the real issues. Perhaps the most famous one is the CNE fraud machinery, something that chavismo loves to see opposition politicians discussing instead of discussing all of the Chavez administration shortcomings where they would have a field day. In this Chavez benefits from the tendency of some politicians to favor comfortable A.C. TV studios to campaign against Chavez in lieu of hitting the dirt roads and humble neighborhoods, just as Rosales is doing these days, to great success. Then again, there is a reason why Rosales has become the unity candidate of the opposition and one reason why the Ledezmas and AD and others are left in Caracas pondering whatever happened to them.

But on occasion I must visit these electoral issues anyway and today it is the finger printing machines.

First, in an acknowledged reference to the increasing power of blogging, the recent debate one the usefulness of fingerprinting machine is making it more to newspapers, even if credit is not fully awarded. Nothing surprising there, newspapers everywhere are afraid of the power of good blogging and Venezuela is becoming fast a region full of excellent bloggers. Not necessarily because we are a particularly bright sort, but because we have to deal with such wily adversaries and compensate for a rather deficient press in matters of in deep and long ranging investigations. In particular when there is a lot of numbers involved, such as PDVSA or electoral issues, journalists are not too happy preferring to devote themselves to more scandalous and front pages news such as the Anderson case, nearing its Nth star witness, and no where near completion.

This El Universal expediente, based in part on the work of Bruni and Miguel, simply questions the suitability of the finger printing machines for the goal they were bought for. That is, it seems that the electronic investment that should be made to have a real time verification of the finger print of an elector has not been made. Thus one legitimately can wonder what is the real use of the finger print machines. Miguel wisely does not speculate much on it, but since it well known that I am unwise I am not afraid to thread that path.

Let’s focus on the problem briefly.

The elector reaches its voting station. His finger print is lifted and sent electronically to Caracas. There it is compared to a data bank which is now above 10 million prints (recent ID delivering operations were combined with finger print collection which allow me to guess that, adding finger prints collected at elections, as much as 10 million finger prints already exist at the CNE, which by the way does not come clear on such numbers).

It is quite obvious that the process requires sometime and can be only carried away with super fast computing system of which there is no clear evidence that it exists in the bowels of the Caracas CNE. From bloggers’s work, the time delay seem unacceptable to allow a free flowing election day, with the added risk that the system could come crashing at any time. When one looks at the expense bestowed on a system that offers no guarantees, one wonders which are the real reasons, when the traditional ink died finger seems to work as well as the finger printing machines at a fraction of the cost!

So, which could be the reasons?

Someone made a buck out of it. Jorge Rodriguez, a former obscure public servant who became the CNE head that forced through the finger printing system, lives now in regular splendor in Altamira, and crashes brand new Audi late at night. The reader may draw its own inferences.

The finger printing machines are really destined for some other usage. Two possibilities here.

By careful selection of the centers from which the finger print data is collected, chavismo can figure how the voting progresses. With the help of the Tascon (1) list the government can determine very easily how strongly the opposition electorate is making its presence felt at the ballot box, and how many chavistas are actually voting. This precious information, already available by mid morning, could spur some reaction from the government, ranging from ferrying in a haste chavistas that tend to stay home to preparing an actual electoral fraud by reprogramming some voting machines such as it is alleged to have happened at the Recall election of 2004, with now rather good evidence.

The other possible political usage of the finger printing machines is to scare away the opposition voter from the ballot, while forcing the chavista voter to participate if s/he wants to retain its misiones benefits. This is very simple to do once the perception of loss of the vote secret has permeated the population. It does not matter actually whether the finger printing machines can actually pierce the secret of the ballot, it is enough to have people think it can. And in the country of the Tascon list this notion is indeed very simple to put in people’s mind.

Thus it is clear to perceive where lies the real interest of the finger printing machines: psychological war against any opposition campaign effort. It is thus good strategy that Rosales has refused to get burdened by a sterile debate on finger printing which only can be won by the government. Instead, if Rosales manages a strong movement that has a chance to unseat Chavez, then the finger printing will become a non issue as people will not care to risk been pegged voting against Chavez since this one will not be around to harass them.

Very simple indeed, and yet another mark on how well Rosales is running his campaign so far, refusing to let Chavez set the agenda.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

1) the Tascon list is the list of the names of all people that have signed the Recall election petition and who have since been branded enemies of the regime. Many of these people have met all sorts of discrimination. With time the Tascon list has created a modern apartheid when to it was added the names of all the people that were receiving misiones benefits and thus rated as pro Chavez. This new Maisanta list is widely used in many government offices to decide who gets what. References on the right side of this page.

[supremedoctrine]

Please put me on the Ping LIst!! Chavez was parading around here in what I dearly hoped would be his Last Hurrah, since I knew he was being challenged and the election was not too long a ways off: We should figure out a way to try to involve ourselves in this election, sort of as anti-Jimmy Carters, with whose help the corrupt Chavez probably won last time. I get the very strong impression that Chavez has been too busy working on his fantasy role as the new reborn Fidel Castro, the oil-rich World Leader of the NonAligned Movement to give his own country his attention, and I sense large numbers of Venezuelans sense it also.

[BLS]

"Venezuelan Election: Chavez's Opponent Manuel Rosales Gains Ground in Race (Translation)"


If Rosales wasa threat, he'd already be room temperature.

[Alia]

>i>If you were pinged to this post I've got you on it.

Good! Thank you.

[Stultis]

I think Chavez is going to have to commit a Venezuelan holocaust before he'll be ousted.

He's made an excellent start, at least in terms of an economic "holocaust":

The Truth About Venezuela (Shocking Video) ^

Posted by Stultis On News/Activism ^ 08/07/2006 9:51:26 PM CDT · 34 replies · 1,994+ views YouTube ^ | 2005 | DNAX Productions Believe it or not there's more than thuggery, political murder, smashing of the presses, arming of narco-terrorists, and hobnobbing with Castro and the crazy mullahs in Tehran. Chavez, despite record oil revenues, is presiding over the Cubanization of Venezuela. Video uses simple before (1998) and after (2005) images. See Hugo's "Beautiful Revolution".