http://www.sabinabecker.com/2013/04/understanding-the-venezuelan-election-two-vital-perspectives.html


Understanding the Venezuelan election: Two vital
perspectives<http://www.sabinabecker.com/2013/04/understanding-the-venezuelan-election-two-vital-perspectives.html>
April
19, 2013 — Sabina Becker

[image: tranquilo-nicolas]

*“Don’t worry, Nicolás, don’t worry, Venezuela — we already know where the
coups come from.”*

The commentariat at Aporrea is full of theories and denunciations about how
the hell Henrique “Majunche” Capriles Radonski could have picked up, or
picked *off,* so many votes in such a short time, despite the commanding
lead Nicolás Maduro had going in. I’ve found a couple of articles that
resonated especially with me. Here’s the first, from Antonio Aponte’s
regular column, Un Grano de Maíz (A Kernel of
Corn):<http://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a163876.html>

*Keys to Understanding What’s Going On*
*

The reality, already difficult in itself to decipher, is becoming all the
more so through the work of the media who, far from being a means of
communication, have transformed themselves into veritable cannons in this
war that our country is now suffering.

The first key: The oligarchy has a weak leadership. Capriles, we all know,
as it has been proven, does not defend the votes; he is afraid of getting
deeply involved. They received the orders of the gringo embassy to “not
recognize” the result and they have not been able to justify the
pretension. It is evident that the ballot-box thing is an excuse, and now
they dare to ask for a new election. If the CNE audits all the ballots,
they will look for another alibi to continue with their destabilization
plans.

Second key: The counterrevolution is not homogeneous. Several different
tendencies are united by foreign orders and allowances, by hatred of
Chavismo, and a deep disdain for the lowly. They show descrepancies over
how to truncate the Revolution, never in the necessity for doing so. They
diverge over the timing of aggression, not over aggression itself.

Third key: The Caprilistas have a great contradiction. They want to sail
the seas of sensitivity and at the same time they are splashing around in
the miasmas of fascist aggression. If Nicolás [Maduro] stands up to them,
they’ll run in terror seeking shelter in the Constitution; if they see a
sign of weakness in us, they’ll advance.

The most decided ones want to crush us; they have been working for years to
stimulate hatred and fear in their base, which is now demanding violent
measures. Whoever doesn’t feed the fascist beast with violence runs the
risk of losing their lead.

Fourth key: Amid the counterrevolution there is a fight going on for the
leadership, which will be decided in the hours to come. The currents are
slyly measuring themselves in practice. The destiny of each is in the pots
they bang, and in the marches they are able to convoke.

Another key: While this is happening, the social contradictions are
continuing to tighten, and the unreality created by the oligarchic media is
trying to substitute itself for society.

The TV screen functions as intermediary between the directors and the
people. The organization presents itself as an instrument of true
communication, so that the masses hypnotized by the screen substitute for
organized society, the basis of true human communication: looking each
other in the eyes, speaking face to face, receiving a message directly from
the leaders. Technology seeks to substitute itself for the genuine
communication of the soul.

Social organization is important: Every organism, however small, must be a
centre of human coexistence which communicates with other organisms in a
manner which transmits and receives information without technological
mediation. Communication is a human phenomenon, and technology must only be
its supporter.
*

*Now the true communication is confined to small groups. We have returned
to tribal communication. Only in an organized society, in socialism, can
there be communication.*

Translation mine.

And here’s another, called “How they stole two million of our
votes”<http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a163566.html>,
by Andrea Coa:

*In spite of the surveys, which have been demonstrated to be scientifically
exact, giving Maduro a victory with a reasonable margin, we have seen that
there exists the certain possibility of a bourgeois candidate overriding
the government, starting a bloody repression against the revolutionary
Bolivarian Chavista movement.*
*

It was between 2:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon on the 14th when, in the
electoral system, the element which made the difference was activated, in
order to produce a fraudulent bourgeois victory which would leave the
people, who had voted mainly for their legitimate candidate, Nicolás
Maduro, with their mouths hanging open and the bitter taste which we who
have been victims of a scam know all too well.

If anyone had said, a few days earlier, that the most powerful enemy was
the smallest, and that it would be at work inside the voting machines,
nobody would have believed me, but in this moment, it is the answer to the
question which the people have been asking:

“How could they do it?”

Between two and four in the afternoon, the charge began — or the activation
of a virus in the voting machine system, which took votes away from Maduro
in an imperceptible manner, and transferred them to the bourgeois candidate
[Capriles], in the same way that some computer “worms” steal money from the
banks penny by penny, accumulating great fortunes before being found out.
The plan was that the bourgeois would win the elections by surprise, with
eight million votes. They calculated that he would keep the six million he
won in October, and would not need more, since the electoral rolls would be
the same as they were then. But the denunciations of fraud that the right
uttered affect their own voters, and many of them abstained, so that
Capriles only legitimately obtained a little more than five million votes,
while we Chavistas remained loyal, and Maduro kept the votes that had gone
to Chávez. The final result was the triumph of Maduro by a slim margin,
which surprised those who had hatched and applied a “perfect” plan.

Our blind confidence in our automated system is a weakness, because
imperialism counts on technological means to injure it, and yesterday, they
proved it.

He whose family bought him the presidency of the national congress had the
security of knowing that the empire had prepared for him a triumph forged
by the hands of unscrupulous hackers, by way of the technology of the
moment, directed at elements which were, until now, impenetrable: the
system of voting machines; meanwhile the armed forces and Bolivarian
intelligence were busy with the guarimbas and the threats. The cyber-attack
on the Twitter accounts of President Maduro and other high-ranking
personages of the government were an element of distraction (the imperial
hackers could not resist the temptation to sign their work) while the plan
of altering the election results was under way. It was conceived by the
empire in order to take control of our natural resources with minimal cost,
relying on a puppet government which would hand it all over on a silver
platter. From there, as well, came the attack on CANTV [Venezuela's
national telephone service], probably from a satellite.

The love of the people for Chávez, the awareness that our survival as a
nation is at stake, and the future of our descendants, made certain that we
all went to vote, so that the right, many of whom thought there would be
fraud, abstained. [...] The vote margin was as predicted in the polls, and
this difference was so great that even with two million votes subtracted,
Nicolás Maduro still won. [...]

The empire killed Chávez, precisely to set in motion the second part of the
plan, which was a fraudulent triumph, which would be achieved while
disqualifying the CNE [...]

Should this plan fail, there would still be Plan B: crying “fraud”.

The proposal that the vote be audited 100% was made believing that it would
not be accepted, but the empire never makes a stitch without a thimble. It
is almost certain that the “mission impossible” of connecting what is in
the boxes with the altered results could already have been completed.
Imperial “intelligence” has the resources for that. However, revolutionary
hackers can, if allowed to examine the software in minute detail, determine
the manner in which the attack occurred. And the digital fingerprints on
the ballots in favor of the bourgeois which are in the boxes, could be a
surprise in that many do not correspond to the voters. The right wing don’t
want everything examined in minute detail, so even though the plan seems
perfect, there are always chinks in the armor.

Even though Plan A did not succeed, since the people kept their promise to
Chávez and Maduro won in spite of the cyber-attack against our elections,
which robbed us of two million votes, Plan B remains in play. The
non-recognition of the electoral result is part of the destabilization
plan, aimed at justifying on an international level the climate of violence
which they have set in motion, with the aim of converting Venezuela into a
Syria, or a Libya, which they want to sack via a massacre already planned,
against the heads of the revolution and the organized people.

The menace which hangs over us is more dangerous than ever, the hyena is
wounded and is not about to lose the prey. Now, the job is for the
Bolivarian government’s intelligence service. The people understand, and
for that reason the psychic environment on Monday following the victory was
one of alertness and not of euphoria. The people know that the direct
confrontation is about to begin, and must be stopped.

At this moment the head of the Revolution, embodied in Nicolás Maduro, must
remain serene and trust his intuition. He is protected by God, but he is
not immortal, and at this moment, he is the target of the most powerful,
unscrupulous and lethal empire known to Earth. However, this empire is not
invincible, and is in the midst of an internal crisis which has weakened
it. [...]

The empire likes direct, violent confrontation, because that’s where they
have experience and greater strength. But we prefer to build in peace, with
all the peace we can get, this pilot plan for the future of humanity [...]

Taking a moment to recognize the reality and trusting intuition to mark the
correct path is the first piece of advice; the second is to maintain the
unity of the collective government, which must be well armored, even though
for this to happen, we will have to dispense with anyone who could be
vacillating.

The third recommendation is to keep the election promises, which won’t be
easy because the boycott will grow in an effort to impede it.
*

*The people will continue to do their part.*

Again, translation mine.

So now we have a clearer picture of what’s going on. It’s much the same as
what happened 11 years ago, almost to the day, with the exception that the
president the oligarchy and its imperial overlords tried to topple then, is
now physically gone (due to “natural” causes, or something plausibly
deniable as such), and the circumstance to be shrouded in chaos and
confusion is an election, rather than an anti-government protest come to a
bloody and sudden head. But the players, with a few exceptions are the
same: We have the putschist Capriles, then mayor of Baruta, now governor of
Miranda, who stormed the Cuban embassy then, and is storming the electoral
authority now. In both instances, he’s claiming that the Cubans are hiding
some illegitimacy or other on the part of the Bolivarian government; then,
it was Chavista officials, now, allegedly, it’s ballot boxes full of
evidence of supposed fraud. The fact that there is no illegitimacy and no
fraud is being obscured by hacking, by violence, and by murder.

The excuse, then as now, is that the opposition members who are committing
the crimes, have been “driven” to it by an illegitimate defeat. Of course,
that’s a lie. And while the opposition keeps shifting the goalposts, the
ball has a funny way of still finding its own way in. The people know what
happened; they know who they voted for, and it’s not the Majunche. They
know full well what his real plan is, and all his tap-dancing and
pretending to be more Chavista than Chávez, more Bolivarian than Bolívar,
can’t hide the fact that he is an arch-conservative privatizer, an imperial
puppet, and a corporatist stooge. He will not do what the people want; he
will do what foreign capital wants.

Not for nothing do a lot of Chavistas refer to him as CAPriles, alluding to
CAP (Carlos Andrés Pérez), who was elected in the late 1980s to kick the
IMF to the curb, and who instead turned right around and kissed its boots.
And got kicked to the curb himself, as a final result, after Chávez and
friends led a failed uprising against him. Even as Chavecito was cooling
his army boots in jail, the people and the process were at work, and the
result spoke for itself: CAP was impeached, Chavecito pardoned and freed,
and a few years later, there was an overwhelming electoral victory for the
Bolivarians, with Chávez at the helm.

That same electoral victory has been repeated time and again, with only one
small setback since then. And last Sunday it was repeated once more, this
time with his “son”, Maduro, standing in for the great leader. It’s as
though Chavecito never died, and indeed, he never did. The fact that the
same villains are still using the same tricks they tried on him (and
failed) proves that he’s as much a force to be reckoned with as ever; more
so, in fact, since now, a hacking of the election computers was necessary
in order to create the appearance of a much narrower margin of victory (and
a correspondingly greater semblance of a possible fraud) than the last time
around.

The empire thought that with Chávez out of the way, it would be easy
sailing, but Maduro proved that to be bullshit. Loyalty is rock-solid among
Chavistas, and it is highly unlikely that any of them would have
voluntarily turncoated to the same man their beloved president called a
coward, a majunche and a pig just a few months ago. I call bullshit on any
analysis that claims he ran a strong campaign. His campaign was weak sauce.
He could not win their votes by pretending to suddenly be a better Chavista
than Chávez himself, or a better Bolivarian than Bolívar. So he relied,
predictably, on the tools of empire, and they came through, partway.

Two million stolen votes is a lot, but it still wasn’t enough to defeat
Maduro. And dozens of countries have signalled that they will not be
falling for the lie either. <http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8673> It
doesn’t matter a damn what the State Dept. says. The world knows the truth,
and major leaders from all over the region, as well as overseas, are on
their way to Caracas as I write. And the CNE? They have just announced that
they will audit the vote 100%. <http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8683> Don’t
be too surprised if they find evidence of fraud along the way…*on the part
of Capriles & Co.*

And in the meantime, among the people, the *cordura* counselled by Aponte
and Coa will prevail. The provocations, as severe and murderous as they
are, will not budge the Bolivarians. They’ve been through it all before,
many times, and they know the pattern as well as any schoolchild knows a
fire drill. Even the growing pile of martyrs from this latest assault —
eight, so far — will only serve to strengthen their resolve. They may seem
poor, but they are many…and they are seasoned fighters, intelligent and
loyal. If anyone in the oligarchy, the international corporatocracy, or the
imperial State Dept. thinks that they can steamroll the will of these
people, they are in for one hell of a shock.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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