We add again an outstanding analysis from the 12-15-06 Wall Street Journal of key issues facing Latin Americans with an added update provided by VenezuelaToday reminding us of the fact that no data on anything radiating from Caracas is fact based as Chavez's centralized regime controls all levers of government 

We have seen, as have thousands, recent voter rolls from Caracas. If one believes the registered Bolivarian voter rolls, Venezuela stands as the globe's largest voting population of dogs and cats and dead persons.....dead for hundreds of years and hundreds of same-sex persons residing at a single one bedroom barrio residence.

Either Chavez has delivered a social plan to mate dogs and cats or necrophilia has risen from the deadest of social norms as "voters" to rejigger a very sick society called "alternative democracy." Either way.... nothing good and certainly nothing ethical, comes from all this.

We remind, however much their paid liars' club of enablers claim urgently that all this dishonesty  is "pragmatic," that governments which  depend on dogs and cats and necrophiles cannot long survive its self- inflicted national psychosis...however alternate.

Alternative democracies made up of alternative data comprised of alternative voters of dogs and cats and long-dead persons rising from the grave yields an alternative reality which can only be stopped by real data, active ethics of honesty, non-alternative life styles of organic human relations, followed by demands that liberty's rewards are to be found not be manipulating data or corrupting reality but by living moral lives in this place and in this time to the fullest.

- The Editors, ECrisis

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

THE AMERICAS  
 
Defining Democracy Down

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

15 DEC 2006 | Over the course of five days in Caracas last week, I couldn't help but notice the ubiquitous image of President Hugo Chávez peering down from hundreds of his campaign banners that read "Vote against the devil; vote against the empire." The nationalistic message denouncing President George W. Bush and the U.S. blanketed the capital.

On election night, as it became clear that more votes had been cast for Mr. Chávez than for candidate Manuel Rosales, the president appeared on the balcony of Miraflores, the presidential palace, to proclaim that "the devil who tries to dominate the world," had suffered another defeat.

The red-clad Chávez dramatically recited from the Lord's Prayer and then borrowed from it for his own prophesy. "Thy kingdom come," he bellowed, and thereafter, "the kingdom of socialism." The ailing Fidel Castro reportedly sent a short message from Havana congratulating Mr. Chávez and noting that "the victory was resounding, crushing and without parallel in the history of our America."

Mr. Chávez has for eight years been heading a devoutly anti-American government and he is widely considered the region's heir apparent to Fidel. But be prepared for the Venezuelan bad boy to become even more menacing to the U.S. now. The reason, in a word, is "legitimacy." Having gone through an electoral exercise against candidate Rosales, who managed to garner nearly 40% of the vote, Mr. Chávez is likely to be emboldened by the conventional notion around the region that he heads a "democracy."

This is regrettable. There isn't a shred of evidence to support the claim that Venezuela has a democracy and voices for freedom are badly needed to point out this reality.

The assault on Venezuelan democracy, which began before Mr. Chávez came to power, has been possible largely because of state corruption. But the Chávez government has taken the concept to a whole new level. In this space last week I cited a report by Gustavo Coronel, a former director of the state oil company. His paper, "Corruption, Mismanagement and Abuse of Power in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela," published by the Cato Institute, deserves a fuller airing.

Mr. Coronel, who was the Venezuelan representative for Transparency International from 1996-2000, has painstakingly traced the "hypercorruption" that is now flourishing as a result of record oil income, poor management, and the "ideological predilections" of a president trying to "play a messianic role in world affairs." In 23 pages he neatly shows that Mr. Chávez, who claims to represent the progressive left, is nothing but an old-fashioned authoritarian otherwise known in Latin America as a caudillo.

The report properly notes that government corruption is "the violation of public interest for personal or partisan gain," a definition that goes beyond graft to "the use and abuse of political power." Chávez corruption includes the 1999 constituent assembly, which was packed with his supporters and given supraconstitutional powers to dissolve the country's democratic institutions and create new ones made up of pro-Chávez actors. "This ended with all Venezuelan political institutions under the control of the government and eliminated effective checks and balances," Mr. Coronel writes. "From that moment on . . . Venezuela ceased to be a democracy."

Since then the government has used its unchecked power to "spend" the country's oil wealth arbitrarily and without any accountability. Using the data from the Center for Economic Research in Caracas, Mr. Coronel identifies $17 billion in Venezuelan "donations to politically friendly countries," various infrastructure projects around the region and weapons purchases. Bolivian President Evo Morales, who famously used street violence to bring down two elected governments, got $30 million on a visit to Caracas in January. "According to the Venezuelan Central Bank," Mr. Coronel writes, "about $22.5 billion has been transferred to accounts abroad by the Chávez government since 2004." Some $12 billion of it, he says, remains unaccounted for.

Mr. Coronel notes that "according to Transparency International 95% of all known public contracts are awarded without bidding." In a country where the state owns the oil and the oil is the economy this means massive politicized fraud. False invoicing and the signing of contracts with "nonexistent suppliers" are among the tricks of the trade and explain why the country is witnessing the "emergence of a new rich 'revolutionary' class."

The politicized Supreme Court, National Electoral Council (CNE) and state-owned oil company PdVSA no longer have any transparency obligations. The CNE, for example, has not allowed an independent audit of the voter registry, which contains almost 17 million names, "a statistical improbabilty" in a country of 26 million, "60% of whom are too young to register." With Chávez carte blanche comes power to destroy political enemies too. After a PdVSA strike to oppose the politicization of the oil company 20,000 skilled employees were fired in violation of Venezuelan labor laws.

Drug trafficking through Venezuela has also boomed under the Chávez government and there is good reason to believe the military is involved. A May report for Jane's Intelligence Review by Andy Webb-Vidal contains an interview with a former Colombian guerrilla who knows how to get illegal substances into Venezuela: "Once across the river, the [Colombian rebels] would make a payment to the National Guard and then transport the drugs in four-wheel drive vehicles."

Just days after the election, Mr. Chávez took off on a South American tour to exert his regional leadership as a man chosen by the people. His aircraft was escorted by the first two of 30 Russian-made warplanes that Venezuela has recently ordered. Back home his government had just announced a joint venture with Iran to make cars in Venezuela.

Venezuela is not a democracy by any definition and Mr. Chávez is sure to be a thorn in the side of democrats for years to come. But legitimizing his abuse of power, in face of all the evidence, only makes things worse.

Copyright 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL  
http://online.wsj.com

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Venezuela Today

Venezuelan Numbers Racket

(from letter to WSJ)

Ms. O'Grady's 12/15 WSJ editorial "Defining Democracy Down" quotes Gustavo Coronel, that 60% of Venezuela's 26 million voters are too young to vote. That leaves 10.2 million eligible voters. Even with unprecedented enthusiasm, 80% of them might register and 90% of those might vote, leaving a maximum available vote-count of 7.3 million for the recent presidential election that was swept up by Hugo Chávez. Of these 7.3 million votes, the Chávez-controlled electoral council (CNE) reports 4.3 million for Rosales, and 7.3 million for Chávez, for a total of 11.6 million cast. This means Chávez won re-election by 100% to 58% - and voter turnout was 158%. Less extreme assumptions, such as 80% registration and 80% voting, place Chávez ahead by 113% to 64%! Considering the absurdity of pro-Rosales CNE manipulation, Rosales actually beat Chávez with at least 58% of the genuine votes cast. Such bold and obvious wholesale fraud is so unbelievable that no one believes it - even the Rosales camp, let alone The Carter Center or the media. That's why it succeeds so well.

If Coronel was misquoted - that only 40% (not 60%) of Venezuelans are too young to vote, that still puts Rosales at 50% despite running uphill. At each election, CNE stone-walls one of perhaps a dozen potential election-fraud issues. The oppositon then accepts "most of what it asked for," as though 92% is "mostly fair." But only one link can break a chain, and Chávez has no trouble with that. In the 2004 presidential recall referendum (RR) it was counting paper ballots, and in this one it was verifying voter registration lists.

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Editor's Note: Official census data forecasts a total population of 27,030,656 in 2006 and 27,483,208 in 2007. The problem here is that the census data is also distorted… the problem starts at Onidex with the wrong people getting cedulas (ID's) and then some getting more than one and then some simply virtual. So the electoral roll (REP) has to be wrong by definition. Capel has never made public its half-assed "audit"… but Rosales agreed to go to election with this so he was a willing participant in the fraud.... Read more here at VenezuelaToday