In The Words of Hugo Chavez Hero Joseph Stalin........

"It's not who votes that matters but who it is that counts the votes".

The fix is already in, count on it.

Caracas, Venezuela is a city of close to 6 million people, yet Thugo Chavez thought that blocking access to the city was going to affect Manuel Rosales' event. It was estimated that nearly 1 Million Venezuelans turned out to support Rosales (photo below), yet the day before Chavez' rally tallied around 250,000.......which included his administration using 2500 buses to bus in people for his rally.

(click photo to enlarge)

Two things.... first, the Chavez propaganda wheels are running at full steam.....

CNN's Spanish network channel reported the Rosales rally with impressive television shots showing the huge mass of people, spoke of hundreds of thousands of people, only to finish ascertaining that Chavez was ahead by thirty points in the surveys.

The foreign press has practically declared Chavez a victor, citing the AP-Ipsos poll as definite proof. In a questionable paragraph, Brian Ellsworth writes for Reuters:

"But most polls still give Chavez a wide lead, with one AP-Ipsos poll showing Chavez sweeping 59 percent of likely voters compared to only 27 for Rosales, who points to opposition linked polls that show the race much tighter." Is Ellsworth aware that several polls are government linked through PDVSA financing, and that all polls in which respondents were openly questioned gave Chavez a thirty point lead, whereas all polls which guaranteed secrecy resulted in a technical tie between the candidates?

Secondly.....probably the best blogger around covering the events in Venezuela, Aleksander Boyd (this guy is nails), has a warning and posts an open letter to foreign letter journalists covering Venezuela.

John Salas and Thor Halverssen write what's really going on and have polls showing the fast fading Chavez and fast rising Manuel Rosales here.

Excerpt:

And, CE.CA., another respected Venezuelan pollster, reported last week that their polls show Rosales ahead for the first time, at 45.8%, with Chavez trailing at 35.3%. Once again, as in all of the previous polls, fear has been found to be a major factor hindering the freedom of expression by Venezuelans.

And the article ends up with this:

Along with Fidel Castro's undying friendship and strategic might, Hugo Chavez inherited a potent and well-greased Cuban PR and lobbying apparatus well experienced in denying the undeniable and defending the indefensible. This apparatus is now working at full steam, because Hugo Chavez has come to realize that eight years of government with few results at great cost not only have wasted away the passion the poor had for him for so long, but have turned a majority of them adamantly against him.

He's scared. He controls the electoral council. What does he do? For now, he's pouring the coal onto the international PR machine, trying to convince the world that he can't lose.