You can even listen to the audiotape.

http://www.aporrea.org/dameverbo.php?docid=12285

The conversation is between opposition leader Ramón Escovar Salóm, former auditor of the regime President Carlos Andrés Pérez (that which massacred more than 1,000 people on a single day in 1989) and his son, Ramón Escovar León.

I don't know how the tape was made or obtained. Almost everyone in Caracas uses cellphones which are easy for any private citizen to intercept, and all sides are playing "Spy vs. Spy" with cell phones. In any case, it is on the Internet now.

The conversation took place late last year (it was posted to the Internet December 8th) at the end of the petition drive. The son is explaining to the father that there is panic inside the SUMATE organization (the US-funded "opposition" group leading the petition drive for the referendum) because according to coordinator Román Duque Corredor, who the son says he just spoke with, they only had 1.9 million signatures, far short of what they needed, and were calling emergency meetings. The father is incredulous, refuses to believe it. The son keeps insisting, no, that's the case. The father keeps insisting not to worry, and admits at once point that it seems like some "frauds" took place in the signature drive...

It is an interesting conversation, if a little bone-chilling, when you consider that the father was a top fixer for the corrupt and murderous regime of Carlos Andres Peres, because it's clear that the "opposition" is soaked with Peres people (worrisome on its own merits) and he's telling his son, without having any hard evidence himself of how many signatures were collected, not to worry... He seems incredibly optimistic that the minutia of how many signatures were collected is basically irrelevant to whether the drive succeeds, that the whole thing can be fixed, while the son is countering that "no," they're not digital signatures but real ones on real paper. Read that part carefully...

Son: "They were very nervous because the SUMATE people told them that they had only collected 1.9 million signatures."

Father: "But that's not true, they got them."

Son: "But that is what Roman (Duque Corredor, petition drive coordinator of SUMATE) says. Roman tells me... that it's not true that they've collected 1.9 million signatures; what is true is that SUMATE says they did. And he says that the person in charge is very inexperiences... They're going to know! And I told him, but okay, but how are they going to add it up, compute all these few signatures... (the petition) is not digital, it's not digital, its some color cards... it's a petition of ten persons (signatures) with fingerprints, the name, some other information... and it's proving very slow to count them."

Father: "Yes, to me it seems that there were not only enough signatures, but abundant. That is the impression I have."

Son: "That is something that nobody knows even still, how many signatures there were."

Father: "Yes, but the impression..."

Son: "I think that they are speculating."

Father: "...the general impression is favorable."

Son: "Looking at expectations this way lacks seriousness. Now, if SUMATE told this to the people... that there were 1.9 million..."

Father: "The thing is that Nelson (Socorro, ex Attorney General for ex President Carlos Andres Peres) is a good guy, but he has no experience in these things. When he called me..."

Son: "It wasn't Nelson. It was SUMATE!"

Father: "Yes, I know, but when he called me I understood that there was no reason for that meeting. That's why I didn't go, also because I had Sunday brunch and could not... No, no... but also I had no motive to go because I knew this was not the case... that it had no fundament. In spite of that they didn't tell me this, that this was the reason. But, something... something I suspected, that they were afraid of something, no? That there had been some frauds and some things... But I believe that it went well, the signatures seem to me that they went well, this at a simple glance can be observed that it went well. The government is tremendously beaten and on the defensive."

There, an inside look at Venezuela's "opposition" and an oligarch family at its core. Is it any wonder that the masses have had it with them?