Milos Alcalay: After weekend election results the aircraft carrier "Miraflores" should be re-named "Titanic"

VHeadline Venezuela News reports: In an editorial written for Venezuela's Analitica, former Venezuelan Ambassador to the United Nations, career diplomat. Milos Alcalay says that whether or not it was intended (and he presumes that it was...), Venezuela's November 23 local and regional elections for governors, mayors and local councillors was turned into a plebiscite for or against the President Hugo Chavez Frias.

But, he opines, the results show that the aircraft carrier "Miraflores" should be re-named "Titanic" because in a direct head-on collision with the iceberg of Venezuela's democratic opposition, Chavez' vessel was sunk when he gave in to autocratic temptations to design a new political map and discovered a rejection of his "redder than red" vision in a triumph for a rainbow of pluralism.

"Over the next few days, we will hear comments from analysts reflecting on a polarization of Venezuela," Alcalay says. "It rather depends on the (political) positions adopted by their authors, highlighting the triumphs of their candidates and the failures of others."

"The truth is, however, that depending on whichever way you approach the results, both poles won and both poles lost."

"It is true that Chavez-allied governors won 17 states this time around ... and that argument has already begun with the President making his own triumphalist assessments on the march of progress and '21st Century Socialism'! But, it is equally true that the opposition won governorships in the most populous and popular states: Miranda, Zulia, Carabobo, Tachira, Nueva Esparta ... and to this we must add the achievements reached in the at the mayoralties of major cities across the nation."

"The results obtained by Antonio Ledezma as the Mayor of Greater Metropolitan Caracas, coupled with the achievements of the mayors of Chacao, Sucre, Baruta and El Hatillo provide a new map of a (politically) multi-colored Caracas, which will have its coordinated management from slap bang in the middle of Plaza Bolivar."

"From the point of view of the total votes cast nationally, the democratic alternative exceeds the preferences of the government's sole party ... the electorate reaffirms its conviction tat the only route approved by the voters, is democracy!"

"But ... what if we can say that the big winner was 'Puralistic Venezuela' while the big losers were two: the inept National Electoral Council (CNE), which displayed such parciality (towards the incumbent government) with the futility of an electoral system (described as the most advanced in the world) and a thoroughly biased 'Plan Republic' election security operation that must be reviewed before the next elections."

"2009 will be a challenge for the multiplicity of parties that make up the Democratic Opposition which is obliged to agree on advanced social strategies and unity to achieve the new alternative based on respect, dialogue, mediation and and cooperation."

Milos Alcalay
milosalcalay@yahoo.com