Latest Surreal News from Venezuela
By Alex Beech
04.12.05 | You have to love a country in which one evening, an email circulates which reads: urgent:
the government has a plan to incite violence and a possible military
reaction...in order to blame the opposition for 'destabilizing' the
country with this 'electoral coup', referring to the recent
opposition boycott of congressional elections. The next day, the news
is sprinkled with stories of little bombs exploding throughout the
city, even two in Fort Tiuna, the country's military headquarters.
Floating around one bomb were sheets of paper with anti-Chavez slogans.
Sadly, the Venezuelan government, led by a paranoid caricature of a man
who once planned a real coup, has now descended into pathetic tactics.
The only thing remaining is for men draped in the American flag to be
spotted running away. Every ill-conceived plan that the government
hatches has a name, like "Plan Balboa", the name which Chavez
volunteered to Ted Koppel when discussing the "plan" which the US
government had devised for his assassination. (My all-time favorite
remains the day Pedro Carreno, a lawmaker and member of Chavez's inner
circle, denounced on television that Direct TV was spying on
Venezuelans through their television sets.) The opposition has made a
historical and piercing statement by withdrawing from the elections on
Sunday. There is no greater bomb than the civil disobedience which
quietly exploded in Venezuela's landscape. Any other noise in the
distance is the screams of Chavez's government, threatening government
workers to vote or else...
The national
coordinator of Justicia Obrera (Worker's Justice) announced that
workers at CVG, a major government corporation, are being threatened
with losing their jobs if they do not vote. The organization claims
that "workers are being asked at what time they plan to vote, and are
being assigned as voting center coordinators" to force them to vote. As
I wrote earlier, Chavez is trying to avoid the major embarrassment of a
high abstention rate, since no opposition candidates are running...
Not that you would know it from listening to Chavez's lap dogs, otherwise
known as the National Elections Council. Elections official, Tibisay
Lucena, said that over 95% of regional party candidates are signed up
and ready to go. How curious that an electoral board would announce
that 95% of parties are prepared for the elections, when every major
opposition party withdrew from the election. Could it be because the
electoral board is controlled by a propaganda-savvy government, and
therefore bows to its leader?
In a final yawn,
the National Armed Forces announced that nearly all voting centers are
prepared for Sunday's election. In other words, the computerized system
which can track how each voter votes, and report it back to the
government, is ready.
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