Last night we witness yet more damning evidence that the days of Chavez regime may be indeed numbered. It is really not a matter of merely losing the election in October, it is the what happens next. And after last night I am starting to feel that there is such a desire to change our political pattern that maybe the transition may not be as traumatic as I am afraid it will be.
The video above is how Chavez cadena ended up yesterday. For those late in the game, for the nth time, a cadena is the power that Chavez has to commandeer ALL TV AND RADIO signal to force them to SIMULTANEOUSLY pass whatever he wants to talk about. Since he can do that free of charge, for as long as he pleases, during an electoral campaign, where the pro Chavez electoral board CNE sees no evil, you can imagine what abuses go on in those cadenas. Well, last night Chavez lost a lot of points.
Chavez was in Guayana to promote himself, among other things claiming as his government work the huge dam featured during the cadena. Wrongly, because all the planning and most of the work started before his 1998 election and he has only the merit to finish it up, with a few delays. The dam that was already planned for him to build, Tacoma, was only started in earnest when the electricity crisis hit us two years ago, around the time where it was supposed to be put into service. By the way, I am not certain that Caruachi is actually fully completed but the regime pretends it is.... At any rate, the gorgeous backdrop only highlighted more what went wrong.
In short, Chavez had been already holding center stage for a couple of hours with yet another inane and false never-ending speech. but this time around his speech brought reaction from his audience which kpet protesting, contradcting him and stimualting yet more intolerance from him, more "wrong answer! buzzzz"". At the end it seems that a group of Guayana state company workers managed to break through security to complain , to grab a mic, or something to that effect. State TV quickly switched cameras to the running water and abruptly ended the show when, I suppose, they realized that the situation could not be recovered fast enough. Later, even though we could hear perfectly the screaming, they claimed that it was cut short due to "sound problems". Yeah, right.....
To this time, we do not know exactly what happened though the account of Damian Pratt in Tal Cual/Correo del Caroni is riveting. But one thing is certain, Chavez seems unable now to control even his own entourage. Be it the security personnel or the "spontaneous" that attend his cadenas to cheer him up at what has become a professional claque level.