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Reporter's Notebook: Charlie Hardy

A Referendum in Venezuela? Maybe

Posted by Charlie Hardy - June 4, 2004 at 8:31 pm
Standing in front of a large painting of Jesus, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez began his Thursday night address to the nation by invoking the name of "Christ Redeemer" and adding some personal religious thoughts. By the end of his introductory remarks, had there been a live audience present with some Christians in attendance, one possibly would have heard "Amens" and "Alleluias."

Chavez was about to share his reflections on the announcement by the National Electoral Commission that sufficient signatures had been gathered to have a referendum regarding his presidency.  He wanted make his comments in the presence of his most important heroes.

After standing in front of Jesus, he moved to paintings of Simon Bolivar and Antonio Jose de Sucre.  Finally he ended his remarks next to a bust of Ezequiel Zamora.

It was with Zamora in mind that he projected himself into the future and announced the new battle of Santa Ines.  In 1859 Zamora gave the federal army the impression that his troops were retreating.  They succeeded in their movement, turned around and conquered their enemy...
The question now is if Chavez will be able to do the same.  The mass media likes to proclaim that his popularity has dropped from the almost sixty percent that voted for him to less than thirty.  This should probably be seen as a publicity scheme against Chavez rather than a true measurement of the current reality.

But the problem for Chavez is not how many people support him.  It is what is the opposition going to do between now and the time scheduled for the referendum.

The first question is whether it will ever happen.  For the past few years, the opposition has done everything possible to avoid the constitutional referendum.  The April 2002 coup and the two-month lockout/strike at the end of that year are the most striking examples.  They never liked the idea of a referendum.  They still don't, but there was no other option open.  If they knew they had sufficient votes to recall him through a referendum they would have waited.  They didn't.  Will they be able to oust him legally now?

Chavez is a master in front of the television camera.  This goes back to his first appearance on February 4, 1992 when, after his failed rebellion against the regime of Carlos Andres Perez, he announced to the country and to his troops that "for now" their objectives were not attainable.  Those two words are now indelibly written in the collective memory of the people.

His presentation Thursday was a collage of Chavez:  friend, teacher, magician, politician and strategist.  At one moment the viewer could feel s/he was in the middle of an intimate conversation with him.  Then it was as though one were in a classroom learning about the history of the country.  In a brief moment, he even pulled a surprise out of an old hat.  From there we were off to a political rally where he took a few moments to lance some spears against his opponents.  Finally, he announced his strategy.

The moment of magic occurred when Chavez shared a videotape of his presentation to the constitutional congress in 1999.  Yes, as everyone who doesn't rely on the mass media knows, Chavez was the person that suggested the idea of putting the referendum into the constitution.  The mass media always presents him as being the main opponent of the referendum.  Well, not much news in that.  But what was interesting was this:  He had suggested that only ten percent of the voting population should be required for a referendum, not the twenty percent that the constitution now requires.

Does Chavez believe in participative democracy?  You bet.  Does Chavez believe in respecting the rights of the minority?  He sure does.  Is that a problem?  You better believe it is.

A young man said to me one day that he voted for Chavez twice but that he would not vote for him again.  Why?  "I wanted a dictator and Chavez isn't a dictator."  Many people expected that Chavez would rule with an iron hand, throwing the corrupt political leaders of the past into prison.

Maybe he should have, but instead he respected the constitution and relied on the courts to do that.  But the courts were as full of corruption as was the political system.  Besides, even before he was elected the mass media was calling him a dictator and the U.S. was looking for a way to remove him from the political scene.  There was enough complicity between the elite of business, labor, church, mass media, the armed forces and the U.S. government, that he probably would never have got far as a dictator even if that had been his inclination.

The opposition has taken advantage of that failing of Chavez, the failing of being a true participative democrat.

What will happen now?  If the opposition doesn't encounter some means to avoid the referendum (e.g. through violence), Chavez should win it.  But don't count on that.  If they go for it, millions will be spent in propaganda to oust him.  And before it ever takes place, the whole voting mechanism will be questioned.  As one opposition member said to me, "We will accept the results, unless there is fraud."  The opposition have been experts in fraud.  They will find plenty of ways to accuse Chavez of it.

And now, my sad conclusion.  Whether there is a referendum or not, whether Chavez wins it or not, doesn't really matter.  The opposition with the help of the United States is out to control this country.  That will not stop on August 8 or whenever the referendum might be held.  Even before he was elected, the powerful decided that they would not give up their power nor share their wealth.

That is a shame.

Chavez has called the people to a peaceful revolution, a beautiful dream.  Revolution is going to happen.  However, it is up to the elite here and in the United States to decide before it is too late whether it will continue to be peaceful.

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AP's James Anderson Is Inept

Submitted June 4, 2004 - 9:30 pm by Al Giordano
Wow, they are really trying hard to spin this one now.

James Anderson of Associated Press begins his "report" from Caracas today with this lead (how many knowing falsehoods can fit on the head of a pin?):

CARACAS, Venezuela - International pressure forced President Hugo Chavez to accept a likely recall referendum on his rule, but his opponents are a long way from ousting the resilient leader of oil-producing Venezuela.

It took a year of protest, 14 deaths in recent riots - and, during a stalled signature count this week, intervention from the Atlanta-based Carter Center and the Organization of American States - for Chavez's government to accept that opponents had the signatures to demand a recall.

Venezuela's elections council did all it could to make the process painful. It initially rejected more than 1 million voter signatures. The count stopped at one point. Federal agents combed through petition forms. Deadlines were missed. Council members feuded - and they still do.

In the end, the council said Thursday it was likely the opposition had gained the 20 percent of the electorate needed to call a referendum.

False statements of "fact" in James Anderson's fairy tale:

1. "International pressure forced... Chavez... to accept a... recall."

Fact-Checking James Anderson: The decision on whether a recall would be held was never in Chavez's hands. It was in the hands of the CNE, the National Elections Council. But note how Anderson simply forces the reader to assume that it was Chavez's decision.

Fact-Checking James Anderson: Note how in Anderson's batty little world the Constitution and laws have nothing to do with whether a referendum is held. In fact, the country itself has nothing to do with it. Only "international pressure." If you think about it, he's cheering foreign intervention, claiming that Venezuela isn't capable of doing its own democracy.

Fact-Checking James Anderson: Not one of the countries from where the "international pressure" came from (he lists the Carter Center of the US and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia for the OAS) has any provision for a recall referendum on its own president. So in both cases they don't practice what they preach anyway... even in Anderson's whacked-out hallucinogenic view of human events. Doctor! I'll have whatever he's taking!

2. "It took a year of protest, 14 deaths in recent riots...."

Fact-Checking James Anderson: Actually, it didn't take any protest at all. It took getting the requisite 2.4 million voter signatures, legally, under the provisions of the Constitution. As for "14 deaths," most of those were pro-Chavez Venezuelans, assassinated by the opposition's referendum proponents. So if Anderson truly believes those deaths had anything to do with getting the referendum, the more accurate journalistic way to state the fact would by "referendum proponents had to assassinate various adversaries to get their way."

3. "Venezuela's elections council did all it could to make the process painful. It initially rejected more than 1 million voter signatures."

Fact-Checking James Anderson: At least here he admits that the referee was the elections commission, contradicting his claim just two paragraphs above that it was Chavez! But rejecting forged signatures (in most cases, all in the same handwriting on the same page) is not aking to "making the process painful." To the contrary, it is the job of such arbiters to heal the pain caused by forgery and fraud.

We can see here that James Anderson is drippingly hostile to the most basic precepts of democracy... The principle of independent arbiters, free of outside interference, pressure tactics, foreign intervention, etcetera. Indeed, democracy would not be possible anywhere in the world if these sorts of things really did work the way he said they did.

"In the end," Anderson says in the fourth paragraph, the elections council did what the law required it to do. The first three paragraphs were thus all noise and heat and spin and no light or fact or truth.

James Anderson is a disgrace to the journalistic profession. He's incompetent. He's inept. He's willingly dishonest. He's knowingly false. He lives not to report, but to lie. Keep an eye on him, folks. And when you see him try these dishonest tactics again, you know who to call.

Link to Transcript of Chávez Speech

Submitted June 6, 2004 - 10:01 am by Al Giordano
In Spanish, courtesy of Venezuela National Radio.

Colombian Paramilitary Kids in Venezuela

Submitted June 6, 2004 - 10:48 am by Al Giordano
On May 13th, 130 Colombian paramilitaries were discovered and captured in Venezuela (if you missed that story, here is a French Presse agency wire on it). They were found not along the border, but, rather, close to the capital of Caracas.

In recent days, Venezuelan immigration authorities have rounded up another 200 Colombians in hotels and small inns around Caracas who either did not have visas or were carrying falsified ones. It's not yet known whether or how many of this group could be related to opposition plans for creating destabilizing violence prior to any referendum vote, in order to prevent the referendum that the opposition says it wants but doesn't really want, and otherwise create excuses for foreign intervention.

The presence of destabilizing right-wing foreign paramilitary forces in Venezuela is one clear example of why Associated Press and others that, for example, this week, after shots were fired upon the City Hall of opposition mayor Alfredo Peña in Caracas, immediately blamed "pro-Chávez" forces, do such a disservice to the search for facts and truth and shame the profession of journalism.

After all, we must use common sense: what motive would Chávez supporters have to initiate such a spectacular media-grabbing attack this past week? The answer is none.

But all the lazy and corrupt U.S. and British news correspondents jumped on the Big Lie like moths to a flame: shots fired, must be the Chavistas.

In fact, Latin American history is filled with "auto-atentados" (self-attacks) and "auto-golpes" (self-coups) by politicians, especially local and regional ones, trying to get attention for themselves, paint themselves as martyrs, as somehow courageous and living under great risk, etcetera. In this light it is interesting to note that the attack on the Caracas City Hall took no lives and caused no injuries. Some windows on upper floors were shot at from ground level. No perps were captured or identified. That doesn't pass the smell test, and for the Commercial Media simulators to immediately blame it on pro-Chávez forces reveals more about their undisclosed biases than it sheds light on what did happen.

In the midst of this, I heard an interesting story today about the first group of 130 Colombian paramilitaries that were captured. As is par for the course, the Colombian paras recruit (often kidnap) teenagers and conscript them into "service." In this group, there were 14 kids aged 14 or under. The story is said to come from Venezuelan Defense Secretary Jorge Luis García Carneiro.

These Colombian boys and girls, upon capture with the adults, were turned over to the youth services agency, where it was learned that they had received training and indoctrination from the Colombian paramilitaries, among other things, in quartering human beings with chainsaws... while the victims were still alive.

The kids have since been sent back to their families in Colombia (one of the 14-year-old girls begged the Venezuelan government to let her stay!)

But before they left, they were received by President Hugo Chávez in the Miraflores presidential palace, where he ate ice cream with them, and pardoned them from any punishment, "giving a ray of light to their tortured souls."

This is the Hugo Chávez that the corrupt commercial media correspondents never let you see or hear from: the humanist. This is the Chávez that I observed, up close, in different kinds of situations, with different kinds of people, for two days in 2002: the magnaminous.... The man who is geniunely concerned for these kids... who can and does see them as victims, too... whose first concern, upon learning of their existence in the paramilitary army of destabilization, was for them as human beings.

Fortunately for Venezuela, it doesn't matter what the corrupt commercial media says: this is how most Venezuelans know Chávez, too.

(Thanks to François Chabot for passing along this glimpse into how events really transpire in Caracas.)

Venezuela By The Numbers

Submitted June 8, 2004 - 5:58 pm by Al Giordano
Veneuela's Communications Secretary Jesse Chacon, who has facilitated the growth of Community TV and Radio stations across the country from 25 when he first took the job to more than 80 today, offered some interesting electoral math today on Venezuela National Radio.

He noted that in the presidential elections of 1998, opponents of the victorious Hugo Chávez garnered 2,864,343 votes (26.1 percent of the total electorate at the time).

In the presidential elections of 2000, Chávez opponents garnered 2,522,90 votes (21.5 percent of the total electorate at the time).

And that the recall referendum petitions, backed by mega-money from the wealthy interests, fawning saturation coverage by the Commercial Media, and all the efforts of various political parties, with a second and third chance given them to obtain the requisite 20 percent of voters to provoke a referendum, garnered, according to the preliminary count, 2,451,821 voter signatures. Presuming that by the final count the opposition got 2.5 million signatures, that would be 20.16 percent of the current voter rolls.

In other words, one can basically see the opposition's numbers:

1998 2.8 million
2000 2.5 million
2004 2.5 million

Under law, according to the process they willingly entered into, they would need 3.8 million (the number of votes Chávez received in 2000) and also gain more votes than the pro-Chávez side receives to win the recall referendum.

You can see the panic setting in now that the referendum is going forward (the National Elections Council is expected at any hour now to announce the date of the referendum: Narco News reported last Thursday night, prior to any other news source, that it will be on August 15th... The official word should come shortly.)

Opposition leaders are making open threats today against the Elections Council, against the Supreme Court, they are fighting with each other over what the balloting process should look like, they are crying out for foreign interference... In other words, they are doing everything but campaigning to win a referendum they know they will not win...

They know. Their vote has a cieling. It doesn't go higher than the low 20 percentiles of the population... basically, it is the top 20 percent income bracketeers in Venezuela... the oligarchy... and the oligarch-wannabes... and then it hits it cieling.

So, in coming weeks, you can expect all kinds of whining and accusations from them that have everything to do with everything except for campaigning for votes. They have already given up on trying to win fair and square.

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