I will be busier next following days and I may not be able to post a Christmas post on the 24. But also it is time for me to come out from an October 7 post as to the future of this blog. As anything in Venezuela, the clean cut scenario of a Chavez victory did not come quite true. Then I wrote that I had no interest in spending more years writing to the world why Chavez was bad and that the blog would not close but evolve into something else, something I care enough to write about, involving Venezuela up to a point.
Then again, under PTSSS on October 8 I wrote that I would try to follow the state elections but after that all bets were open. I did not cover much but I did cover it. Thus my contract with the devoted readers that followed until today has been fulfilled. Yet....
Chavez is more dead than alive and this does affect the premises of the contract. For all practical purposes it should not: if anything I am even more disenchanted today by the people I belong to. The chavista world still allowed to get itself manipulated by Chavez diseases and already forgot about all his promises for October 7 which show no sign whatsoever to be fulfilled, the only thing mattering is how many vertebrae Chavez did lose in surgery. The opposition missed a golden chance to build some countenancing parapet and woke up worse than ever as too many of its voter thought it was a good idea to abstain, or simply could not be bothered to compromise their vacation of shopping schedule. Things were made worse as the opposition simply used the once defeated message of October 7, showing an incapacity to respond, to evolve, to create. And proving once again that homo sapiens is the only animal to trip twice on the same stone.In short the Venezuelan electorate cares only about the now, the how much is in it for me, regardless of what happens outside the window. Those include more than 50% voters from both sides combined. And it is a conservative number.
I am obliged, of course, to cover the eventual denouement of Chavez and I may be forced to cover the oncoming elections even though at this point I am predicting yet another defeat for the opposition and a Maduro presidency, the more so if the election is held at the latest in March. After it may be not so clear.
Once some provisional conclusion is reached I will move this blog in its next phase, as announced last October. Let's say that the transition period is going to be longer than expected.
One thing I will start doing these holidays is putting order in the blog. The first text posted was written on December 1 even though in the blog it is dated January 6 2003. Thus the blog is now 10 years and nearing the 4,000 mark faster than expected, the more so if Chavez croaks.
This means that I need to go back in time and select a couple of hundred telling posts. I think that I will open a new blog where I will put them with an introductory paragraph for hindsight and whatnot. Editing will be kept to the strict minimum since I think it is important, at least to me, to see how I evolved as a blogger. My changes in outlook are part of the story because they will reflect how many people changed during this past decade. My big regret here is that the first 7 years of comments were lost when the platform changed though I do have a file from where I may be able to dig some. I would have loved very much to include your perspective all along but it may not be possible though it will be an opportunity for you to comment anew, on hindsight. By the way, I have changed the comment policy again as I am slowing down. Now it is open posting for the first 24 hours and then moderation.
Possibly that new blog will be the blog and this one will become an archive for the times in case anyone is ever interested than the idiotic media. After all, when this blog started all found Chavez still quite charming and only few blogs were dedicated to wake up public opinion. We succeeded outside of Venezuela but here....
Thus as of this post my activity will go down as long as Chavez is as he is. I am preparing only two posts until January: an obit of Chavez, whether he dies being irrelevant, and a short review of the 16 D vote. I really do not think it is worth any analysis, I think it is totally irrelevant in the current situation to write stuff like "PJ got more votes than X here but less there". I am just updating my now recurring Caugagüita graph and add some telling observations if I have the stamina to peruse the CNE page.
And with this I wish you a Happy Christmas.