Half Venezuelans claim to distrust President Chávez

[ChangoLoa]

Latest IVAD poll:

Only two out of 10 Venezuelans put the blame on President Hugo Chávez for the country's problems. According to poll firm Venezuelan Institute for Data Analysis (IVAD), 63.2 percent of Venezuelan held accountable the different bodies of the Executive branch of government for domestic troubles; 20.1 percent held Venezuela's President responsible; 11.4 percent attributed the problems to state governors and 6.2 percent to Mayors.

With regard to confidence in President Chávez, 51.6 percent had little or no confidence; 21.6 percent said that they had little confidence and 30 percent no confidence at all. Meanwhile, 15.7 percent was highly confident, 20.2 percent trusted the president and 11.7 percent was somewhat confident.

With respect to political allegiance, 36 percent said they support President Chávez, 33.4 percent was against Chávez, 26.1 percent was independent, 1.9 percent was not interested in politics, and 2.6 percent did not know/did not respond.

As for the Venezuelan economy, 62.5% considered that the devaluation of the Venezuelan bolivar was not favorable.

About the causes of the power crisis, 39.8 held the President responsible; 25.8 percent blamed nature, particularly El Niño meteorological phenomenon, 11.3 percent blamed people and their lack of conscience.

On water supply problems, 32.2 percent said that the problem can be attributed to scarce rains whereas 24.6 percent held the government responsible.


Link:
http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/02/08/en_pol_esp_half-venezuelans-cla_08A3407011.shtml

[protocol rv]

1. So 80 % of Venezuelans blame the central government

I think even the poor are waking up. Now all they have to do is understand Chavez picks the people who run the country at the federal level. And if 80 % of them think the PSUVistas are responsible for the problem, then it's time for change, is it not? The trend is evident, as the electricity crisis gets worse, industry is starting to shut down, they keep working harder and harder to borrow money, which means they are mortgaging the nation's future. Not a nice picture unless we can change the congress and stop the irresponsible behavior on the part of this government.

[ChangoLoa]

2. Petare is definitely waking up

But the road to september is long. Legislative presence is the necessary condition for a real coherent leadership to emerge out of the naive and useless "anti-Chavez union". Anti-chavismo invaded by old dinosaurs is no political line. The different groups need to campaign and get congress participation in order to formulate real political projects.

Have you read this?

http://www.talcualdigital.com/Avances/Viewer.aspx?id=31446&secid=44

This looks interesting too:

http://www.talcualdigital.com/Avances/Viewer.aspx?id=31432&secid=28

What do you think about Falcon? I know that both the opposition and the chavismo in Lara really appreciate him.

[Wilms]

3. That's weird. A link I have about the SAME poll features something else.

Chavez taunts opposition over his popularity
Monday 08 February 2010

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called the opposition's bluff, inviting them to campaign for a recall referendum to prove that Venezuelans "disagree with the revolution."

Mr Chavez said: "Lately, the opposition is saying that I have just 30 per cent support and that 70 per cent of the people are against me.

"If that were so, why not call for a recall referendum to sack me?" he added.

Venezuela's constitution allows for such a referendum halfway through a president's term if 20 per cent of the country's registered voters sign a petition asking for it.

Mr Chavez said: "It would be extremely easy to collect signatures if 70 per cent are against me - the opposition could do it in two days if that were true."

Latest polls by the Venezuelan Institute for Data Analysis showed that President Chavez had an approval rating of 58.3 per cent, while his United Socialist Party of Venezuela would receive 34 per cent support in September's congressional elections, compared with just 11 per cent support for opposition parties.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/layout/set/print/content/view/full/86591

:shrug:

[protocol rv]

4. They punish those who sign for a referendum

Because a referendum requires signatures, and those are verified, the government can have a list of the people who vote for it, and then the government can punish them. As they have assumed they can nationalize anything they want, and so many people now work for state owned enterprises or the state itself, they are more and more afraid of showing they oppose the government. He knows this, and is willing to brag about it.

Regarding the polling, I don't see the figures you see. I saw the Datanalisis survey itself, and it shows for the first time Chavez is opposed personally by more people than support him. Datanalisis keeps a graph in which they show results for the same questions over time, and the trend is clear, Chavez is losing popularity gradually, and the opposition to Chavez is slowly gaining. The issue, as has been discussed by others, is whether the opposition remains fragmented, or the people unite to force the PSUV out of power. Unity in opposition to the communists will be the key.

[Wilms]

5. First you say they punish people, then you claim they could.

So which is it.

Meanwhile, you can get together with your friends to discuss a few percentage points one way or the other.

Chavez is in office, he was voted there repeatedly. When you get organized you can run against him.

Best of luck.

[ChangoLoa]

7. They've already punished people for voting against the regime so they could do it again

difficult to understand?

[Wilms]

8. Link?

Why must I ask for one?

[protocol rv]

14. Link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasc%C3%B3n_List

[Wilms]

16. Thanks for that link.

According to it, there was "widespread" concerns about how the list was being used. It also refers to a case filed by three gov't employees citing abuse. Do you know what happened to that case?

[protocol rv]

10. They can, and they will be punished for it.

The government has already shown its perfectly willing to punish individuals for signing in referenda against the government position. Thus the legal right to force the referendum is there, but people are afraid to use that power. I wouldn't do it, it's too risky. The key is to have a united party with a decent platform, which people can unite behind to take the communist PSUV off its perch. This is going to be difficult because the opposition isn't united, and every time a leader starts emerging with the ability to unite people, he is indicted and forced to flee the country, or jailed.

I am fairly sure the situation here in Venezuela is hopeless, because the so called socialists (the Chavistas) are now firmly entrenched in power, and while people are not happy with the Chavista performance, the alternative opposition is weak, disorganized, and their leaders disappear as they emerge. In a sense, the Chavistas are using the same techniques used by the Bolsheviks in the early Revolutionary days, when, in spite of being a minority, they used tight organization and carefully applied terror and violence to overwhelm the more moderate Menzhevik opponents. Thus Lenin and Trotsky were able to take over, and we know the result, the Soviet Union went communist, and the horrible outcome of communist rule was imposed on the poor, long suffering Russian people.

Thus I expect there is no solution for Venezuela, the government will become increasingly radical, become more and more lawless as it ignores the Constitution and the laws it itself writes. Arbitrary arrests, disappearances, and jailing will become more prevalent, the crime rate will continue to soar, industry will continue to collapse, oil production will continue to drop, electricity will continue to be in crisis, the health system will continue to be lousy, higher education will suffer in quality, inflation will continue at its current super heated pace, and smart Venezuelans, including a large portion of the middle class, will flee, partially replaced by Cuban "experts" who will make sure Venezuelan money is funneled to Cuba as much as possible.

Venezuela will be seen in future history books as the Uganda of Latin America, a member of a list of failed "socialist/nationalist" revolutions, such as North Korea's, Zimbabwe's, and Cuba's. My friends, we are toast, and the best solution is to calmly prepare to leave the country in an orderly fashion, before they close the doors and we become another set of victims sitting in a gulag, surrounded by walls built by our communist captors.

[Wilms]

11. A *cough* link *cough-cough* please *cough-gag*. n/t

[EFerrari]

12. LOL.

[vallisoletano]

18. Short Circuit Inside the Revolution

Venezuela is going through a grievous power –electrical energy- emergency but the so called revolution is also having difficulties to conceal it, while the motto “To stick to one’s hands” pretending not to understand, ignoring this problem, isn’t paying any results.

Frequent black outs would reach even to the farthest country geography, consequently affecting its inhabitants. There’s no getting around it: government officials are definitely not ruling this South American country efficiently and again, back to the old tricks, they don’t attend their office duties, and clerks fail to come to work either for the well being and people’s welfare and to bring this country on the road to a fair progress and steady growth.

But wages these bureaucrats earn are justified since they support and secure Chavez president at office and of course at power. This explains vacant minister offices as public administration clerks abandon their jobs just to attend to campaign parades.

We would expect an outcome: the basic, elementary maintenance overhaul given to dams is neglected, overlooked and careless by negligent office clerks, who obligated to wear red clothes -men in red- are forced to attend to these parades -assistance is checked- even humiliated if refused, so Venezuela won’t get out of control.

The country’s infrastructure, communication, transportation, and roads, has become impaired, wearing out, causing damage to citizens. This is what has happened to power plants, despite huge budgets approved by president Chávez to deal with these problems.

In only just a decade, over 950.000 million dollar bugged of calculated proceeds without control authority or instrument have been handed out to energy board, without authority control, except for the ostentatious, showy governmental expense squandering. This has been augmented by the new attention, courtesy contributions and donations given for the sake of the Bolivarian Revolution to allied countries, plus purchases of obsolete weaponry for non existing wars.

The biggest and only dam in Venezuela is “Guri” or “Raúl Leony,” once a major outstanding engineering masterpiece, and still is today, standing as one of the best in the world, lacks appropriate maintenance and safeguarding creating some problems along the years. So it shows the fact only half of total turbines working presently is responsible for 70% of power going to Venezuela’s energy necessities.

Nevertheless, 11 years since Chávez got power and enough resources were not sufficient to build more dams -or alternate energy plants. At the same time other ways for generating energy have been abandoned -like thermoelectric plants powered by orimulsion fuel. These latter depend greatly on oil -Venezuela has plenty of this- and would be much more manageable than depending on rain hazard.

The country is now under the worst leadership crisis, blaming others for the power shortage, ranging from “El Niño,” to blame the IV Republic, ruined by almighty chavismo, it has the government way out.

Everybody would question if too much power given to a president has been effective to solve Venezuela’s problems, or if random, hit and miss is the rule here instead. Venezuelans cannot accept any political project hat would let collapse public utility and risk the nation budget in arms and propaganda expenses on the rise. Energy supply has been a hard trial for Chavez and his admirers, yet they have mismanaged these damned catastrophe. The only way out of this in resolving the current power crisis would be a proposal bound to execute and carry out new alternate ways to get Venezuelans out of the existing electric shortage.

[ChangoLoa]

6. The question wasn't "do you approve...", the Morning star changed the idea

The question they're referring to was "How would you qualify the overall performance of Chavez?"
Results:
Very good = 13%
Good = 22.7%
Average to good = 22.6%
Avg to bad = 14%
Bad = 12.3%
Very bad = 12.6

From that to concluding that "Chavez had an approval rating of 58.3 per cent" it takes a very militant point of view. Especially when they read three other questions saying
1) 51.5% of the population has little or no trust in president Chavez against 47.1% who has some/a lot of trust
2) 54.8% disapproves Chavez's current behavior while 39.8% approve it
3) 63.9% of Venezuelans want this to be his last term

I see you're talking about the possible revocative referendum... are you kidding me?
Last time people signed, the government violated the secrecy of their signature, broke the laws, got the lists one night in the electoral council, published the names of 3-4 million people who "signed against the president" and many thousands of administrative workers lost their jobs, saw their professional ascension frozen, many university students lost their state scholarship. People were badly punished already because they dared sign against Chavez. Not again...

Btw, "Venezuela's constitution allows for such a referendum halfway through a president's term" but, theoretically, it severely punishes people who would eventually unveil the names of the persons who sign. Hey! but IT HAPPENED and NO ONE WAS PUNISHED... because the Supreme Court is 100% chavista and 0% impartial.

[Wilms]

9. You need some...

[struggle4progress]

13. Popularidad Chávez cae en Venezuela, todavía sigue alta: sondeo (Reuters)

eves 11 de febrero de 2010 15:54 GYT

... Un estudio de la respetada encuestadora IVAD, encargado por el Gobierno y obtenido por Reuters el jueves mostró que un 58,3 por ciento de la población cree que el desempeño de Chávez ha sido bueno, aunque tan sólo un 48 por ciento confía en el presidente socialista.

Pese a ser todavía una cifra muy alta, la popularidad del líder ha ido cayendo paulatinamente según la encuestadora, cuyos sondeos le daban un apoyo del 60,3 en diciembre, menor al 62,4 en octubre y sensiblemente inferior al 71 por ciento que registró en septiembre del 2008.

Al mismo tiempo, la opinión positiva sobre la oposición se ubicó ligeramente por encima del 50 por ciento, mientras que en el estudio del 2008 tan sólo un 16,5 por ciento de los consultados aprobaba el trabajo de los adversarios de Chávez.

Además, seis de cada 10 venezolanos cree que la situación del país es mala y un 70 por ciento opina que en el 2010 será igual o peor ...

http://lta.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idLTASIE61A16C20100211


Published: Sunday, January 03, 2010
Arthur Shaw: Why is Hugo Chavez so irresistible to the electorate now?

... Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reached the end of 2009, supported by 60.3% of his country's citizens, according to poll results, based on a survey of 1200 people, released Thursday, December 31, 2009, by Venezuelan Institute for Data Analysis (IVAD).

Bourgeois liberals control IVAD at the top and, below, the Institute is largely staffed by middle class liberals. Most likely, there is not even one Marxist-Leninist on IVAD's premises or ever been on IVAD premises. In the past, IVAD, on occasion, has been disparaging of the Venezuela Revolution but occasionally IVAD is factual, too.

IVAD is an outlet of the bourgeois media in Venezuela but, unlike most of the bourgeois media in Venezuela, is not known for an irrepressible propensity to tell lies, whether the falsities seem to favor revolution or ideological neutrality or counter-revolution ...

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=87268

[protocol rv]

15. Fix the economy and you will be popular again

Talk, talk, talk, all we hear from you is sloganeering and hot air. Fix the economy, get the electric power back on, and you will be popular again.

[Wilms]

17. He's still popular. Just not as much as before. n/t

[protocol rv]

20. That's right, not as much as before

And the key number is his slippage below 50 % when many questions are asked. I've seen the graphs, and he shows a continuous decay in popularity. And things are still getting worse. The rumor around here is that Castro is so worried about Chavez' party surviving the next election he's sent trusted men (most of them old members of the communist gerontocracy) to help Chavez run things. So Cubans are now being put in charge in many ministries, are working within the military, the security services, the health services, and now the emergency electricity board. I don't think things are as bad for Chavez as Castro thinks, because the opposition continues to be juvenile and fragmented. But the trend is definitely down for the ruling clique, and this has to give Castro fits. Cuba relies heavily on Venezuelan cash and oil to survive, and as the economy here winds down and begins a slow collapse, Venezuela won't be able to sustain itself and also Cuba.

[Wilms]

22. Here...

[EFerrari]

19. He polls higher than Obama.

"For the past few months, Obama’s approval rating has trended downward. A New York Times poll published Friday showed only 46 percent approve of the president’s general job performance, while 45 percent disapprove."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33017.html#ixzz0fjXvTwhu

[protocol rv]

21. Who cares?

There you go with your American-centric view of the world. When are you Americans going to learn to discuss subjects outside the USA without whining about this or that American, or whatever happens there? We don't care if there's no water in California, or if you have a lousy military record. When we are discussing Latin America, then the US should only be mentioned when its actions impact Latin America.

[Wilms]

23. I'm ok with discussing LA.

Chavez was the democratically elected.

That bothers you.

[protocol rv]

24. That doesn't bother me

I voted for Chavez. What bothers me is the way he has changed his ideas over time, and the poor performance by the people he has put in important positions. I also dislike having Cubans run things, they're not known for being that sharp, look at what they did to their country.

[Wilms]

26. That's your perspective.

Vote for the other guy next time.

I'd be surprised if Chavez did any more than an OK job. And that's OK. For some one better to come along would be fine. And I sense Cuba did fine as well considering the blockades and the fact that the US held considerable influence over LA.

[EFerrari]

25. LOL. The comparison is for perspective, something your posts

tend to avoid. :)