failure

After the fraudulent election of July 28, 2024, Nicolás Maduro announced he would deepen the “Communal State” as a model of popular participation. In his words, it was necessary to “accelerate the construction of popular power” and “transfer more powers to the communes.” The implicit promise: more communes, more consultations, and more participation should equal more solutions.

I put that promise to the test with data from Mérida, a state where public services (especially water and electricity) fail every day. In mid-2024, power outages were almost four hours a day, enough to ruin an entire family.

In May of that year, a professor at the University of the Andes, Israel José Ramirez, died in the building where I lived with my family. That day, the power went out as well. The professor was inside an elevator that became trapped between the first and second floors. When he forced the mechanical lock on the door to try to get out, he found himself facing a void: the elevator car wasn’t at the floor’s level. He tried to jump but couldn’t reach. He fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft, about three stories high. He died on impact.

Electricity in that part of the city usually took four to eight hours to return. That day, it only took half an hour. The desperation of a prolonged power outage led Professor Ramírez to open the elevator doors, and his life ended there. This tragedy was a partial motivation for conducting this research.

Between August and July 2025, I did an internship at the National Institute of Statistics. There, I was able to review the records of 198 projects from the Concrete Action Agendas (ACA in Spanish) in 64 communes in the state of Mérida. The ACAs are the central mechanism of the chavista Communal State for participatory planning: consultations in which the communes identify their priority problems (called “critical nodes”) and vote on the projects they want the State to implement. These 64 communes represented 82% of the 78 registered in the state. The remaining 14 were excluded from the analysis because the officials responsible for transcribing the community assessments into the databases made so many errors that the information was unusable.

The communes understand the workings of the State better than many public officials.

Official reports stated: “Project in progress” or “Project completed.” But something didn’t add up. Local communities kept voting on the same service problems year after year. Someone was lying.

I needed to separate the propaganda from reality. I did something simple: I took each problem that a commune voted on in 2022 and tracked it for four years. If it stopped appearing in subsequent consultations, the government could claim it had been resolved. If it continued to appear year after year, it meant that people had been shouting the same thing for four years. And if it disappeared without explanation (neither resolved nor voted on again), nobody knew what had happened. The State simply ignored it.

Using this detector, I audited 198 projects. The results are summarized in the following graphs:

These charts reveal three dimensions of failure.

First of all, who decides: of the 198 projects, 51.5% (102) were assigned to ministries and the national government for implementation, while another 25.8% (51) fell to the Mérida governorship. The communes diagnose the needs, but Caracas decides whether to open or close the tap of resources. Only 19.2% (38 projects) remained under municipal or communal control.

Second, what happened to them: almost half of the projects were not even considered. Only a quarter (50 projects, 25.3%) were completed after years of consultations. The State received the diagnosis, knew exactly what the people needed, and decided to do nothing. Third, participation wasn’t the problem: 76.8% of the communes (152 projects) participated in all four national consultations, from the first in 2022 to the last in 2025. The core chavista voter base mobilized, filled out forms, and voted. The system didn’t fail due to a lack of participation. The problem isn’t that the communities don’t know how to organize themselves. The problem is that when they do organize, the system ignores them.

Now, what problems are the communes identifying? These are summarized in the following chart:

This chart’s revelation is devastating: two out of every three communes in Mérida (43 out of 64, or 67%) identified water as their priority problem. This isn’t an isolated issue affecting just one or two communes. It’s a systemic crisis impacting the entire state. Four problems (water, roads, housing, and electricity) account for 60% of all project requests in Mérida.

Now, we can see how the ACA projects are distributed in Mérida in the following chart:

Of the 198 projects analyzed, 54 are related to water. More than a quarter (27%) of all projects. The first four categories (water, roads, housing, and electricity) account for 62.63% of all projects. The Pareto principle applied to poverty: 20% of the causes explain 80% of the problems. And how many of those 54 water projects were actually implemented?

Behind these figures are real families, of course. Take the example of the Doña Simona commune in Lagunillas, Mérida, which has a serious drinking water problem. In 2022, they voted for water in the first referendum. In 2023, they voted for water again. In 2024, the same. And in 2025, four years later, they were still voting for water. Four referendums. The same problem. Why? In a conversation with the Mérida’s INE office, where I did a summer internship, they revealed the number that explains everything: $10,000. That’s the budget per project. Always. It doesn’t matter if the community asks for an aqueduct or paint for a school.

With $10,000 you can’t build an aqueduct. It’s barely enough for 200 meters of pipe. You can’t dredge a river. You can’t pave a road. You can’t solve a water crisis that affects 43 of the state’s 64 communes. The communes learned this lesson. If you need water but it costs $50,000, you’re better off asking for paint. At least that’s something they will greenlight.

Four years of voting for water. And in the end, paint for the walls of a run-down public school.

So, what happened in Doña Simona? In the third and fourth consultations, the community changed its vote. They no longer asked for the aqueduct they needed. They voted for something “realistic”: participating in the Bricomiles, the program where soldiers paint school facades and repair sports field roofs. It’s not that the people of Doña Simona are unaware of what’s happening in their community, but rather that they’ve learned to play the system: the State only funds projects that cost less than $10,000. “Citizen participation” then revealed itself not as empowerment, but as an exercise in adjusting real needs to the ridiculously small budget the government is willing to provide. Four years of voting for water. And in the end, paint for the walls of a run-down public school.

However, one thing is certain: the communes of Mérida are always right. When the problem is electricity, they assign it to Corpoelec. When it’s water, to Aguas de Mérida. When it’s housing, to the Ministry of Housing. I reviewed 198 projects and didn’t find a single exception. The communes understand the workings of the State better than many public officials.

This accuracy remained consistent across all 64 communes, throughout the four consultations, and in all 198 projects. Then I thought: if the diagnosis is so precise, if the communes are doing their job, the system should be producing results. Water flowing through pipes. Paved streets. Stable electricity. I measured the relationship between the quality of the diagnosis and the effective resolution of problems. This graph shows the main conclusion of this research, which I call the Great Disconnect.

The dark blue cells confirm what we already saw: the communes diagnose with surgical precision. The system works like clockwork in the diagnostic phase. So I asked the obvious question: if the communities diagnose perfectly, does the State provide solutions?

The answer was once again devastating. There is no correlation. None. The gray cells say it all: a commune correctly identifying its problem predicts absolutely nothing about whether that problem will be solved. Neither the accuracy of the diagnosis, nor the urgency of the problem, nor how many times people have voted for the same thing matters. None of that matters.

The factors that determine whether a project is implemented operate completely outside the formal Commune Action Board (CAB) system. They are external, opaque, probably related to circumstantial political will, erratic budgets, or the constant turnover of officials.

This is the Great Disconnect: a system that diagnoses with surgical precision and does nothing.

My data shows what that means: more people shouting in empty rooms. The communes are just an authoritarian excuse to overrepresent their political power.

The success or failure of a project doesn’t depend on whether the commune identified its need, whether the responsible institution was selected correctly, how urgent the problem is, or how many times people have voted for the same thing. What determines whether a project is implemented operates entirely outside the formal CAB system. These are external, opaque factors, probably related to short-term political will, erratic budgets, or the constant turnover of officials. The communities do their part. The Venezuelan State does not.

The problem with the Communal State in Mérida isn’t one of scale, it’s structural. There’s no shortage of communes: 64 are already functioning. There’s no lack of participation: 76.8% of the communes participated in the four consultations. The system works exactly as it was designed, mobilizing the chavista base to diagnose problems, making them believe they are participating, and then systematically ignoring their demands. It’s not a failure. It’s the design.

My data shows what that means: more people shouting in empty rooms. The communes are just an authoritarian excuse to overrepresent their political power. The reality is that the wife of Professor Israel Ramírez found him dead in the elevator shaft because there was no electricity in the building that day. In some neighborhoods of Mérida, people probably voted for electricity in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. And in 2026, if this policy continues, they will continue to vote for it.

Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Jaime Moore has taken over an agency under intense scrutiny — and he’s getting paid handsomely to do it.

Moore, who was appointed by Mayor Karen Bass in October, will earn $473,600 a year, the City Council decided Tuesday — $18,000 more than his predecessor, Kristin Crowley, made when she was ousted by Bass in February 2025 for her handling of the Palisades fire.

The LAFD and the mayor continue to face intense scrutiny over their handling of the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes in January of last year, as well as the watering down of the LAFD after-action report on the fire.

When Crowley started as fire chief in 2022, her annual salary was $367,100.

Soon after that, the city amended its salary ranges for department heads to keep up with inflation, said Matt Szabo, the city’s top budget analyst.

Crowley, the city’s first female and first LGBTQ fire chief, received annual merit raises, according to Szabo.

On Monday, Crowley filed a whistleblower lawsuit claiming that Bass “orchestrated a campaign of retaliation” to protect her own political future and paper over her failures during the Palisades fire.

The LAFD did not immediately comment on Moore’s salary, which was recommended by the mayor and the City Council’s Executive Employee Relations Committee before going to the full council on Tuesday.

“Investing in strong and experienced leadership fortifies public safety for residents,” said a spokesperson for council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who chairs the employee relations committee.

Moore’s salary is fairly comparable to that of other city and county public safety leaders.

The chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Anthony Marrone, made $475,000 in base pay in 2024, according to county data.

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell was sworn in at a $450,000 salary in 2024 — less than the $507,500 the Board of Police Commissioners had initially recommended. McDonnell’s salary as of Tuesday was still about $450,000.

McDonnell’s salary was a significant jump over the initial pay of his predecessor, Michel Moore, who earned $350,000 when he first assumed the position in 2018.

The LAFD has about 3,200 uniformed fire personnel, while the LAPD has about 8,700 sworn officers.

Both McDonnell and the new fire chief make far less than Janisse Quiñones, general manager of the Department of Water and Power, who was sworn in at $750,000 a year. Salaries for DWP executives must remain competitive with those of utility company execs to retain top talent, according to the city’s Office of Public Accountability, which recommended Quiñones’ salary.

She makes much more than Marty Adams, the previous department head, who earned about $447,000 a year when he departed.

Moore, a 30-year LAFD veteran, has spent his first months as chief dealing with persistent questions about the department’s management of the Palisades fire.

A week after the fire, a Times investigation found that top LAFD officials did not fully staff up and pre-deploy all available engines and firefighters to the Palisades and other high-risk areas, despite a forecast of dangerously high winds.

Bass cited the failure to keep firefighters on duty for a second shift as one reason she dismissed Crowley.

The new chief has swerved between candid reflection over the department’s failures during the Palisades fire and lashing out at the media over what he has called a “smear” campaign against firefighters who bravely worked to put out the catastrophic blaze.

Moore appeared to be referencing a Times report that a battalion chief ordered crews to roll up their hoses and leave the area of the Jan. 1 Lachman fire, even though firefighters had complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch. Days later, the Lachman fire reignited into the Palisades fire.

Moore has also tried to walk a fine line on the LAFD’s after-action report, which was meant to spell out mistakes and suggest measures to avoid repeating them.

The author of the report, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, declined to endorse the final version because of changes that altered his findings and made the report, in his words, “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”

The most significant change to the report involved downplaying LAFD officials’ pre-deployment mistakes.

Moore has admitted that the report was watered down to “soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership,” while saying he would not look into who directed the watering down. But Moore has also said that he will not allow similar edits to future after-action reports.

Bass has repeatedly denied that she was involved in any effort to water down the report. But two sources with knowledge of Bass’ office have said that Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened.

Bass has called The Times’ reporting “dangerous and irresponsible.”

A SAUCY Valentine’s Day strip model Abbey Clancy had planned for her hubby Peter Crouch was dashed when he invited a chef to their home to cook for them.

The 40-year-old dressed in skimpy underwear and covered up with a mac, intending to make a big reveal.

But she was forced to swelter under the coat when the former Liverpool, Spurs and England striker arrived with the chef.

Abbey said: “That was the worst surprise ever because I got a gorgeous outfit from Agent Provocateur and just put it on with a coat on top.

“And Pete was like ‘Surprise! We’ve got a chef’.

“So I had to just wear my coat for the whole dinner — at home.

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“I had to wear my coat for the whole meal in my own house.

“And I was literally sweating because I was so worried.”

Asked if she was in a Burberry Mac, Abbey said: “Yeah, I was.

“That was highly embarrassing.

“And he kept asking ‘Aren’t you hot in that coat?’”

Peter, 45, eventually cottoned on to why Abbey would not remove her coat but by then was helpless to ask the chef to leave because it would have appeared rude.

He said: “He wouldn’t go away as well.

“You know when they come over and they want to explain the meal.

“It’s like ‘p*** off mate, will you’.”

Mum-of-four Abbey said Valentine’s nights indoors can be romantic too and couples should not feel pressure to always have a great meal out on February 14.

She added on their Therapy Crouch podcast: “That is nice, to stay in.”

It was not the first time Abbey had tried to woo Peter using the same tactic — although last time she was a bit more successful.

In November 2003 she told The Sun how she lured Peter home from training by picking him up in a car while wearing only a Burberry mac.

He said her teasing tactic “worked very well” — but that he is also very easily pleased.

Peter said: “It’s easy to surprise me.

“If I came home and you had no clothes on, it’d be the best surprise ever.

“It’s so simple and I’ll be so happy.

“I’m just being honest.”