Fear of Chavez is fear of democracy
Bush:
If it’s our oil, why do Venezuelans get to vote on it?
GOP
panicked that counting votes in Venezuela will spread to Florida
By
Greg Palast Read Spanish Version
The
Family Bush can fix Florida. They can fix Ohio. But it’s just
driving them crazy that they can’t fix the vote in
Venezuela.
[Note: Watch the reports taken from the Palast BBC
investigations in Venezuela in the newly released DVD, “The
Assassination of Hugo Chavez.”]
The Bush Administration and
its press puppies — the same ones who couldn’t get enough of the
purple thumbs of voters of Iraq — are absolutely livid that this
weekend the electorate of Venezuela had the opportunity to
vote.
Typical was the mouth-breathing editorial by the San
Francisco Chronicle, that the referendum could make Hugo Chavez,
Venezuela’s president, “a constitutional dictator for life.”
And no less a freedom fighter than Donald Rumsfeld, from the height
of the Washington Post, said that by voting, Venezuela was “receding
into dictatorship.” Oh, my!
Given that Chavez’ referendum
was defeated at the ballot box, we know that as a dictator, Chavez is
a flop. Of course, without meaning to gainsay Secretary Rumsfeld,
maybe Chavez is not a dictator.
Let’s get clear exactly what
this vote was about. Firstly, it was a referendum to change the
nation’s constitution to end term limits for President.
Oh,
horror! Imagine if we eliminated term limits in the U.S.! We could
end up stuck with a president — like Franklin Roosevelt. Worse, if
Bill Clinton could have run again, we’d have missed out on the
statesmanship of Junior Bush. While U.S. media called Chavez a
“tyrant” for suggesting an end to term limits, they somehow
forgot to smear the tyrant tag on Mr. Clinton for suggesting the same
for America.
We were not told this weekend’s referendum was
a vote on term limits, rather, we were told by virtually every U.S.
news outlet that the referendum was to make Chavez, “President for
Life.” The “President for Life” canard was mis-reported by no
less than The New York Times.
But ending term limits does not
mean winning the term. As Chavez himself told me, “It’s up to the
people” whether he gets reelected. And that infuriates the
U.S.-Powers-That-Be.
Secondly, beyond ending term limits, the
referendum would have loaded the nation’s constitution with changes
in property law, work hours and so many other complex economic
adjustments that the entire referendum sank of its own weight.
It’s
the oil
Term
limits and work hours in Venezuela? Why was this a crisis for
Washington?
Why is the Bush crew so bonkers about Hugo? Is it
because Venezuela sits on the world’s largest reserve of
coconuts?
Like Operation Iraqi Liberation (”OIL”) — it’s
all about the crude, dude. And lots of it. The U.S. Department of
Energy documents I obtained indicate that the guys holding Bush’s
dipstick figure that Venezuela is sitting on 1.36 trillion barrels of
crude, five times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Chavez’
continuing tenure means that Venezuelans’ huge supply of oil will
now be in the hands of … Venezuelans!
As Arturo Quiran,
resident of a poor folks’ housing complex, told me, “Ten, fifteen
years ago … there was a lot of oil money here in Venezuela but we
didn’t see it.” Notably, Quiran doesn’t particularly agree with
Chavez’ politics. But, he thought Americans should understand that
under Chavez’ Administration, there’s a doctor’s office in his
building with “free operations, X-rays, medicines. Education also.
People who never knew how to read and write now know
how to sign
their own papers.”
Not everyone is pleased. As one TV news
anchor, violently anti-Chavez, told me in derisive tones, “Chavez
gives them (the poor) bricks and bread!” — how dare he! — so,
they vote for him.
Big Oil has better ideas for Venezuela,
best expressed in several Wall Street Journal articles attacking
Chavez for spending his nation’s oil wealth on “social programs”
rather than on more drilling platforms to better fill the SUVs of
Texas.
Chavez has committed other crimes in Washington’s
eyes. Not only has this uppity brown man spent Venezuela’s oil
wealth in Venezuela, he withdrew $20 billion from the U.S. Federal
Reserve. Weirdly, Venezuela’s previous leaders, though the nation
was dirt poor, lent
billions to the U.S. Treasury on crap terms.
Chavez has said, Basta! To this game, and has called for keeping
South America’s capital in … South America! Oh, no!
Oh,
and did I mention that Chavez told Exxon it had to pay more than a 1%
royalty to his nation on the heavy crude the company extracted?
And
that’s why they have to kill him. In 2002, The New York Times
sickeningly applauded the coup d’etat against Chavez. But that
failed. Therefore, as the electorate of Venezuela is obstinately
refusing to vote as Condi Rice tells them, there’s only one
solution left for democracy-loving Bush-niks, the view express out
loud by our President’s spiritual advisor, Pat Robertson:
“We
have this enemy to our south controlling a huge pool of oil. Hugo
Chavez thinks we’re trying to assassinate him. I think we ought to
go ahead and do it. … We don’t need another $200 billion war …
It’s a whole lot easier to have some covert operatives do the
job.”
But Hugo’s not my enemy. Indeed, he’s made a damn
good offer to the American people: oil for $50 a barrel — nearly
half of what it sells today. By locking in a long-term price,
Venezuela loses its crazy Iraq war oil-price windfall. In return, we
agree not to let oil prices fall through the floor (it dropped to $9
a barrel in 1998) and bankrupt his nation. But Saudi Arabia doesn’t
like that deal. And Abdullah’s wish is George Bush’s command.
(Interestingly, Chavez’ fellow no-term-limits dictator Bill Clinton
endorsed the concept.)
I don’t agree with everything Chavez
does. And I’ve found some of his opponents’ point well taken. But
unlike Bush, I don’t think I should have a veto over the Venezuelan
vote.
And the locals’ sentiments are quite clear. I drove
with one opposition candidate, Julio Borges, on a campaign stop to a
small town three hours from Caracas. We met his supporters — or,
more accurately, his lone supporter. The “rally” was in her
kitchen. She served us delicious arepas.
The next day, I
returned to that very same town when Chavez arrived. Nearly a
thousand screaming fans showed up — and an equal number were turned
away. (The British Telegraph laughably reports that Chavez’
boosters appear “under duress.”) You’d think they were showing
for a taping of “South American Idol.” (Well, the Venezuelan
President did break into song a few times.)
It’s worth
noting that Chavez’ personal popularity doesn’t extend to all his
plans for “Bolivarian” socialism. And that killed his referendum
at the ballot box. I guess Chavez should have asked Jeb Bush how to
count votes in a democracy.
So there you have it. Some guy who
thinks he can take Venezuela’s oil and oil money and just give it
away to Venezuelans. And these same Venezuelans have the temerity to
demand the right to pick the president of their choice! What is the
world coming to?
In Orwellian Bush-speak and Times-talk,
Chavez’ referendum was portrayed before the vote as a trick, Saddam
goes Latin. Maybe their real fear is that Chavez has brought a bit of
economic justice through the ballot box, a trend that could spread
northward. Think about it: Chavez is funding full health care for all
Venezuelans. What if that happened here?
Greg
Palast has just returned from South America. Catch his investigations
for BBC Television and Democracy Now! in the newly-released DVD, The
Assassination of Hugo Chavez, including Palast’s interviews with
Chavez, his opponents — even the man who kidnapped Chavez. You can
watch the trailer on YouTube.
Greg
Palast: Fear of Chavez is fear of democracy
Posted
by: "Walter Lippmann" walterlx@earthlink.net
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