Alert for Venezuela 14th August

I really hate to sound repetitive, but here we go again, facing yet another round of internal and external, political and diplomatic efforts aimed at destabilizing the Venezuelan government. 12.00 midnight tonight marks the "ultimatum" posed by the Venezuelan Supreme Court 10 days ago to the National Assembly (Congress), with regard to the time span "conceded" to name the members of the National Electoral Council (CNE in Spanish), public organ which organizes, administers, directs and oversees all election processes in the country, and which constitutes one of the five political powers (legislative, executive, judicial, citizen and electoral power) that give life to the participative and pro-active Venezuelan democracy as outlined in the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999.

According to the Constitution, the members of the National Electoral Council are postulated in part by civil society, in part by the faculties of political and juridical sciences of the national universities, and in part by the citizen power; but they have to be elected by a majority of two thirds of the National Assembly, an urgent task that has not been possible to accomplish for months on end, due to the constant denial of "opposition" forces to come to a reasonable consensus on the matter, which has been part and parcel of their overall parliamentary sabotage strategy.

The future National Electoral Council will be in charge of organizing and supervising a possible recall referendum on president Chávez' mandate after August 19th, provided the "opposition" would recollect the necessary signatures to initialize the referendum, and unless the "4 million" signatures recollected during "el firmazo", a highly controversial and fraudulent one day street campaign earlier this year, would be admitted as valid by the electoral organ. Needless to mention that the "opposition" is not really interested in any recall referendum, for being the outcome very likely that of a defeat and for being the recall referendum extendable to all public office holders, threatening to sweep away many an "opposition" major and governor across the country. In any case, the political impartiality (as far as this is possible), serenity and sense of responsibility of the future members of the National Electoral Council is absolutely crucial to the credibility of any electoral process to come, as well as to the overall political stability of the country.

From tomorrow, Friday, on, the Venezuelan Supreme Court will proceed to elect, within the next ten days, the members for a "temporary but legitimate" National Electoral Council, self-assigning itself a competence which is clearly and exclusively that of the National Assembly. In addition, given the precedents of former, nefarious rulings of the Venezuelan Supreme Court in favour of the fascist "opposition" (especially the one of August last year which denied a coup d´état had happened in April and thus conceded general amnesty to all military personnel involved), fears if not convictions have arisen, that the Supreme Court will try to implement Electoral Council members strongly inclined towards the "cause" of the "opposition", lacking the necessary credibility and trust for being in charge with any future electoral process to come.

Well aware of yet another series of political, judicial and mediatic manoeuvres of the "opposition", intended to paint a picture of presidential and governmental unconstitutionality and illegitimacy after August 19th - date marking half of Chávez office term and from which on a recall referendum can be solicited-, and in the face of an imminent, "institutional coup d´état" with the Supreme Court usurping functions alien to its competencies the political forces backing the government in the National Assembly have warned they would call for a special parliamentary session to legally disqualify such a ruling and declare their non-adherence to it for being an interference into the competencies of the National Assembly.

For the next week and a half, the political parties backing the government have announced the celebration of three years in office of the revolutionary government of Hugo Chávez, with all sorts of political events being held all over the country and also in the capital, inviting participants to bring their tents and stay overnight in the streets, which looks very much like a pre-emptive move of active defence, countering the political destabilization efforts to come. (Any resemblance of this strategy to the Bush Doctrine is unintended and purely accidental ...)

"Coincidentally" we have seen a very recent effort by the Colombian and Venezuelan mass media to discredit the Venezuelan government by linking it to the Colombian guerrilla, immediately and happily picked up and endorsed by US government officials, namely the Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard B. Myers, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Myers' "jewel" consisted in drawing a parallel between Venezuela/Colombia and Syria/Iraq, hinting at a hidden and forbidden collaboration with "terrorist forces", firing a clear warning shot into Venezuela's direction with regard to the Colombian Guerrilla, nicely and timely framed by the latest media confabulations. But Colin Powell actually came quite close to the truth (without knowing why, of course), when recently stating, that president Chávez "sometimes has some ideas with respect to democratic systems that don't quite comport with ours ..."

Summing up recent developments, on the internal front we have the "institutional coup d´état" in the making, whereas on the external front we have the corresponding, mediatic acrobatics that will back up and even try to superate their Venezuelan counterparts in painting Venezuela's government as one that is obstructing the recall referendum and thus undemocratic, despotic, illegitimate, tyrannical, you name it.