Venezuela ruling party takes control of parliament

Venezuela ruling party takes control of parliament
14:10, January 06, 2011

The ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) took control of the National Assembly Wednesday after three of its members were elected president and vice presidents of parliament.

During the parliament's first meeting for the 2011-2016 term, PSUV's Fernando Soto Rojas, a 77-year-old former guerilla, was elected president of the Assembly, teacher Aristobulo Isturiz elected as first VP, and former Communication and Information Minister Blanca Eekhout as second VP. Positions such as secretary and sub-secretary also went to the ruling party.

The PSUV enjoys a majority of 98 seats out of the 165 seats of the Assembly.

During the oath ceremony, Rojas said the National Assembly will guarantee the social improvement long awaited by the Venezuelan people. He said the National Assembly will represent all social sectors.

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/7252352.html

Opposition deputies, on the other hand, pointed out they received 52 % of the popular vote, and the PSUV gained the majority thanks to gross gerrymandering and re-districting carried out....by the PSUV dominated National Electoral Commission.

I saw the links you offered, noted you included Jimmy Carter's organization. All gave a totally clean evaluation, every time.
Those of us who bother to keep track have known that from the 1st.

Sad the same can't be said about our own elections, isn't it?

especially if there is a heterogeneous population (racial, economic, ethnic) but Venezuela's electoral process has high integrity.

but you see, the gross gerrymandering carried out by the communists prior to the election is so gross, and so extreme, it can be said now that Venezuela lacks a true democracy. Furthermore, the outgoing Assembly's award to Chavez of the ability to rule by decree for 18 months is a clear sign they do not respect the popular will at all.

Not only did they gerrymander to obtain a majority, they put an illegal system in place, allowing the President to become a dictator by decree, because they didn't even want to have a debate in the Assembly - even if they could win the vote anyway.

of your assertions we could begin to have a discussion.

It seems that in the Latin American forum supporters of Colombia and right wing governments do not have to supply evidence for their assertions, but expect their statements to be regarded as "fact" because they are stated. This occurs over and over. It reminds me a lot of conservatives in the US, "We're not reality based."

Jimmy carter's organization had no comment on the last election.

in the election.

Again, it seems that Chavez detractors expect their assertions to be regarded as fact "because I say so." That only works in the US mainstream media. We're trying to be "reality based" here.

I am not asserting that there was massive voter or election fraud.

make all the excuses you want. The people voted AGAINST the Chavistas. Your guys LOST the popular vote. The districts were GROSSLY gerrymandered. Nations which exercise such GROSS gerrymandering can not be considered true democracies. The National Assembly therefore DOES NOT REPRESENT THE POPULAR WILL. The PSUV (the Chavistas) are in power IN SPITE OF THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE, WHICH THEY IGNORE. Your guys LACK MORAL AUTHORITY.

Report in Spanish

http://ovario.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/sistema-electoral-y-circunscripciones-electorales-analisis-y-conclusiones/

Bloomberg in English

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-27/chavez-may-radicalize-revolution-as-venezuelan-foes-gain-ground.html

The Economist in English

http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2010/09/venezuelas_legislative_elections

The BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11423927

RTE News

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0927/chavezh.html

All of these sources report a similar set of numbers, the opposition won the majority of the popular vote but got only 1/3 of the seats. This is attributed to very gross re-districting and rules changes imposed by the ruling party, PSUV. You may see some discrepancies regarding the opposition count - was it 48 % or 52 %? The opposition says the PPT party (Patria para todos or Fatherland for All), a socialist party which bolted the government coalition late in the game, should be counted as opposition - they are definitely not voting with the Chavistas now. PPT is a small party but received over half a million votes, it's core constituents are native Americans (indigenous tribes in Amazonas state are the key group). Because its leaders are refusing to vote along the Chavista line, and have been insulted and attacked by the government, I think it's clear they should count as opposition. Which gives the opposition the clear majority in the popular vote.

The re-districting was carried out by the National Electoral Commission recently, when they realized the chavistas were likely to lose the elections and their majority in the National Assembly. Now, I realize you will find all sorts of Chavista sites claiming the redistricting was done properly, but I ask a simple question: What is proper about a system whereby the national vote is for the opposition, and yet it gains only 1/3 of the seats? This is clear evidence of gross gerrymandering. Any argument such as "well, this is done in the US" runs on empty. Anybody who has an ounce of honesty knows gerrymandering is wrong wherever it takes place. And this gerrymandering in Venezuela is gross.

I would also like to point out the election results were so bad for the Chavistas, they delayed giving results until way after midnight, which is clearly a violation of the rules, and they never did post the final tally as required by law. Today, if you look at the National Electoral Commission site, you won't find the figures clearly posted state by state and district by district as they should be. On election night, they cancelled their victory party and slinked out, they knew celebrating a victory when they were defeated in the popular vote was going to make them look bad. So they just hid.

And as I readily stated in my own post, all representative democracies in countries with heterogenous populations can have problems with gerrymandering (the US probably being the most glaring example - Texas' redistricting is an outright fraud). I can understand if you oppose Chavez and his policies why you would latch on to that desperately, but frankly, that's politics, not "dictatorship." The fact that he lost twice indicates that the elections were fair, which is essentially heralded by the Economist story.

The gist of all of the stories is that the main reason the opposition won is because they were finally able to coordinate their activities. Good for them. And the Chavistas want to "strengthen the socialist revolution" good for them, too, as long as they do it within the law and peacefully.

To me it's significant that the two most critical stories come from publications that lead the world in it's cheering of capitalism. I suggest that the only reason they even covered the election is because Chavez has nationalized some industries. If not for that, these publications could care less about what happens to the Venezuelan people. Their audiences, for the most part, are people that keep an eye of political developments to see if they may damage their opportunities for profit. And reporting on those developments is the job of these publications. Look at their coverage of Angola 1980 to 2000: their main concern was in how the socialist government of Angola allowed the Transnationals to continue business as usual.

I appreciate you taking the time to do the research and, to me, good information is always welcome, both for and against arguments.

All you had was paid Chavez mouthpiece quoting some obscure group.

Nearly every interchange I have with you in this forum consists of me providing some evidence and you replying "that's a lie" without providing any credible evidence.

I have five years of post graduate study under my belt, so while I'm not a scholar I do have a pretty good grasp of what constitutes "fact" and "truth."

The overwhelming preponderance of evidence.

We're still waiting for your "credible evidence" concerning something you said here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=405&topic_id=45698&mesg_id=45746

#3 by mudplanet 12.11.2010:
"the murder rate in Colombia is three or four hundred percent higher than that in Venezuela"


Have you actually found something or were you making up stuff? WHERE ARE YOUR SOURCES???

Those five years of post graduate study "under your belt" should have taught you to clearly mention and question your sources.

http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79342

What's interesting is that the vast majority of murders in Colombia aren't figured into "murder rates" they are considered deaths in an armed conflict (even though the majority of victims are unarmed) and because over 50,000 of them "didn't happen" because the government refuses to admit to them or investigate them.


If I don't post a link to some source its for two reasons:
Any idiot can google "human rights disappeared deaths Colombia" and find an overwhelming amount of evidence on his own, and
I already posted the link in a previous post in the same discussion

You said: "the murder rate in Colombia is three or four hundred percent higher than that in Venezuela"

You're not showing any evidence backing what you said. You still haven't posted any evidence concerning that point in a month.

yourself, why don't you?

I've made it easy for you. All you have to do is copy it and paste it.

Or, you believe that every news organization and human rights organization in the world is lying. It's your choice.

I've seen the estimations of the extra-judicial killings in Colombia and in Venezuela.

But here's the problem: you said that there were 4 to 5 times more murders in Colombia than in Venezuela, proportionally.

So, if there are 15,000 to 18,000 murders ('murders' + 'extrajudicial killings') in Venezuela yearly...

Considering that Venezuela and Colombia have a population of 29.5 and 45.5 million, respectively...

You should be able to show that there are 92,500 to 139,000 murders in Colombia in a year.

The higher estimations I've seen talk of 25,000. Do you have something different? Please share it.

Both situations are truly dramatic but quite different. While there's no political violence in Venezuela, cities are way more dangerous than in Colombia.

You're taking the report on one organization as "truth" and every citation I've seen that lists killings in Venezuela this high is lead back to this one organization.

It's impossible to show exactly how many killings there are in Colombia yearly for several reasons, including:
1) The government commits many of these killings and investigation and reporting it within Colombia is dangerous to a journalist's health (a journalist doesn't get assassinated in Venezuela for reporting on killings) http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/8847-unesco-alarmed-by-increasing-viloence-towards-journalists.html
2) The killing are taking place, primarily, in rural areas where it is easy to conceal the acts and hide the bodies (they're going to be digging up clandestine graveyards in Colombia for decades, just like they are and have been in Guatemala and El Salvador - 90%+ of the grave containing victims of government and government-sponsored death squads)
3) It is much more difficult to gather actual facts in a conflict zone.

Only 25,000 victims a year in Colombia! I didn't know it was that low. Projected back a couple of decades (conservatively) and that's "only" a half-million "false positives." It's a systematic long-term campaign of state terror (read, the government of Colombia is deliberately carrying out these crimes, they are not occurring through negligence of failure to institute an anti-crime policy).

Not very much time passes in last few decades without some story of the Colombian army or its proxies entering a town or village and having a "killing festival." It's their primary job. They could defeat FARC in three months, but they make a lot of money and have a lot of fun continuing the conflict.

I'm just not seeing that it's more dangerous to be a Venezuelan than a Colombian.

The overwhelming weight of the evidence (i.e., hundreds of reports by human rights organizations and mainstream media over a period of decades) indicates that Colombia is run as an oligarchy and has been conducting a systematic campaign of brutal murder and violence targeted at the poor and the powerless for decades. This isn't the case in Venezuela.

You posted three links that related to elections prior to the last one, when the subject was the last one.

you provided one link to a Chavez paid propaganda arm quoting some obscure group that nobody has ever heard of.

Just one.

I'm curious as to what's your field of study. Not trying to be unpolite or anything. If you tell us, then we can gear answers up according to your background.

I would also like to point out that in general the evidence posted by pro-Chavez supporters comes directly from the propaganda mill run by Eva Golinger and the other chavista aparatchiks. Golinger doesn't have much credibility with people who know Venezuela in depth, yet her sites and proxies are seen constantly.

I realize the reverse happens in some cases, but I do try for example to post reports by Human Rights Watch, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, and a wide spectrum of news sources to show my case. Unfortunately many of you don't speak Spanish, nor do you visit Venezuela or have first hand sources. I do - I visit Venezuela, I have first hand sources, and it is my pastime to understand what's going on there.

Unfortunately it's difficult to explain the depth of coverage some of us have, because Venezuela today is an extremely hazardous place, and it's not possible to discuss sources or even discuss who we are. The trip is dangerous enough without one having to worry about government types trying to do something because one has become an incovenient truth.

I wasn't aware they had ever let it go, other than making itself irrelevant by the decree vote.

Obviously the PSUV doesn't have much faith in Chavez. He wanted 12 months to fix the flooding issues but the National Assembly didn't think he was competent enough to get the job done in less than 18 months.