The Chavez propaganda site VTV says Hugo's popularity keeps increasing. According to the - how shall we call it? - non-imperialistic polling agency IVAS, the president's popularity has increased to 57.9%!
That is amazing, considering the same IVAS reported his majesty's popularity in May 2008 was just 73.9% and in August 2008 69% (see my Spanish blog here for some of the sources).
I love charts, as you know by now. On the left I put the data I have available from that same agency. Unfortunately, I don't have the stats for every month. I am not even sure they publish results for every month. Perhaps Hugo's popularity increased from last month...perhaps it increased from some other month. In any case: they always say it keeps increasing and the most gullible keep believing that.
How is it possible Hugo is still in power? Well, a big part has to do with the fact our other politicos are also acting as caudillos, just thinking about themselves and not even dreaming about presenting a plan (they always fear someone else is going to steal their ideas). Hugo is the largest caudillo in Venezuela, but he has a little advantage over the others: he has total control of over 90% of Venezuela's foreign currency and the oil price during his presidency has been on average over 300% higher than in 1998 and in any case much higher than in the 20 years before. So, Hugo has some advantage, specially as Venezuela is now importing even black beans and almost all the rest from bloomers to shoes to electronic devices to anything. Our opposition needs to form a team, it needs open primaries to show it is better than the Electoral council Venezuela has, it needs to show it has thought through some sensible plan for sustainable development.
We are going nowhere by organizing marches "for ourselves". We don't do anything by foolishly chanting in a posh Sambil "Libertad, libertad". We are going to go somewhere if we stop being intellectually lazy and socially irresponsible and ponder: what can we do to improve the education level of all the population (not just the 20% who go to private schools), what can we do to force more transparency and fight corruption in Venezuela? What can we do to promote pluralism once WE are in power?