<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2003 By: Daniel Burnett

Date: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 4:40 PM From: Daniel Burnett dburnett1@nyc.rr.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: More thoughts on education

Dear Editor: I was pleased to see the letter by Mr. Campbell regarding how to reform the Venezuelan educational system. In my original letter on this subject I noted that my ideas were not exhaustive and that there would be many other ways in which to improve the educational system. In fact it was my hope to provoke a discussion on this subject where in others would contribute their ideas. On this score, Mr. Campbell's letter did not disappoint as he put forth a number of very helpful proposals.

The main idea put forth by Mr. Campbell was creating a two track educational system where there would be not only traditional "academic" schools but also more technically oriented vocational schools. I believe that this in an excellent idea and one which I completely overlooked in my original letter.

As Mr. Campbell pointed out, there are a great many students who are uninterested by a regular academic curriculum. Further, traditional secondary school curriculums have as their main purpose preparing students for university studies in spite of the fact that most students never go on to study in a university. Therefore such schools poorly serve many students by driving many to abandon school altogether and by leaving the large number who graduate but don't want to attend a university ill prepared for the labor market.

So creating vocational schools where students would hopefully be more motivated and learning practical skills would definitely be helpful. In the United States vocational schools were heavily used for the past 40 or 50 years. Of late they have been in decline but I think that is more the general decline in the quality of secondary than anything else. However, community colleges, which are the equivalent of vocational schools at the university level, have been quite successful and have been expanded. These community colleges offer a wide range of educational programs but concentrate on very specific technical training.

For example, in the city where I am from, Rochester, New York, the main industries are photographic equipment, optics, and machine tools. And guess what almost all the programs at the local community college pertain to ... photographic equipment, optics, and machine tools. The relationship between the community college and industry is very close. College administrators frequently consult with local industry to see what their needs are and gear their educational programs accordingly.

For example, in the late 1990s the Rochester area had a bunch of companies start up in the new area of Photonics. These companies needed employees trained to work in cleanrooms and with sophisticated etching equipment similar to what semiconductor manufacturers use. The response of the community college was to build its own cleanrooms. Area companies helped supply the needed equipment and loaned the college engineers to do the teaching.

The community college got new equipment and a valuable new educational program, companies got the type of well trained employees that they needed and, not least, a significant number of people got excellent training and well paying jobs. To some having such a close relationship between private industry and a public college may seem inappropriate. But looking at the results, it is a win-win-win situation for everyone involved. Given the demonstrated success of these types of institutions Venezuela may wish to devote some of its resources to creating similar types of colleges.

Another form of this collaboration between industry and universities is the co-op programs that many universities have. At one local university, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the academic calendar is made of three trimesters. For two of these trimesters students attend normal classes. During the third trimester they must work as an intern at local company in a field related to their area of study.

This benefits the students in several ways. It gives them practical experience in their chosen field. Also, they make contacts in industry which greatly aid their job search once they graduate ... in fact many times the companies where they intern wind up hiring them into full-time positions once they graduate. And it also helps the students economically in that they earn money to help support their studies. This program has been used by the university for about 20 years now and has proven very successful. These types of programs could be implemented in Venezuela and I believe they would be equally successful there.

Starting primary schooling at the age of 6 instead of 7 is also an excellent idea. First it would allow the education to be accelerated and allow for the development of the vocational tract that Mr. Campbell proposes. Additionally it would help families that are headed by either a single parent or where both parents work by alleviating childcare problems. Further, many studies conducted in the US have consistently shown that early childhood educational efforts are the most effective ones.

There are a few points were I am not in complete agreement with Mr. Campbell. For example, Mr. Campbell is in favor of leaving current fees that some schools have in place. He also questions the whether it is practical to implement nation wide exams for all grades and subjects.

In general, I am against any fees or tuition being charged for any level of education. Primary and secondary education should be both universal and compulsory which rules out charging fees for it. Further, we need to keep in mind that in a country with as much poverty as Venezuela even the most nominal fees are likely to be too high for many families.

University level education will indeed have to be rationed as there are limited resources. However, I believe that university education should be reserved for those who most merit it and show they will take full advantage of it. The way determine who those people are is through performance on entrance exams, not by how much money their parents have.

That brings me back to our second area of disagreement ... standardized testing. Mr. Campbell's main objection seems to be that it would cost a lot. However, if it is implemented on a nation wide basis, which is what I propose, the cost of it relative to the overall cost of the educational system would be small.

Mr. Campbell also says that nationwide tests would require a standard nationwide curriculum. That is also precisely what I propose. A nation wide curriculum would be beneficial for various reasons but the main benefit is that it reduces bureaucracy and saves money.

Why should every state in Venezuela be wasting resources devising its own curriculum?

Is there any difference between what primary school students in Lara and students in Bolivar should be learning?

Of course not. And as I mentioned in my original letter the state of New York (with a population of 19 million) has a standardized curriculum so Venezuela (with a population of 24 million) shouldn't have any problem implementing one.

But there is a much more important reason why I think standardized testing is absolutely crucial and cannot be postponed as Mr. Campbell proposes. In any undertaking there must be ways to measure success and failure. When running a company it is profit or lack thereof that indicates success or failure; in health care system it is the life expectancy of the population that tells us if the health care system is well run or not; if you are running police department you measure murder rates and other crime statistics to see how effective your policing is.

In education the main question is how much are the students learning. And the best way of measuring that is through exams. The educational reforms that Mr. Campbell and I are proposing would require that increased resources be dedicated to education. Of course, in Venezuela financial resources are very limited and therefore extremely precious and not to be squandered.

For that reason, there must be some ensuring that those resources are used effectively and not wasted.

If you fly a plane with no instruments to tell you how fast you are going, what your altitude is, or what direction you are traveling in you are said to be "flying blind." Well, without regular exams you are you are "educating blind" ... you will simply have no way of knowing if you are going in the direction that you want to go in.

The fact is, regular examinations are the best way of determining if educational reforms are working. If they are indeed working we will see that reflected in significantly improved performance on these exams. If they are not working that too will be reflected in the student's performance on the exams and we will know we have to change course and try something else. The point is if we are doing something wrong the sooner we find out the better.

This is why testing must be implemented right from the beginning. If we wait until some years on to implement it we may find we have wasted much time and money on ineffective educational reforms without even realizing it. I know that I have belabored this point to such an extent that most readers are probably tired of hearing about it. My reason for being so insistent on it though is that without such a testing scheme all other reforms, now matter how well intentioned, will likely fail. For this reason I would definitely ask that Mr. Campbell reconsider his position on this point.

Mr. Campbell also took exception to my saying that most parents don't have significant educational aspirations for their children. However, that isn't what I said in my original letter. My point actually was that most children's educational attainment does not surpass that of their parents. And that is most definitely true throughout in the US, England, Germany, Venezuela, indeed throughout the world.

Most professionals with a high level of education come from families where their parents had a high level of education. On the other end, most children who drop out of school without completing their primary education have parents who did not complete their primary education. Of course, there are certainly exceptions to this ... children of illiterate parents who come to have doctorates and children of professionals who never complete their formal education ... but as a general point it is true.

It is for that reason that countries like Venezuela, where the majority of the population has a relatively low educational level, need to come of up innovative plans to get poor families to put more of an emphasis on education. That was the impetus behind my idea of keeping schools open additional hours and providing three free meals to all students. The idea is to make sure children spend most of their day in a place where education and studying is being promoted.

I would like to add an additional point regarding free meals in schools. Reflecting on it a little more I now realize this program is even more important than I originally indicated. The reason is this: as I have pointed out in other letters the time for any economic development plan to work is likely to be long ... decades not years.

During the first ten or fifteen years, most all of the population will actually see their standard of living go down. The poor will also be hard hit as there will be almost no new public works that benefit them ... no new public housing, no new paved roads and sewer system, and no new hospitals.

The reason for that is that the government will need to devote all of those resources funding new companies in building up their industrial infrastructure. So the program of free meals for all schoolchildren will be important in that it will be pretty much the only way in which the government will be showing that it has not abandoned them.

It will be the one tangible thing given by the government to the most marginalized sections of society that will show that it values them and that they will have a place in the "new" Venezuela. So although it will be a costly program to carry out I think it is very worthwhile as it will serve multiple purposes.

A final point that bears mentioning is that for educational reform to have success the economy must also be successfully reformed and the country must enter a period of sustained growth.

Education and the economy are very much intertwined.

Without a skilled workforce the economy will not be able to grow. But without a growing economy it will be impossible to sustain improvements in the educational system.

Students will not continue to exert themselves in their studies if after studying for many years to become engineers or scientists there are no jobs that utilize their hard earned skills.

Young people must not only be given the opportunity to study ... they must be given a reason to study.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: A long letter by Daniel Burnett (May 1, 2003) starts with the question: How will we know what works ... if nothing is ever given a fair chance to succeed? He elaborates on this question only briefly and almost at the end of the letter.

In essence, he claims that we Venezuelans, who are seeing how the country has been destroyed by the inept group of people now in power, should be ... patient!

He claims we should not expect miracles in too short a period of time. And he quotes Gerver Torres who says that " any serious development program will take many years to be successfully carried out"...

Since he refers to me often in his letter, which is mostly about PDVSA, I will comment on it.  First of all, let me say that Mr. Burnett has no right to ask us to be patient ... we are living the Venezuelan tragedy day after day. We are not occasional visitors here, who can gloss over the myriad of small and big horrors of the so called "Bolivarian revolution". We suffer them.

This is not a social laboratory that can be revisited for years to come, just to see how the natives are doing. Four years is plenty of time, by any standards, to get a pretty clear idea of whether things are working or not working or whether they are going to work.

I say that things are not going to work for us Venezuelans while we have this bunch of clowns in charge of the government. All we have to do to think along these lines is to open our eyes and take a look around, inhale deeply and listen. What we see is poverty, unemployment, invasions of private property, crime, uncollected garbage, buhoneros galore, beggars, children living in the streets, food rationing, an universal lack of hope among the people, social resentment.

As we see this, we refuse to be patient. Iraqis were patient with Hussein, Cubans have been very patient with Castro, Haitians very patient with Duvalier, Argentineans extremely patient with their military gorillas and political demagogues....

We do not want to be patient in that manner....

As we inhale in our cities we smell the urine, the filth, the rotten foods in the sidewalks and we refuse to be patient. We want to be civilized and not live like a tribe of savages. Chavez said something last Sunday that Mr. Burnett will be interested to hear: "Caracas is a pigsty....it revolts me."

Well, Chavez, welcome to the club.  But it is like listening to the pilot of the plane, where we are passengers, complain over the loud speakers about the dismal mechanical conditions of the machine.  And, as we listen we do not hear about development programs of the type Gerver Torres talks about. We hear about our importing Brazilian chickens, Cuban blackbeans, Algerian oilmen, Cuban medical staff and medicines, Colombian flour and cattle...

We do not hear about incentives to investment, but about new red tape against investors.

We do not hear about competent ministers but about nitwits like Giordani and Lucas Rincon being the "stars" of the cabinet.

We do not hear about how important it is for the nation to become united behind a clear political or economic vision but all we hear is "us" and "them", about we the good guys and you the saboteurs, the criminals, the squalid....

And, after four years of this operetta, tragic as an opera but too bizarre to be taken seriously, we refuse to be patient and wait for better times, which would come, according to Mr. Burnett, if we just could wait to see what happens.

Let me add this: When we came aboard the bus (or plane, to be consistent), as passengers our ticket read Democracy, Transparency, Social progress, First World.  This was our destination. Four years later we look out the window and we can clearly see that the route the driver or pilot is taking, from the very beginning of the journey, is not leading where we want to go. He is taking us to Authoritarianland, to Corruptionland, to Socialhateville.

We are going to Cuba or to Zimbabwe or to North Korea.

But, you see, we do not want to go there. Do we wait to get there to tell the pilot to go and fly a kite? No, thanks, Mr. Burnett. By then it will be too late and you know it. Being democratic and idealistic, you will then say "I do not agree with this turn of events. Coronel was right. I do not want to visit that place anymore." But we will left, as a society, slowly twisting in the wind.

Regarding PDVSA, you make a long analysis to conclude that the managers of PDVSA had to be fired, that Chavez waited too long to fire them, that Chavez was too magnanimous, that employees can not run the companies but obey, that they should quit if they are not in agreement with the orders they get. Well, I have gone over this issue many times, but it seems that I can not put my case clear. Let me list once more my main arguments:

1. Managers did not rebel to gain control of the company. Managers rebelled to protect the integrity of the company against its systematic destruction at the hands of Chavez. The rebellion came after some very incompetent presidents and boards were imposed on the company. Of course you can make a mistake in judgment. But when one president is mentally unbalanced, when another is a sworn enemy of the company and still another has a terrorist record. When a president has sued the company he is presiding. When the directors do not have the qualifications to be at that level. When political commissars check the moves of the employees searching for counter-revolutionaries ... then we can see that this is no poor judgment but a plan to control politically and financially the only profitable State Company in Venezuela. And this was a crime that the managers refused to accept...

2. You assume as the gospel that the rebel managers sabotaged the oil installations. This is not true. It is not enough that a pathological liar makes this accusation on national TV for it to be true. Have any proofs been presented? When have the accidents and fires and explosions and oil spills taken place?  Well, after the company fell in the hands of the incompetent. It is not logical to assume that the people who built the installations were now destroying them. Have you seen "The Bridge over the river Kwai"?

3. I certainly would not advocate open rebellion as a recurrent manner to protest. But to fully understand what has gone on in PDVSA you have to see the whole picture. You walked into the theater in the last quarter hour of the film and all you saw was a group of "criminal managers in mutiny against the legitimate President." But you did not see the way this "legitimate" President had been trying to destroy the only company that provides revenues for the country. The managers have been educated not as "owners" of the company but as "trustees". They behaved as "trustees" which is the proper role. As such they were there to guarantee that the company would be well managed, profitable and free from politics.

In summary, What is going on in Venezuela right now is not a social experiment. It is an attempt, on the part of Chavez, to convert the country into a Cuban-type regime. And there are millions of Venezuelans who refuse being dragged in that direction, who will resist it in all legal ways, as long as the rules of the game are respected.

But the purposes of Chavez, by definition, can not be obtained by legal means.

In our Constitution, Venezuela is defined as a democratic country, not as a revolutionary country ... and democracy entails checks and balances, respect for dissidence, accountability by the government bureaucracy to the nation, transparent use of public funds, leadership for all and not for the few converted.

Mr. Burnett can not judge our actions against the framework of a theoretical democracy that does not exist in Venezuela.

But, of course, in the very last instance, when all is said and done, we will all be fully responsible for our actions: I, he, they ... I could have made mistakes and done some things in the wrong way. But I have not killed, I have not stolen and I do not want to see my country become another wretched fundamentalist, dictatorial society. And I will clearly oppose those who want to go that way...

Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983.  In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort.  You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email gustavo@vheadline.com

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2003 By: Mark Weisbrot

Center for Economic & Policy Research Co-Director Mark Weisbrot writes: The US media's mishandling of the Iraq war -- including the build-up and aftermath -- has brought an unusually wide range of criticism and condemnation. Greg Dyke, General Director of the BBC, said he was "shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during this war."

But even within the United States, such sentiments have spilled well beyond the usual circles of right- and left-wing media critics.

I recently participated in a panel discussion at the National Press Club here on the media in Venezuela. In that country the private media has openly and consciously sided with the political opposition, and in the process disgraced itself in the eyes of journalists worldwide.

The comparison with American reporting on the war repeatedly came up. It was striking to see such broad agreement -- among people of very divergent views and politics -- that our media had indeed failed miserably to fulfill its basic duty to inform the public.

The most obvious evidence of this failure is a "results-based" measure. A Gallup poll last August found that 53% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was "personally involved" in the massacre of September 11. Where did they get this idea, for which no evidence exists?

They got this idea from hearing it implied -- not even stated outright -- repeatedly by the Bush administration. The broadcast media transmitted this information over and over again, with only occasional rebuttals, if any. Regardless of their own views on the war, American journalists became the Bush administration's major means of promoting it, even through disinformation. This disinformation included the alleged weapons of mass destruction (still missing in action), the forged documents and aluminum tubes put forth as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, and other falsehoods.

Many journalists I have talked to blame the American people for allowing themselves to be fooled, some even calling Americans "stupid."

As far as they are concerned, the information was all there, especially in the print media and on the Internet -- so it's your own fault if you were misinformed or deceived.

This is a cop-out.

Americans may have a lower literacy level than other high-income countries, but they are not any more stupid than anyone else.

The people of Europe -- including the British and Spanish whose governments joined the "coalition of the willing" -- overwhelmingly opposed the war because the media in those countries, while presenting Bush and Blair's statements, also gave the other side of the story.

The broadcast media is most important, because that is the main source of information for the "swing voters" and Americans whose views are not determined by party affiliation. This media will have to be reformed. Journalists must begin to treat government lying as any other form of malfeasance such as bribery or stealing: it is something to be exposed to the public as news, not glossed over and reinforced with endless repetition.

And when the public is divided on matters of opinion, with 61% opposing a unilateral American invasion of Iraq, that view must be given equal time to that of government officials -- not just an occasional spray in an ocean of pro-war messages.

The last nine months have been truly Orwellian.

In a political move beginning last August that was as transparent as it was cynical, the Bush team used a manufactured threat from Iraq to remove from the electoral agenda all the domestic issues on which it was politically vulnerable. Among these: a series of scandals involving the administration's highest officials (including President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney), the economy, the budget, Medicare and Social Security.

The strategy worked, and helped them win both houses of Congress for the Republican party.

They then invaded Iraq, causing the media and the public to rally even more around the President, and lifting his approval ratings. Now the press is talking about whether he can "use the capital from the military success to push forward his domestic agenda."

That is not likely, as the economy continues to sputter and unemployment rises. The odds are therefore very high that we will find ourselves confronting another "security threat" before the next election -- North Korea, Iran, Syria ... there are many to choose from.

Yes, it can happen again.

The media's complicity in such scams is therefore much worse than a problem of bias or passivity. It is one of the greatest threats to democracy -- and security -- that the United States of America and Venezuela faces.

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research, 1621 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20009-1052 -- Phone +1 (202) 293-5380; Fax + 1(202) 588-1356 .  You may email him at weisbrot@cepr.net

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2003 By: Jeremy Le Page

US YellowTimes.org correspondent Jeremy Le Page writes: As Venezuelans feel sharp economic strains following a recession from more than a year of political conflict, a commercial alliance is being sought between President Hugo Chavez Frias and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Reports indicate the two leaders are pursuing a partnership between state-owned oil firms -- Petrobras (Brazil) and Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) ... both men say the neighboring countries have "interests in common," when it comes to the oil industry.

The alliance will secure cooperation in the oil sector for development, refining, commercialization, exploration and production of petroleum products.

Hopes are that the alliance between the nations will help the staggering Venezuelan economy. Many US experts are now suggesting that Caracas' economy is now "stable" when compared to previous months. Last year, Venezuela's oil output was reduced to 200,000 barrels per day ... operating at full capacity, the country is the 5th largest producer in the world.

But many Venezuelan groups say violence is again on the rise.

This follows a May 1 shooting spree in Caracas which resulted in the death of a man involved in an opposition march. Chavez Frias has since said the violence was the latest attempt by his opponents to overthrow his rule, while anti-Chavez supporters claimed the President's government was responsible for the shooting.

COFAVIC human rights group says violence is growing in Venezuela ... they state that 57 people have been killed and more than 300 injured since last year's failed coup ... almost all the killings remain unsolved.

Many of the anti-Chavez military that helped organize last year's coup d'etat have been seeking asylum in other South American countries. Meanwhile, the US is still pushing for a new election in the country.

Following consultations with the Organization of the Americas (OAS), the White House has said the best way to resolve the crisis in Venezuela is to hold early elections ... the next general election is currently scheduled for 2006.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2003 By: Oscar Heck

VHeadline.com commentarist Oscar Heck writes: What will the results of a referendum (asking for Chavez to leave office) be?

Apparently, such a referendum can be held sometime in August 2003 or later. But first, a petition requesting a referendum must legally collect a certain number of signatures under the vigilance of the CNE (National Electoral College).

In February 2003, according to reports, the number of petition signatures needed to activate such a referendum was 2,393,248 … 20% of the eligible voting population of almost 12 million.

As per some reports, the “Firmazo”, a campaign to collect signatures (without the supervision of the CNE) in February 2003, collected 3,236,320 signatures. This figure was revised and in May 2003 the number of signatures was reported to be 2,789,385 … 446,935 signatures less! (14% error)

The reasons: duplication, illegibility and signatures from people who were not on the eligible voters list.

Now, if in the next weeks, the people opposing Chavez collect (legally and under CNE supervision) the same amount of signatures, that is, 2,789,385, then the CNE can proceed to organize the referendum asking for Chavez to resign from his mandate as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

2,789,385 signatures represent 23.24% of total eligible voters. It also represents approximately 46% of the number of people that voted at the last election (somewhere near 6 million).

(In February 2003, the opposition was declaring that 80% of Venezuelans wanted Chavez out! They even propagated this information world-wide to the extent that most people outside Venezuela believed them. Where they got the figure of 80% is still a mystery).

According to what I witnessed in Venezuela during the “Firmazo”, I estimate voter show-up for the “Firmazo” event to have been about 80%. The same people who signed that petition would be the same people signing a new petition … and would also be the same people voting against Chavez if an election were to take place.

If the 2,789,385 signatures represent 80% of the anti-Chavez voters, this means that there would be 3,486,731 anti-Chavez votes at the most.

This number represents 58% of 6 million (approximate number of people who voted in last election) and only 29% of the total eligible voters population.

The 58% quoted in the last sentence is probably not accurate because it is very probable that more than 6 million people would vote.

Supposing that 9.6 million people vote (80% voter turn-out), then the figure of 3,486,731 represents only 36% of the total votes.

It appears that the referendum will take place, at least based on the number of signatures collected during “El Firmazo.” If the referendum does take place, I do not see how the opposition can win the referendum (50%+1 of the total votes). As much as anti-Chavez people would go to the polls, so would pro-Chavez people, that is, if the opposition doesn’t sabotage the process somehow (I would not exclude the possibility, based on what the opposition has been capable of doing over the last year!)

My estimate is that at the most, the anti-Chavez camp would accumulate between 42-47% of the total votes, thus losing the referendum … and Chavez would remain in power. (I get 47% by taking the average between 58% and 36%)

Another way to look at it is the following:

1. Approximately 65% (a conservative figure) of the Venezuelan population live in “barrios” (slums) or similar conditions. Of these people, my estimate is that about 65% are pro-Chavez, resulting in 42.25% of the population.
2. Approximately 30% are from lower-middle to upper-middle classes and my estimate is that about 15% of these are pro-Chavez, resulting in 4.5% of the total population.
3. Approximately 5% are from the “elite” classes and in my estimate, a negligible amount of these are pro-Chavez.

By adding the results from 1, 2 and 3 above, one gets a total of 46.75% of the population being pro-Chavez. This means that 53.25 % of the population is either anti-Chavez or neutral. If 80% of the 53.25% are anti-Chavez, then we get a total of 42.6 % anti-Chavez people … which is not enough to win a referendum.

Likewise, if there were elections, it would be extremely difficult for the anti-Chavez campaign to win an election.

Oscar Heck Oscar@vheadline.com