Caracas Chronicles

At his press conference today, Jimmy Carter showed what you eat “international pressure” with. His statement: plain, direct, devastatingly straightforward shows that the Descifrado leaks from yesterday were basically on the money. The government looked at its options, and decided to face the voters. I know it’s hard to believe just now, but all the evidence points to that direction.

Carter oozed confidence as he announced that he had held long meetings with all the players over the last few days, that everyone knows what the tallies show, and that the international community awaits a CNE announcement of the real numbers, the ones all sides have. He made it plain, between the lines, that CNE and the government are quite clear on what’s at stake, and has made a clear commitment to play ball.

The great thing is that when you are Jimmy Carter, you can tell it like it is, and people look very foolish if they get angry at you. Today, Carter very clearly and straightforwardly recalled the changing verification criteria in the previous round of signature checks, made it clear such nonsense was not acceptable, and emphasize again and again that the basic difference between the reafirmazo and the reparos is that this time around “any discrepancy” between the totals observers already have and any CNE announcement would be plainly evident. He stresses strongly that he has strong pledges from both CNE and President Chavez himself that the announced results match the information already available to all sides.

I should have a poll about which prominent Caracas street we’ll eventually have to rename Avenida Presidente Carter…