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London 24.03.06 | Somewhat I feel vindicated. In August last year I posted an extremely thorough piece of investigative blogging regarding Smartmatic; the e-voting machines vendor, which owns Sequoia, that has proven so useful to Venezuela's wannabe dictator Hugo Chavez.

London 15.02.06 | With the backing of figures provided by pollster North American Opinion Research (NAOR), Venezuela's national electoral council's (CNE) boss Jorge Rodriguez claimed in state media recently that, the organization he chairs, enjoys a healthy 78% of support amongst Venezuelans. According to Rodriguez the increment is due to the effort made by the CNE to guarantee electoral transparency.

London 03.02.06 | Richard Dawkins cited a quote by Stephen Weinberg that goes like this "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things -- that takes religion." Frankly I couldn't agree more with that predicament. Being an atheist myself I totally empathise with the stance of Dawkins and Weinberg.

London 28.01.06 | Recently Canadians booted out the liberal, and corrupt, government of Paul Martin and elected Conservative Stephen Harper. After bearing witness of a marked decrease of Canada's international preponderance and 12 years of rather dull internal politics, the electorate chose a new option. Bush-bashing has proved to have limited mileage amongst intelligent people, especially if not accompanied with sound policies. For some, like myself, is reason to joy. However this victory does not mean that Harper will have an easy ride.

London 28.01.06 | In doing research for a paper I have to present in a conference later on this year, I have come across, too often, with the notion that neoliberalism is the main culprit for the democratic deficit and economic failure in much of Latin America.

02.12.05 | Diplomatic sources in Caracas report about an opinion trend that appears to be gathering force. The "electoral boycott" hypothesis, peddled by Venezuela's officialdom and its OAS sidekicks, has it that the decision of opposition political parties to withdraw from Assemblymen elections on December 4 constitutes, at best, a "boycott" and at worse "an electoral coup." Chavez opponents also stand accused of having, irresponsibly, broken an agreement with the OAS whereby participation in the race was a given.

29.11.05 | All the major political parties have announced withdrawal from the electoral race of next Sunday, in which Venezuelans would choose Assemblymen. Accion Democratica, COPEI, Fuerza Liberal, Polo Democratico, Venezuela de Primera, Movimiento Republicano, Vision Emergente, CausaR and Proyecto Venezuela have made clear that under the present conditions they will not participate in electoral processes.