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Third week campaign roundup: Capriles at the beach
This was "Semana Santa", Holy Week, when we are supposed to do penance for our sins and prepare for the major Catholic Holiday of Easter. Instead, too many of us hit the beach in a display of secular...
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Talanquerias
Estos años revolucionarios han re-energizado una costumbre política nuestra: el salto de talanquera. Pero para poder hablar con propiedad veamos primero lo que implica la expresión “saltar la...
View ArticleElectoral AWOL
Due to business commitments preceding the alleged date of demise of our local imperator, I will not be in Venezuela this week, much preferring to attend a symposium/training course. I have no idea how...
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Waldoniel likes this hospital
I have that sick romantic fantasy of spending a long but strangely pleasant recovery from some heroic glorious wound or some mystery glamorous disease where this recovery takes place in an old...
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Our "47%"
I may be away and busy but news come crashing about what an awful country we have become (never mind that my Latino American colleagues at the meeting I am attending feel bad and pitiful towards me and...
View ArticleThe CNE forbade this ad on electoral fraud by chavismo
The Venezuelan electoral board this week forbade transmission of this political add that clearly makes allusion to the scare tactics that chavismo uses to force people to vote for them. Do not be...
View ArticleFourth week campaign roundup: Maduro, the unsuitable candidate
Certainly, having been away for a week should disqualify me from writing a review. And yet I am helped out by the crudeness of this past week.What has been most striking for me was that Nicolas Maduro...
View ArticleProvisional post
I will try to "live tweet" a portion of today's march in Caracas. If the wireless system does not collapse..... You can follow at @danielduquenal . Starting around 11 AM caracas time.
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Democracy peaceful last stand: the opposition does its mother of all marches
I do not know how to explain what happened today in Caracas. I have gone through 10 years of marches and nothing was like today. Never did I see as many people, never did I see such a positive mood....
View ArticleMargaret Thatcher
I thought I would interrupt briefly Venezuelan election coverage to mention that I admired Margaret Thatcher very much because she was a principled politician, one that was not afraid to take hits for...
View ArticleLast week Venezuelan electoral evaluation
The Capriles event yesterday in Caracas forces us to revise our assumptions for the result next Sunday. Let's go with the hard data we have.Yesterday's march and rally in Caracas was the biggest one...
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April 14 result and abstention
UPDATEDAfter my post of Monday tossing around some numbers I thought, during the long drive back to San Felipe, that I should be a tad more serious than tossing numbers haphazardly, that maybe an...
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What if chavismo has overreached?
I am back in Yaracuy after a two weeks absence as voting duty calls me (and my business of course even though these days there is little business to do, but that is another story).The first thing that...
View ArticleMedia problems in Capriles camp
I have just seen a strong and bitter post from Juan Cristobal at Caracas Chronicles where he blames Ana Maria Fernandez for a lousy media communication system at the Capriles campaign. I will not...
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The Carter Center returns to Venezuela
What are we to make of this return of an institution which has been decried by the Venezuelan people from both sides? Mostly by the opposition we must say, and not without reasons.First, it is...
View ArticleSunday's results, an exercise in immateriality
Of course, one must try to evaluate what may happen next Sunday. I, for one, am nonplussed. I still stick to my "47% Venezuelan style" theory and think that we are a lousy people and that we will vote...
View ArticleUn video que todos los chavistas deberian ver, si es que les queda algo de moral
El disidente Orlando Luis Lazo describe lo que es la vida en Cuba, la falta de Internet, la represion, y el fascismo social. Eso es lo que viene si votan por Maduro. Asuman su responsabilidad.
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Last week campaign roundup: a summary and final prediction
The official campaign may have ended Thursday night but the regime has been blithely breaking the law and keeps campaigning all the way until today, on the excuse of commemorating the April 2002 coup....
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The last, I hope, election day post
Tibisay announces Maduro winning....11:13Shit! Tibisay arrives when I was about to walk out!11:09Time to walk the poor dog. Tibisay, hold on for 15 minutes more!!!!10:48Well, it looks like the military...
View ArticleMaduro gets a non-mandate and Capriles does not buy it
Well, let's start from the beginning. I am not happy but I am far, very far from the funk I was last October 8. See, I purged myself from the oppressive knowledge that a majority of Venezuela were non...
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