Twelve million Venezuelans were ready to vote on May 28th. The only people in the country who could actually do so were 17,000 expatriate Peruvians. Venezuela's Supreme Court had pulled the plug on an electoral process marred from the outset by haste, controversy and, above all, incompetence and deceit on the part of the electoral council (CNE). The day was to have been one of triumph for President Hugo Chavez's "fifth republic": the "relegitimisation" of every elected position from that of president down to parish councillor, under the new "Bolivarian" constitution approved, at his behest, in December. But to organise contests involving over 36,000 candidates and every imaginable permutation of electoral alliances in just four months proved beyond the capacity of a CNE directorate that cheerfully admitted to no prior experience.
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