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Reporter's Notebook: Al Giordano

Chávez: "Bring It On!"

Posted by Al Giordano - May 23, 2004 at 8:06 pm
I watched Venezuela President Hugo Chávez on TV today, doing his weekly "Alo Presidente!" program, and speaking about this week's "repair process" for invalid signatures by those seeking a recall referendum to cut short his six-year term.

Narco News School of Authentic Journalism professor Martín Sánchez also watched it, and has already published his observations on Venezuelanalysis.com.

Martín and I got the same impression from watching the democratically-elected president do his popular television call-in program: Chávez is ready and at fighting weight to campaign and win yet another crushing electoral victory in that referendum if it happens.

Of course, the squalid oligarchs who can't shoot straight may still screw up their extra extra chance to validate signatures that they claimed publicly were valid, but that their leaders were caught on tape admitting privately they were not valid, back when they filed the petitions filled with forgeries, signatures of dead people, and multiple signatures from the same persons... Martín Sánchez writes:

During his weekly live TV show, Chavez urged those who had the intention of signing against him, but whose signatures were invalidated, to go and revalidate them. However, he said that if really had control over the courts or over electoral authorities, as his opponents suggest, he would have declared invalid the petitions with irregularities, and not given the opportunity for repair. "The coup plotters who right now are free, would be in jail if I controlled the judicial system," said Chavez...

The President complained that his signature against opposition lawmakers was declared invalid by electoral authorities with no possibility for repair. It is unknown why the leaders’ signature was tossed out, “but we must respect the arbiter’s decision,” said Chavez.

The President highlighted the fact that it was him who made the initial proposal to the elected Constituency Assembly to incorporate recall and law nullity referenda in the new Constitution drafted in 1999. Opposition delegates to the Constituency Assembly actually voted against the referenda proposal at the time....

"I don't know what's going to happen on Thursday, but I have a premonition. If they [the opposition] repair enough signatures, we will welcome it because the knockout they will receive in an eventual referendum would be historical. The best thing for the opposition would be that there was no referendum... I would actually prefer it if the referendum was held," said the President...

This statement of course may come as a surprise to the poorly-informed North American and English-language media news consumer, who has been fed a constant stream of falsehoods claiming that the opposition's own ineptness and electoral frauds are somehow Chávez's fault.

From Juan Forero to John Kerry to, of course, the anti-democracy lobby in the Bush-Reich Latin American politburo, they scream on the one hand that Chávez is some kind of authoritarian while, on the other hand, they complain that he won't issue authoritarian orders violating the Constitution and the laws to impose a referendum whose sponsors harbor sole blame for screwing it up.

As I watched Chávez, again, today on his popular Sunday TV program, again I saw him constantly pick up the little blue book that contains Venezuela's new, most-democratic in América, national Constitution, written and approved by the people in 1999, and savored the irony that, despite all the nasty and dishonest claims against him by those who fail again and again to back up their claims with facts, this is a president and a democratic government that walks its talk: there is no country in the hemisphere today that more scrupulously honors its own Constitution and democracy than Venezuela.

And I think the time is fast coming to start kicking the asses of those who dishonestly accuse otherwise while failing to tell the truth or base their statements on facts.

A referendum in Venezuela? We'll see. That's up to the Constitution and whether those who claim to want it really follow it. But if it happens, well... "Bring It On!"

About Al Giordano

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Publisher, Narco News.

Reporting on the United States at The Field.

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Comments

Forgery tape

Submitted May 26, 2004 - 7:57 am by Jules Siegel
"their leaders were caught on tape admitting privately they were not valid, back when they filed the petitions filled with forgeries, signatures of dead people, and multiple signatures from the same persons"

If you could post some references to this, I'll be happy to get the story around among my contacts.

Audiotape of Venezuela "opposition"

Submitted May 26, 2004 - 10:31 am by Al Giordano
Here's a link.

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?

Need a little more help...

Submitted May 28, 2004 - 11:04 am by Jules Siegel
Great stuff, but I would really appreciate  a link to an authoritative source summarizing Venezuela under Chávez.

From a letter to a friend, here's a summary of more or less what I plan to write, but it has to be absolutely bullet-proof:

Gore is a prig and a prude and an uptight klutz. He couldn't swing and that's why he lost to Bush.  That's what I'm afraid of with Kerry. He's too calculating.

Example: he comes out against Chávez. I've looked into Hugo Chávez. He's the best president Venezuela has ever had. The opposition consists of white and light-skinned preppies and wannabes who hate him because he's dark and crude, and is educating the dark-skinned lower middle and lower classes to stand up for their rights. Venezuela's history until Chávez consists of one horrible tragedy and massacre after another. You don't want to know the details.

One of my best friends here is a Mexican was raised in Venezuela because his father was Commercial Attaché in the Mexican embassy in Caracas. He's vehement about what a disgusting slob Chávez is. But he is unable to come up with a single bad thing Chávez has done except constantly criticizing the oligarchy in a non-preppie accent.

The opposition is paid for by Bush. It has no support outside the upper middle and upper classes. A substantial portion of the referendum signatures were faked. They have a tape of one of the opposition leaders and his son arguing about this.

Kerry came out against Chávez in order to prove that he's not a Commie dupe. Anything else would be considered supporting Castro by the Cuban exiles, as Chávez is keeping Cuba alive by supplying oil on credit and not demanding to be paid on time. Cuba has thousands of doctors, teachers and other technicians working in Venezuela to raise living standards among the miserable masses.

Kerry probably got some bad advice from Barney Frank and Jimmy Carter, who feel that Chávez should just accept the phony signatures and go ahead with the referendum in order to avoid further conflict, knowing as everyone does in Venezuela that Chávez probably has the votes and the opposition probably doesn't.

My answer on that is that probably isn't good enough. Would have Frank accepted improperly credentialed petion signatures for a referendum to recall Barney Frank?

As an Anyone But Bush Democrat, I had to make excuses about this for Kerry in a pro-Chávez online forum on the grounds of political expediency. I understand the tactic, but I'm not happy about it. He should have said nothing. He's never going to get any votes from those anti-Castro people anyway. It reminds me of Gore's stupidity in rejecting Clinton's help

Michele Quinn's Caracas Diary

Submitted May 26, 2004 - 6:17 pm by Al Giordano
Michele Quinn is a journalism student in Missouri who went on a Global Exchange tour of Venezuela, heard from representatives of the various sides of the conflict, and has written a very interesting ten-part story of her observations there:

http://www.missouri.edu/%7Equinnl/MVR/report.html

I haven't had the chance to read all of it yet, but I read various sections, and what I did read was impressive for the brutal honesty in her questioning of her own preconceptions and openness to consider perspectives and angles off the beaten path. Definitly worth a read.

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