Caracas Chronicles

Interesting bit #1: Julio Borges welcomes the New CNE’s decision to allow Venezuelan universities to audit the much-disputed Electoral Registry.

Interesting bit #2: Chavez rebuts allegations that he is meddling in other countries’ internal affairs in a single phrase that magnificently joins his special brand of water-tight intellectual rigor and sense of subtlety with his trademark understated sophistication: “¡Qué injerencia, ni que nada!” (I’ll let someone braver than me try to translate that one.) Chavez explains the strange phenomenon whereby some ill-intentioned people have misinterpreted his, erm, threat to end diplomatic relations with Peru if Peruvians vote for the wrong presidential candidate as “meddling” by saying that the desperate Latin American right wing made it all up. Meanwhile that standard-bearer for the desperate Latin American right wing, Ollanta Humala, condemns and deplores Chavez’s earlier statements…go figure…