In reference to the upcoming recall referendum vote on President Hugo Chávez, a July 30th editorial by the Washington Post titled “Monitoring Venezuela” alleges the Venezuelan opposition group Súmate is leading the charge for democracy in Venezuela.
"The vote itself will have a greater chance of being staged and judged fairly thanks to Sumate..." says the Post. In fact, Súmate is a partisan group in oppostion to the government whose sole mission since being founded in 2002 has been to collect signatures and promote a referendum to unseat the president. The more than one million dollars the NED in 2003 funneled to Venezuela went overwhelmingy to opposition groups.
The editorial condemns the Venezuelan government for investigating—or as the editorial calls it organizing “an ugly campaign”—the activities and funding sources of Súmate. Indeed, Venezuela’s state prosecutor is investigating four Súmate members for receiving 52,400 dollars in 2003 from the congressionally funded U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The Post describes the NED as an institution that "supports democratic movements around the world." History, much of it recent, indicates this is a gross mischaracterization of the NED’s work. In the 1990 presidential election in Nicaragua the NED distorted the electoral process by funding opposition groups in the guise of promoting democracy. And more recently in Haiti, the NED contributed to the destabilization of the government of a democratically elected leader. The organization funded the minority opposition that openly condoned the bloody Febraury rebellion leading to the ouster under murky circumstances of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
The editorial asks: "Why would it be treasonous to accept U.S. funds in an effort to organize a fair election?" Well, how about a little thing called sovereignty? And the integrity of a democratic process? How would the Post’s editorial board members respond if the Iranian government gave money to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s campaign in an effort to ensure a “fair election” this November? For groups involved in electoral politics to receieve foreign funding is illegal in Venezuela, as it is in many countries, including the U.S.
The editorial goes on to assert that "Sumate does not advocate Mr. Chavez’s removal but only the resolution of the country’s conflict by constitutional means." This is a gross misrepresentation. Súmate may not officially admit that it wants Chávez out, but all its work indicates its intentions are to oust the twice-democratically elected leader.
In closing, the Post declares: "If [the Sumate leaders] are prosecuted or jailed, the world will know that Venezuela’s referendum is tainted." In any case, convicting and jailing the Súmate leaders is up to the Venezuelan justice system, and beyond Chavez´s control. And if they broke the law, they should have to pay the consequences of their actions just like in any democratic country. Considering the NED’s track record of meddling with democracies in Latin America, an investigation could shed important light on its questionable intentions.
The Post should carefully consider its words when writing on matters of democracy and government malfeasance. And it should hold its own government to the same set of standards it seems to find so lacking in Venezuela.
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Behind the Unsigned DC Post Editorial
Submitted August 6, 2004 - 5:24 pm by Al GiordanoDiehl wrote:
What is this "crisis" that the Bush administration and the U.S. government supposedly faces that was so unexpected?
It's a Chávez victory on August 15th.
Diehl practically admits it when he writes:
In other words, Diehl sees the writing on the wall, and he doesn't like it.
So as a preemptive strike - against all the statements by election monitoring organizations including those like the Organization of American States (OAS) that have been historically hostile to the Chávez government that say that this referendum process is proceeding fair, square, and to the letter of the law and democratic principles - to discredit what is increasingly looking like Chávez's eighth electoral mandate in six years coming on August 15th, Diehl is throwing all kinds of unsubstantiated mud to try and create, in advance, a spin that the referendum was not legitimate.
I suppose, though, that if the polls were today showing Chávez trailing in the vote, Diehl would be insisting loudly that the results must be respected by all sides.
And that is the problem with so many beltway bandits like Jackson Diehl: His and their situational ethics.
The true test of a small-d democrat is whether he can live with election results in which a majority disagrees with his personal opinion. Obviously, Diehl represents the extreme anti-democracy fringe that can't accept contrary results, and so the smear campaign has begun before the voting has even begun.
Diehl offers us a glimpse of the talking points memos already being circulated from Foggy Bottom in case of a Chávez victory: "fraud, the billions Chavez is spending out of the state oil company's reserves, or legal manipulation after the fact," would be the three horses of anti-democracy apocalypse if the "opposition's" fantasies about the level of its public support prove to be as delusional as we've been reporting for years here on Narco News and elsewhere.
It is vital for Authentic Journalists and truth-seeking readers to study up and keep vigil on those three points to stop the lies by Diehl and other anti-democracy forces from getting into the goalie's net: Diehl has now telegraphed, inadvertently, the position of his other beltway friends who hide behind his columns and his unsigned editorials. Diehl already got the talking points memo. It will soon go out to many more.
As vital is that, from now on, every unsigned Washington Post editorial on Venezuela - if it is as dishonest and wrong on the facts as other recent ones have been - be given the name of "Jackson Diehl," to subvert the protection that editorials claim in cowardly fashion: anonymous authorship.
It's crystal clear now that the Post editorial, too, was authored by Diehl, who has some very bizarre ideas about democracy while he claims to promote it. The next one will be too... Until enough people start shouting across the Internet and through other media that we see through the charade, that Jackson Diehl is hiding behind those editorials, but they are no more than the ravings of one person, poorly equipped or qualified to speak of democracy, because, so obviously, he opposes it.