Despite all the bravado, all the refusal to recount and even Luisa Estela’s opinion, the CNE spent a full nine hours yesterday discussing the possible recount and magically. an hour before UNASUR was to recognize Maduro but strongly request a recount, the CNE announced that the 46% of ballot boxes would be audited.

You have to realize that the other 54% was not 100% audited and that an audit is truly a recount, as votes, machines and voting notebooks have to match in detail.

So, what happened? Simply, Maduro was forced to blink. It was not only UNASUR, but also the Venezuelan military that exerted its pressure and force the acceptance of the recount that Maduro had backtracked on. And opposition radicals can claim what they want, but 46% is statistically VERY significant. Any discrepancy, any irregularity, any inconsistency will certainly come out in this audit.

Maduro may look really bad after this recount…

What Maduro and his cronies did not realize is how sensible a recount sounds no matter how partisan you may be. Thus, internationally, Maduro accepting the recount only to “recular” (go back) the next day, looked certainly suspicious to say the least.

For Capriles, this is a win-win situation. He knows the hundreds of irregularities in the voting and his team will focus on it. Any ballot box not present, any inconsistency and those votes will be subtracted from Maduro’s lead. Add Capriles 57,000 international votes and Maduro’s lead of 270,000 could easily melt into the 100,000 lead.

And make him look even weaker.

And what do you say at that point? If all irregularities add up to something significant, the road ahead could be quite difficult.What happens if Maduro’s lead is reduced to 100 thousand or even less? Do they audit the remainder votes?

Nobody knows…

But it could get tricky as soon as next week, when the audit begins and Capriles’ team asks for international observers and the CNE refuses them. Or Tibisay says in this audit no actual ballots will be counted. The road will not be easy or simple.

But I am told the military knows what happened in detail on April 14th.Thus, Maduro blinked, but not only because of UNASUR, but because the military knew what was happening on Sunday. The Government claimed all afternoon that Maduro was ahead by as much as 10%, only to announce a small (<2%) victory at the last minute and rushing the proclamation of Maduro, and event that has always taken two or three days to take place.

And the military is divided. Yes, they have opinions, but leadership, true leadership, is nowhere to be seen on either of the two sides. Or maybe they are afraid to show their true colors.

But in the meantime, Maduro blinks and backtracks, Tibisay goes back on her words and Luisa Estela is made to look like the obeying fool everyone knows she is.

The whole thing is more volatile than most people imagine. Maduro was weak, even if he won. But his performance since has weakened him even further, while many of his comrades wonder why Hugo picked Nicolas, if they are so much better than him.

Things could change so fast, that I can’t predict a month, let alone a year. And as I had suggested before the election, politics is a new game in Venezuela. Chavez dominated politics and the agenda for fourteen years, but Capriles has lead the first political fight of the post-Chavez ear and he seems to have won resoundly.

In fact, Maduro may want to sound tough, but in reality nobody fears him, after all, Capriles and others already made him blink…

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