“We need volunteers!” “Will you be my witness?” “Will you help organize the primaries in London?”
This kind of message has been flooding my inbox for some time now. Having previously organized my share of political events related to Venezuela in London, everyone expects me to take part in organizing things again this time.
But I won’t. While my fellow Venezuelan bloggers have been busy posting about who they will vote for and why, I prefer to say that I won’t be voting, not on Sunday, not in October, and I will explain why the primaries this Sunday won’t be the decisive moment everyone is “predicting.”
No amount of illusions and backroom politics will defeat the richest and most powerful politician in Venezuela. It makes no sense, in my viewpoint, to beat around the bush in this case. Regardless of whether the opposition candidate receives 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, or 5 million votes on Sunday, Chávez will win again in October.
It’s utterly foolish, in my opinion, to even consider that the opposition has a chance in the presidential race—unless the caudillo dies in the meantime—while the electoral power remains in the hands of the Elections Ministry of Hugo Chávez.
The old and new opposition is doomed. It’s hard for me to get excited about Henrique Capriles Radonski when his close relatives are deeply involved in massive corruption scandals and effectively run Chávez’s most efficient propaganda outlets.
And wasting time debating whether they are center-left or center-right, or if they are like Lula or Uribe, makes no sense. Instead, they should be planning how to take over every single polling station in the country, especially in rural areas of Venezuela, where thousands of ghost voters continue to give Chávez 100% of the votes. They should ensure that anything announced by the CNE is a true reflection of the people’s vote, not a manipulated and unaudited result from Smartmatics controlled by the CNE that only a fool like Jimmy Carter would accept. Until that happens, none of them stand a chance, and to think otherwise is simply foolish. Lula is not the iconic figure they should follow; instead, they should look to Alejandro Toledo, the humble cholo who possibly defeated South America’s first postmodern dictator: Alberto Fujimori.