Thanks, Mr. Bush

I got my hands on a correspondence (the last one came in last Sunday) between the über failure [Hugo Chavez] and former-U.S. president George W. Bush. The former is thankful to the latter for having allowed him to put into practice the thing that, on one occasion 10 years ago, made it easy for the Texan to make himself at home in the White House in spite of having clearly lost to his opponent, Al Gore, in both the summation of the popular vote and for the halted recount of votes in Florida.

In the letter the expert card player, that same old gambler who, while shuffling the deck with the marked cards declares to his partner: “Don’t worry, I’ve got a winning hand,” declares himself an admirer of Mr. Danger and assures to have appealed at exactly the right moment to the old imperialist knack for manipulating electoral districts. “Thanks to you and your selfless example,” he writes, “I will take over the majority of seats having won even less votes than the candidates of the Coalition for Democratic Unity, thus allowing me to show off the newly elected deputies, my most recently trained seals.”

“Bush, my friend, thanks for the favors. I no longer despise your sulfur smell; in fact, it has become my favorite scent. I want you to accept my apologies for the innumerable times in the past that I screamed out against you, throwing in your face the type of president you were for having exalted yourself to the presidency of my esteemed United States with half a million less votes than that thankless Al Gore.”

“Well, Bush old buddy, if we have anything in common, it is our ability to transform defeat into victory. Yours was to set up camp in Washington for a while and mine was to make into law everything that was rejected in the already forgotten constitutional reform, complete with that shitty victory and everything; you in Afghanistan and Iraq and now me here in these elections, so skillfully rigged by the National Electoral Council.”

“What does bother me, though, and here I appeal to your ‘saloon’ skills, is that I can’t seem to wipe that smirk of satisfaction off the faces of those masochists that I ordered to have eradicated. They are choking me. Ever since that night when the most popular girl on the ranch disappeared for eight hours, those impertinent masochists won’t stop imitating the Mona Lisa.”

“After all, Mona is what I have, as I so publically hinted to that disrespectful French reporter (absolutely sure that she had been sent by that imperialist President Nicolas Sarkozy) who even dared to wonder how it is that you can end up having more when you really have less. Go to hell instead of paying so much attention to whether or not Bruni is cheating on that ghoul…or is it Gaul? It’s all the same anyway. I already have my 98 representatives thanks to the saving formula patented in 1812 by the revolutionary Elbridge Gerry. What they say about him being a tooth and nail conservative from Massachusetts is a disgrace, as is the allegation that I am a communist.”

“Furthermore, I solemnly declare little Gerry as the forerunner of the Bolivarian revolution and of 21st century socialism. I ordered my staff to bring over some dirt from the land in which this brilliant idea of manipulating the electoral districts was born and lay it to rest in the National Pantheon. Your letter in 2000 was quite a tremendous one, my dear Bush.”

“But what becomes unbearable, as I already mentioned, my old comrade, is that blessed little smile and the signs that I see on a lot of cars, saying: “52 percent + 2012.” I confess that this unnerves me, just like it did when I found out the election results on Sept. 26. The stomach cramps forced me to switch the village balcony for my Corona pot (toilet, in case you didn’t get that).”

“And that’s why I come to you, my dear Bush, to see if between saloon hopping and poker games with marked cards you can, in two years, rig up something utterly democratic: that each of my votes be worth five while the votes of those guys with the sparkly Crest smiles worth only one. Let’s see if that way I can save myself from what’s to come. Don’t forget that the Supreme Tribunal of Justice and the National Electoral Council are both on the lookout. The autonomous universities are on to something similar that I want to put an end to. Meanwhile, I will have to do some juggling because I only have 98 possible deputies (my seals), some old and some new that I am going to have to train. I am rehearsing with a cannon full of irresistible green bills for the revolutionary ethics of the PPT, if we go by the kick marks in the rear from that guy who believes himself to be Albor, and who never told us.”

52 percent = 65, 48 percent = 99. We are the majority and we are proudly scrawny. Democratically, we are going to get you and we will not fall into the trap of a recall election, nor will we allow you to choose our candidates. Worry about governing.