About matching impossible results with correct procedures
Since the world was aware that Venezuela is a polarized nation and needs credible elections so as to be able to work out their internal differences peacefully, the Organization of the American States (OAS) and the European Union (EU) sent observers to review their Parliamentary elections held on December 4, 2006.
Had the observers been there to supervise the mixing of a blue and a yellow but instead of the expected shade of green had only found a pure yellow, they would simply have concluded that the colors were not mixed, which in fact is what happened in Venezuela. As the election results in Venezuela yielded a Congress with 167 representatives in favor the government of Hugo Chavez, and none, zero, zilch, of those who differ with him, the only possible conclusion was that no matter what the causes or who is to be blamed, there were simply no elections held.
Unfortunately since the observers were so completely taken off guard by the surprising results, they did issue some preliminary statements which included a lot of criticism but also some acceptance of the results and this when later having to workout a final statements, on an election never held, must have come back to haunt them.
I know that we were supposed to feel much more sympathetic with these international bureaucrats about the challenges they faced when trying to harmonize the no doubts about an election process with a 167 to 0 result but, unfortunately, the elections were just too important for that.
Had the observers been there to supervise the mixing of a blue and a yellow but instead of the expected shade of green had only found a pure yellow, they would simply have concluded that the colors were not mixed, which in fact is what happened in Venezuela. As the election results in Venezuela yielded a Congress with 167 representatives in favor the government of Hugo Chavez, and none, zero, zilch, of those who differ with him, the only possible conclusion was that no matter what the causes or who is to be blamed, there were simply no elections held.
Unfortunately since the observers were so completely taken off guard by the surprising results, they did issue some preliminary statements which included a lot of criticism but also some acceptance of the results and this when later having to workout a final statements, on an election never held, must have come back to haunt them.
I know that we were supposed to feel much more sympathetic with these international bureaucrats about the challenges they faced when trying to harmonize the no doubts about an election process with a 167 to 0 result but, unfortunately, the elections were just too important for that.
