Entitlement
It´s important, I think to address why this referendum, why now? How is it that with a severe lack of signatures, the opposition was given a second chance? Had the recall signature collectors fallen short of their mark and been exposed for their fraud in California I can guarantee that Grey Davis would still be governor (granted, not much of a consolation).
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been following the rules, why should the resources and energy be wasted on a campaign to prove once again to a world that will always refuse to be convinced that yes, the Chavez government is legit, people actually like social services, they appreciate being given the chance. They like to hear a leader who can say I´m sorry and can also focus on the betterment of the poorest sectors of society.
In our analysis of the referendum, then, I think it´s important to make clear the obvious. There´s a referendum here because Carter wanted one. We could look into the reasons behind Carter´s insistence on the referendum, but the fact that even a nationalist government like that of Chavez still bends to the will of the imperialists from the North. Now, we hear from the stalwart of US diplomacy that the CNE elections board is rock solid, that democracy is alive and well in Venezuela, that free speech is protected, and that tomorrow´s elections will be more free and transparent than the 2000 Florida elections. If you need Carter to tell you that, you haven´t been paying attention.
So why the sudden change of heart? Have great strides been made to please the external observers? Has the commercial media and the Carter institute forced democracy on the castrocommunist dictatorship of Venezuela? I think not. At issue, dear reader, is political expediency. US elections. Who will be the next emperor. We can screw Bush by lending legitimacy to the democratic process that has been taking place in Venezuela since 1998, free to condemn it when it becomes politically expedient.
Don´t get me wrong, dear reader, I´m happy for this gift to the Bolivarian revolution. I´ll take truth, even if it comes six years too late. At the risk of sounding like a sore winner (we´ll see how sore and how much of a winner tomorrow) it´s the sense of entitlement. Here we finally have a government, as my new friend Francisco would say, finally has the pelotas to stop pulling down it´s pants and bending over to the will of the US, one that has endured coups de etat, one that is fiercely independent and willing to condemn acts of terror by the US war machine, and even it is subject to the whims of US politics. As Chavez defends the Venezuelan right to autonomy, the democratic candidate pledges his support for the Iraq war even as we all know (and most of us knew) that the reasons were lies. Now we´re up shit creek, an ungovernable, and rightly so, Iraq refusing to produce the black gold that was the real reason for the war, OPEC is alive and well, and the Washington and Houston elites are shitting their shorts that maybe Chavez will lose. Their precious opposition in shambles, Venezuela slides into chaos, the oil stops flowing, we have another oil crisis like 1973. Who´s going to win that election? How ironic, the seven sisters spin on a dime and declare that Chavez is the best person to govern Venezuela.
Entitlement. The belief that you deserve all that you have, that you earned your place in society, that the world is how it should be when you call the shots. This is nothing new, there´s more than 500 years of historical precedent. To finish, let me just say that tomorrow, when Chavez is once again confirmed as the democratic leader of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, when the poor breathe a little easier, imagining that for a while, at least, there´s a possibility of really focusing on Venezuela´s problems again, when the rich hole themselves up in their eastern poblaciones preparing for the Cuban gulag of their overprivileged and overactive imaginations, one authentic journalist will share in the victory but feel just a little ill.
Viva la Revolución.
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Mr. Smith Goes to Caracas
Submitted on August 14th, 2004 by Al GiordanoI would like to offer a harmonic but different perspective.
I believe that the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had counted on this referendum happening all along... ever since 1999 when he proposed that a presidential recall referendum process be included in the new Boliviarian Constitution for the nation.
The question was never whether there would be a recall referendum, but, rather, when it would happen.
Chávez played rope-a-dope with the opposition (the famous boxing strategy that Mohammed Ali used to defeat George Foreman in the early 1970s to retake his world champion crown), acting like he feared the referendum that was part of his original plan to provide a peaceful, electoral, safety valve for the opposition he knew he would surely generate, and knowing that the reactionary opposition only knows how to react: If Chávez appeared to fear the referendum, he knew that the opposition would pretend to want it, on the basis of of the "anything he doesn't want, we do" philosophy that plagues spoiled children and Venezuela opposition leaders alike.
The opposition, as I have stated here again and again, never wanted a referendum. It, instead, wanted to pretend to try for a referendum, in the hopes that it would not succeed in getting enough signatures, and then would be able to blame Chavez for somehow blocking the democratic will of the people.
The opposition got suckered. It was a master stroke in Americano realpolitik, and I tip my red beret to Chavez for figuring it out.
Now the opposition is on the verge of its worst defeat among seven previous electoral defeats in six years.
Jimmy Carter, the OAS, Washington, the oil industry, all got suckered too. Chavez, a military as well as an electoral strategist par excellence, has read the Pentagon "low intensity warfare" manuals. He knows the goal was to pin him down, to prevent him from consolidating or acting upon his mandate, in order to prevent the Bolivarian revolution from spreading like wildfire throughout the hemisphere.
After six p.m. Sunday, the exact opposite will happen (as various international media who oppose Chavez have fretted aloud in recent days): Chavez and his supporters will emerge, if current trends continue, with the mandate that all the complainers tried to deny him through coup attempts, illegal strikes that were not strikes, and now this referendum process.
Then, it will truly be showtime in our América... a mortal blow to the entire imperial formula...
What Chavez and his supporters have apparently accomplished (we'll know tomorrow night whether my analysis is correct) is a kind of political jui juitsu... using the enemy's strengths against the enemy... the oil card, the Carter card, the OAS card, the Washington card, the U.S. elections card... all cards played against Chávez in recent weeks and months... and suddenly he's lined them all up like ducks in a row now marching in his favor.
If I'm correct, and Chávez surprises all tomorrow with a stunning victory of a large margin, he will have rewritten the political playbook about how to use the system's weight against the system... and there is a lesson here for all of us who want so badly to change the world...
In fact, maybe, just maybe, if you analyze the history and trajectory of Narco News, you might find some similar tactics and strategies deployed in recent years and months... Our is a journalistic zapatismo... what Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution have accomplished is, in this country where 90 percent of the population lives in cities, the first outbreak of what Peter Lamborne Wilson hoped, eight years ago, would emerge from some part of the world as an "urban zapatismo."
The urban zapatismo of this referendum has succeeded, primarily, because it is the first mass urban social movement to grasp the problem of Commercial Media and develop the ways to counteract it. And that is the story of this revolution as it will be told years from now.