Venezuelans' Plan to Recall Chavez Is Defeated. Venezuela's elections council ruled that the effort for a recall referendum lacked enough signatures. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

I'm used to inaccuracies in reports about Venezuela (which, by the way, makes me mistrust everything I read in the mass media). Is actually 1.1 Million signatures that are going to the reppair process, the opposition needs around 600 thousand to make the numbers. Problems are: It has only two days, people can go say they didn't sign. The probability of cheating is very high. Still the opposition has to do this futile experiment and go to the regional elections (and be cheated too). You see, the opposition only had to gather 20% of the electorate in signatures, something even my Pro-Chavez friends admitted, should have been easy. The fact that it couldn't is not a testament to how weak the opposition is, but how weak the government is. The opposition handed 3.4 million signatures, even if a quarter were fake (very easy to prove, by the way, take 100 at random and the probability would be very high around 25 would be fake), that would still leave enough signatures for the recall. So, the question is Why did the chavistas resort to big cheating in order to avoid the referendum? Why are they afraid of an opposition that couldn't gather 30% of the electorate? Aren't they well-above the 30% mark according to Polls (even losing the recall they could still win the election afterwards)? The answer is no. They must know those polls are rigged. Not so much by cheating pollster but by fear, a fear that will diminish come election time... So their plan has to be either not to have election or planned huge cheating in every election. Well, they are already practicing...

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