Here in Caracas, everyone is making contingency plans.

The opposition—knowing that they will lose the election—are openly admitting their plan, known as "plan B," to once again disrupt the revolutionary constitutional order. Every day, Globovision is running interviews which are calling into question beforehand the results of the election. In fact, one recent interviewee claimed that:

1.) It’s already clear that the election is fixed (despite all of the poll results showing Chávez leading), and that the government has no intention of handing power over to Rosales. Hence,

2.) what voters do on December 3rd is important, but not as important as what they do on December 4th! 

In the latter suggestion, one can see that the opposition is hoping to mount a sort of massive demonstration, demanding that Rosales be declared the winner of an election which he won’t win.

References abound to the "Pink," "Rose," "Orange," and "Velvet" revolutions, but such are really more political ploys for the international audience, heavily rooted in perceptions about the nature of our post-revolutionary era. The fact of the matter is that the opposition knows full well that they can’t pull off a revolution peacefully, for the simple reason that the current regime enjoys an incredible degree of legitimacy among (most of) the population.

They will be forced, then, to provoke violence once again, as they did in April 2002. But the outcome is already decided beforehand: most of the population knows the tactics of the opposition, and most of the opposition still refuses to recognize the fact that their own leaders were willing to shoot them down for political gain.

And just in case, there’s the "plan B" of the Chavistas. Chávez himself deems this "Plan Ché," in which any aggression by the opposition will result in the immediate cutting off of petroleum supplies to the United States. And in the radical sectors, armed self-defense is the word of the day: Tupamaros and similar organizations are staking out autonomous zones which will be no-go areas for both the police/army and (especially) opposition forces until things have calmed down.