While we keep waiting for the final results I figured out that I should be catching up with some of the stuff readers sent me. One very amusing item came for a rather bitter Weisbrot, notorious Chavez lobbyist. He seems to take a little bit personally the result of yesterday. Then again having made a career of more than 5 years explaining to the world why Chavez is such a great stuff, well, that Venezuelan people rebuttal of Sunday must be rather humiliating for him. Oh well....
On the other hand The Economist has published an excellent review on why Sunday result was against Chavez. Contrary to the "studies" of the Weisbrot hack team, the Economist dig into actual examples of corruption and incompetence such as its study of the "collective farm near the village of Buenos Aires in the coastal plain of Barlovento". Whoever was sent from the Economist to dig there got even the amount, in dollars, pocketed by corrupt "socialist" officials in charge to develop this project: 465.000 US dollars. Thus we can gather that when the "beneficiaries" are able to measure all what was ripped off from their governmental grant, they either sat out that referendum, when not voting NO. We should not be surprised at all.
The Economist even observes: The emergence of the “third pole”, composed of Podemos, General Baduel and the student movement, should in itself herald a less polarised politics. I do not know whether they read blogs in English (which I suspect they do because some of the stuff in that Economist article could have come out form either Quico, Miguel or myself) but I particularly liked that sentence. After all it is something that I am trying to convey and for which I am getting some crap as many dismiss the Baduel episode or the PODEMOS defection. But the Economist does notice (They probably got it from Teodoro).
Anyway, the good thing about Sunday result and Chavez despicable reactions is that from now on we should read a much more critical press outside of Venezuela. The Weisbrot and other assorted hanger on will have a hard time pushing their stuff, when not fired outright by Chavez. After all, now that he has an expiration date, why should he favor such leeches who have no more chemical preservative to bring to his image?
-The end-