This political strategy is brought to you by Ron Cacique.
In a shockingly ham-fisted move, Pablo Pérez’s announced earlier today that the opposition is in talks with a number of chavista governors, including those in Trujillo, Mérida, Bolívar and Yaracuy, to get them to switch their allegiance to Capriles.
It’s just obvious to me that this isn’t something you can talk about until you have a done deal, because if you do you put irresistible pressure on the people involved to deny the story and double-down on their support for the regime…which, indeed, is what all of the governors involved did, immediately, as soon as they heard the news.
So there you have it: there might possibly have been a chance to flip four chavista governors to our side…until Pablo Pérez decided to go gabbing about it.
Or am I missing some deeper game here?
Uber double facepalm time
Maybe he was actually lying to confuse Chavismo and generate some distrust in the PSUV. Didn’t count on that, bro?
Anyway, I truly dislike most of the current Chavistas regional caudillos (including the last saltatalanquera, el gato). Many of them are highly unpopular and they’re just doing fine because they befriended Chavez. I don’t truly think that being able to use their $$$ machinery on the local level can be any beneficial, as Capriles would get associated with their already awful image and the central gov can and will outspend them easily. But we live in a patronage society, so who knows.
OK… You call PP’s gaffe (or deeper play, I don’t know), but you don’t say that Henry Falcón did say almost the same thing (which is credible enough; after all, he came from the same place).
CC was editorially against PP during the primaries, and he was game… But you can’t see Falcon’s blunder (or genius political move)? Come on! Come… on! ☹
BTW: I believe they are merely trying to disrupt chavismo… There’s very little point, after the primaries, of supporting the former chavistas if they provide a split of the red vote by just looking for reelection against a PSUV challenger (unless they do bring something to the table, presidentially-wise).
OK, ok, right you are. Though PP did the talking, HF was just an innocent bystander to the mess. (I can imagine them planning to announce they had talked to several PSUV governors, but without naming states, then having PP run away with it…)
Incidentally, I wouldn’t call my line anti-PP in the primaries. It was clearly pro-HCR, and anti-PP’s coalition partners, but PP himself struck me as a pretty sharp guy….until yesterday!
You may not have shown an anti-PP line during the primaries. Overtly. But in this post, and before all evidence is in, you scrape PP down with a photo op that shows him in a poor light, during the pre-candidate campaigns. And you take it one step further by adding the caption: “This political strategy is brought to you by Ron Cacique.” That’s an anti-PP low-blow, no matter how you sweeten it, now.
I must agree with syd here.
I also agree with Syd here…and also Henry was very vocal on the announcement, he was not a quiet bystander..
Aw, lighten up… It’s a joke! The tagline was hilarious, IMO…
Worthy of The Economist…
que fetiche tan arrecho el de ustedes con pablo perez, henri falcon tambien estaba ahi, pero ni lo mencionan, el que la kaga tiene que ser er marracucho! geez.
To be fair, I would give PP and the Comando Tricolor the benefit of the doubt on this one… I give credit to how organized and calculated their campaign has been run so far, and I sincerely doubt that they would allow such an improvised whim to go unchecked if it didn’t have some deeper objetive or agenda. I agree with gtaveledo that this might just be a media maneuver to momentarily disrupt chavismo.
This stage in the campaign is when all opposition spekespeople have to actively contribute within their natural spheres of influence…perhaps doing and saying the things that HCR cannot. Perhaps they have left PP to do the political taunting while HCR rises above it, and if this is the case, then PP should be applauded for being willing to take the fall if whatever this stunt looks to achieve ends up failing. I doubt his reasoning is as simple as you initially judge it to be…
I really wanted to believe this too, eduarte, until I saw how simply chavismo could disarm the gambit just with a few tweets. If it was an attempt to disrupt them, it just didn’t seem all that disruptive to me.
(Who knows, though, maybe PP and HF really did meet with those guys not with a view to flipping them but as part of a pre-meditated plan to then leak the fact, get SEBIN to confirm it had happened, and sow distrust within PSUV. James Bond stuff, pero quién sabe…)
I am ready to be convinced that PP is the Keyser Soze of venezuelan politics. A mystery wrapped in an enigma.
…Sprinkled with a bit of Intrigulis……
It may be a bold move that could reap its benefits. They basically just pulled really hard at a good part of the structure and while they did not bring it down, they may have caused a few cracks, and cracks can grow unexpectedly fast.
It’s all about mind games at this point. The ‘guerra de encuestas’ has begun SEVEN months before the actual elections, something is definitively up in both PSUV and Comando Tricolor. As far as I can imagine (or allow myself to imagine) this is a bluff move to burst the cheerie chavista bubble after yesterday’s sad show of overjoy due to numbers that won’ t have any validity a month from now. Which leads to a second question: was this bubble-bursting declaration from the runner-up in the primaries provoked out of spite because of the aforementioned hapiness in the chavista HQ, or was it a mere reminder to them that Gato Briceno and Henri Falcon are the only ones balsy enough to jump that talanquera, but that intrarelationships in PSUV are as solid and stable as a geological fault? Not necessarily because this or that governor might think of leaving chavismo -which isn’t that farfetched of an idea when you think of it, but also up high in the real power struggle.
I’ll go ahead and reafirm my belief in PP wanting to stir some trouble and, why not, toy chavismo a little bit. PP might not be Einstein, but he ain’t no Rosales either. I mean this in the good way, of course.
So what about bricenio the cat? When is the million dollar photo op coming up?
I am sure: as soon as they hug Briceno we shall see Chavistas seriously investigating the murders that some farmers and squatters have claimed were committed by people close to the governor.
They will start showing in La Hojilla all the mud they could get about Briceno.
The question for us is: do we need to go that far? Can’t we just plant a Tortuous Convolvulus among them? Chavisti Galli non sunt.
Well you also have to hand pick the Governors you take on this side; for instance I have lived in Bolivar for more than 20 years and we have never seen a Governor so corrupt and dirty as Rangel Gomez; please do not take him or else I will vote for the reds!! and so will many because the second in line from the PSUV is a sure victory against Rangel or even against Andres
This is the other thing I can’t fathom – don’t they see that Andres V. is going to blow a gasket if they throw him under the bus for Rangel Gomez?! Why would they even be trying to poach a guy like him?…
I just don’t get it…
Who is the second in line?
Behind Rangel Gomez? No idea. Chavez would put an outsider anyway.
I agree… You have a lot of primary winners, and potential election winners. Why would bring such rotten apples up here? If they do not bring votes for Capriles, there’s little point for that…
Could they be asking for future amnesties if HCR is elected through their efforts?
Yeah, they could. In the end, it’s every man for himself. They know they can’t go alone and pretty sure that they won’t be accepted in the opposition, so what other choice they have? The first priority for these people now is self-preservation.
Wait…nobody said we want to throw nobody under the bus…but splitting the chavismo and offer the minimum institutional support to see and independent Rangel Gomez ticket at the ballot has its value… providentially speaking
Un Nuevo Tiempo is a horrible party,i still dont know why people here in Zulia vote for them.
Well we are regionalistas after all
What you see as a gaffe, I see as a way of getting people to talk about something other than what they want to talk about. Regardless of how much they deny it, I’m sure some in the PSUV are thinking and saying “Yo sabía que esos eran unos traidores…” It also heightens the idea of chaos – el desespero, puej – within chavista circles.
On the other hand, Trujillo Governor Hugo Cabezas doesn’t strike as someone who would be willing to jump the talanquera or open to the idea. This sounds like bluffing to me, pure and simple. Let’s hope it works.
Hugo Cabezas, also known as the X man. I know this because the proof is in my cedula.
Assuming this was planned and executed by the MUD leadership, I would classify it as a probe to determine the speed and organization of the reactions of Chavismo in the absence of Chavez. In general, I have a hard time believing that PP has wandered off the reservation.
agree. (love your expression, ‘wandered off the reservation” :-)) Even though he was not my favourite candidate, PP has shown great maturity in accepting defeat, great solidarity with the MUD, and a great love-in with HCR. I doubt that PP was flying off the handle on this issue.
Syd,
I nearly changed that expression. I wasn’t sure any non-American would understand it.
Had PP finished drinking the bottle of Cacique when he made the comments?