- "Today we gave another lesson in dignity to the
imperialists, it is another defeat for the empire of Mr. Danger....another
defeat for the devil. We will never be a colony of the US again....Long
live the socialist revolution....Destiny has been written....Socialism
is human. Socialism is love." This is how Hugo Chavez Frias characterized
his smashing electoral victory on December 3 when he appeared on the balcony
of the Palacio de Miraflores (the official presidential palace residence)
and addressed a huge gathering of his followers below that evening telling
them of his victory for the people and that he now has an even stronger
mandate to pursue his Bolivarian Project to do more for them ahead than
he's already accomplished so far which is considerable.
-
- He told his loyal, cheering supporters his impressive
landslide electoral victory is one more blow to George Bush, and it follows
on the others won by populist candidates in the region in the past six
weeks by Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil on October 29, Daniel Ortega in
Nicaragua on November 7, and Rafael Correa in Equador on November 26.
Chavez will serve for another six year term that will run until December,
2012.
-
- Earlier in the day, Hugo Chavez showed he's indeed a
man of the people by casting his own vote the same way ordinary people
do. Unlike George Bush who goes everywhere in an entourage of limousine,
helicopter, or Air Force One luxury accompanied by a phalanx of security
needed to protect him from the people he was elected to serve, Chavez drove
himself in his aging red-colored Volkswagon to his assigned polling station
accompanied by his young grandson in the back seat, voted, and then left
the same unaccompanied way he came. That's how a man of the people does
it - no bells, whistles or extravagant trappings of power that's a hallmark
of how things are done to excess in the US calling itself a model democracy
but one only for the few with wealth and power and that behaves like a
rogue state that's only a model for despots and tyrants.
-
- In Venezuela under Hugo Chavez there's real participatory
democracy for all the people. After it played out in a fair and open electoral
process, Chavez greeted his supporters in an atmosphere of jubilant celebration
once National Electoral Council (CNE) president Lucena Tibisay announced
at 10:30 PM election night that with about 78% of the vote tallied, Chavez
received 61.4% (5,936,000 votes) to right wing opposition candidate Manuel
Rosales 38% (3,715,000 votes).
-
- The early figures were then updated showing Chavez increased
his advantage to 62.89% (7,161,637 votes), handily defeating Rosales by
about 26 points (at 36.85%) - an impressive nearly two to one thrashing.
It was also announced that voter turnout was about 75% or the highest percentage
in Venezuela's history making this election an historic event and a clear
mandate for Hugo Chavez.
-
- Once the first results were announced on election night,
it was clear to Mr. Rosales he'd lost and he was forced to concede defeat.
He added, however, he would continue opposing the policies of the Chavez
government "struggling for the people of Venezuela (and announcing)
we are beginning the struggle for the construction of a new time for Venezuela....and
I won't stop there, from today on I will be in the streets (staying) in
the struggle, in the fight." He didn't say what he has in mind is
returning the country to its ugly past serving the interests of wealth
and power and ignoring the needs of ordinary people, all his pious rhetoric
aside. He's sure to get lots of encouragement and help from Washington
as its unbending agenda going forward is to do precisely that. Short of
an armed invasion, however, it may be harder than ever to do that as Hugo
Chavez came out ahead in all 23 of Venezuela's states including in Rosales'
home state of Zulia that went for Chavez with a 50.57% majority, an embarrassment
he also neglected to mention in his concession statement cum bravado.
A dozen other candidates participated in the election as well, but had
nothing to brag about, getting in total less than half of one percent of
the vote total.
-
- From the US capitol, State Department spokeswoman Janelle
Hironimus added her government's response without a touch of irony from
an administration that's already tried and failed three times to oust Hugo
Chavez: The US government recognizes the right of the Venezuelan people
"to elect the government of their choice and the path they want for
their country." US Undersecretary of State for Latin America Thomas
Shannon added: "We do not want a relationship of confrontation (with
Venezuela). We've always looked for ways to deepen the dialogue with....President
Chavez (and we hope) he will show a greater interest."
-
-
- Neither US official tried explaining that their post-election
good faith rhetoric is belied by their government's actions since the Bush
administration came to power in 2001 trying every underhanded trick it
could cook up to undermine and oust Hugo Chavez and is still engaging in
subversion. It would be quite a change in the Bush White House if it ever
practiced what it always disingenuously preaches fooling no one, especially
Hugo Chavez and his government.
-
- The same kind of post-election forked tongue comments
came from US Ambassador William Brownfield who congratulated Venezuelans
on a smooth and peaceful election and indicated Washington's willingness
to have a less confrontational relationship with Chavez saying: "We
recognize that and we're ready, willing and eager to explore and see if
we can make progress on bilateral issues." Hugo Chavez understands
full well the kind of relationship the ambassador means and responded to
the overture: "They want dialogue but on the condition that you accept
their positions. If the government of the United States wants dialogue,
Venezuela will always have its door open. But I doubt the US government
is sincere....we are a free country. We were once a North American colony,
and we will not be one ever again."
-
- Chavez was being polite but firm as he knows the US is
never sincere in its dealings with other countries and is determined to
remove him from office. Also, its relations with all Global South countries
are uncompromisingly ones on an "our way or the highway" basis.
For Hugo Chavez, that's no way, and it's hard to imagine relations between
the two countries will change going forward, at least under a Bush administration.
Chavez explained further saying: "How are we going to have good relations
with a government that has financed conspiratorial activities here?"
-
- It's also a government establishing closer ties with
the military in Latin American countries (circumventing ruling governments
if necessary) to counter the influence and spread of populist leftist governments
like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Former US Southern Command General Bantz
Craddock explained the real sentiment of the Bush administration toward
the region when he said: "The challenges facing Latin America and
the Caribbean today are significant to our national security. We ignore
them at our peril." He wasn't referring to the need to be more conciliatory
to populist leftist leaders like those in Venezuela, Bolivia or Ecuador
(in January) or Fidel Castro in Cuba (the US has tried and failed many
dozens or even hundreds of times to kill) who have notions of governance
much different than those in Washington.
-
- For the moment at least, the cheering crowd outside the
Miraflores on election night had other thoughts on their mind, but like
their president demand nothing less than a relationship based on equality
and respect with their dominant northern neighbor. They gathered in the
late evening pouring rain dressed in their signature red T-shirts and caps,
waving Venezuela flags and shouting "Uh, ah, Chavez no se va"
- "Uh, ah, Chavez will not go." It continued all night in the
celebratory streets of Caracas echoing Chavez's words repeating "Libertad
(liberty) and telling the crowd this was a victory for them, for socialism
and for the Bolivarian Revolution he now wants to advance to the next stage.
-
- Venezuela Under Chavez - How Real Democratic Elections
Are Run
-
- The polls opened at 7AM on Sunday, December 3, but hours
earlier people were already queueing up in their eagerness to participate
in Venezuela's democratic electoral process. Most of them, as we know,
were there to support Hugo Chavez Frias as their president and won't allow
anyone else to have the job as long as he wants it. The lines were long
at many of the stations, but observers noted voting across the country
ran smoothly with only minor problems that were no obstacle to the electoral
process. About 1400 observers were on hand to witness the day's events
including 10 representatives from the Carter Center in the US, 130 from
the European Union (EU), 60 from the Organization of American States (OAS)
and 10 from the Mercosur Common Market of the South countries.
-
- At day's end, OAS team leader Juan Enrique Fisher congratulated
Venezuelan officials for a "transparent and well-run election....We
congratulate the Venezuelan people for their spirit of citizenship, President
Chavez for his popular mandate and candidate Rosales for his civic spirit
and for fortifying democracy." He described the voting as "massive
and peaceful" and added scattered reports of voting equipment malfunctions
were minor and more attributable to voter unfamiliarity with the machines
than to irregularities. Spanish parliamentarian Willy Meyer, one of seven
members from the European Parliament, noted the process was smooth-running
and turnout was "massive, well-arranged and happy..." European
Union leader Antonio Garcia Velasquez said Venezuelan electoral officials
gave them "complete liberty and with all requirements so that the
job (of observing) can be fulfilled in conformity with our stipulations."
The NGO Electoral Eye noted in an afternoon statement that 99% of the voting
centers were operating "completely normally."
-
- Voting took place using 33,000 ballot tables at 11,118
polling stations throughout the country, and each candidate in the election
was allowed to have observers present at all of them if they wished. All
registered Venezuelans, of course, could vote including the 57,667 eligible
ones located in other countries. Voting took place on Sunday to make it
as easy as possible for people to participate, and while polling stations
were scheduled to close at 4PM Caracas time, most stayed open as long as
there were people in line who hadn't yet voted.
-
- Venezuela's Electoral Process Prior to the Election of
Hugo Chavez
-
- Before Hugo Chavez was first elected the country's president
in December, 1998, less than half of all eligible Venezuelans were registered
to vote and thus were unable to participate in choosing their elected officials
who might help them raise their standard of living including the great
majority of impoverished people in the country most in need of positive
change. For decades previously, two parties in the country, Democratic
Action (AD) and Social Christian Party (COPEI), dominated the political
process through a power-sharing arrangement that served the interests of
Venezuela's wealthy elite and its "sifrino" middle class ignoring
the needs and rights of the great majority of poor and effectively disenfranchised.
It finally boiled over in the streets in the late 1980s and 1990s that
led to the governing coalition bringing Hugo Chavez to power in 1998 that
changed everything - just the way Chavez promised he's do it if elected.
-
- Along with his political and social revolution, Chavez
promised to address the problem of electoral fraud and exclusion that had
to be overcome for any true democracy to exist. At the outset of his first
term in office, the National Assembly strengthened earlier reforms and
initiated new ones focusing on voter access and rights, security and eliminating
the kinds of fraudulent practices that characterized Venezuelan elections
in the past.
-
- A major and successful initiative was later established
in 2003 known as Mision Itentidad (Mission Identity) that aimed to implement
Article 56 of the Bolivarian Constitution stating: "All persons have
the right to be registered free of charge with the Civil Registry Office
after birth, and to obtain public documents constituting evidence of the
biological identity, in accordance with law." The Mission constituted
a combined mass citizenship and voter registration drive that's given millions
of ordinary Venezuelans national ID cards granting them the full rights
of citizenship they never before had. It also resulted in over five million
Venezuelans being able to register and vote in elections for the first
time ever up to the middle of 2006 - including qualified immigrants and
indigenous people who never before had any rights. In 2000, before this
initiative was begun, 11 million Venezuelans were registered to vote. By
September, 2006, the number had grown to over 16 million in a country of
27 million people.
-
- How the Electoral Process Is Administered
-
- The electoral process is administered by the National
Electoral Council (CNE). It's an independent body, separate from the Executive,
Legislative and Judicial branches of government or any private corporate
interests. It's comprised of 11 members of the National Assembly and 10
representatives of civil society, none of whom are appointed by the President.
-
- Elections are now conducted in Venezuela using Smartmatic
touchscreen electronic voting machines with verifiable paper ballot receipts
that voters can check to assure they confirm the vote they cast and then
are saved by the CNE to have as a permanent record of vote totals that
can be used in case a recount is needed. They also require voters to leave
an electronic thumbprint to assure no one votes more than once.
-
- The machines work as intended leading the Carter Center
to comment, based on their observations of their use: "The automated
machines worked well and the voting results do reflect the will of the
people." Further independent studies verified the same thing including
ones carried out by vote-process experts at the University of California
Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and elsewhere. Great care was taken
in their design to eliminate any possibility of tampering. It involves
using a special technology splitting the security codes into four parts
that has been endorsed in numerous voting security reports because it makes
the machines used in Venezuela the most advanced system in the world according
to the European Union Election Observation Mission in the country.
-
- How Elections Are Now Run in the US
-
- Contrast this exercise of real participatory democracy
with the way things are done in the US, especially since the fraud-laden
election bringing the Bush administration to power. A growing number of
investigations have since revealed how corrupted the electoral process
has become, especially in national elections, where a systematic effort
has been made to disenfranchise portions of those segments of eligible
voters likely to oppose Republican candidates or selected Democrats representing
elitist interests. Many techniques are used to do it starting with the
privatization of the electoral process that gives large electronic voting
machine companies total unregulated control over it.
-
- In the 2004 national election, more than 80% of the US
vote was cast and counted on these machines owned, programmed and operated
by three large corporations, most of which have no verifiable paper ballot
receipts making it impossible to have a recount as any done, if needed,
will only verify the first result being challenged. The process now is
secretive and unreliable run by private corporate interests with everything
to gain if candidates they support win, and based on what's now known,
that's exactly what's happened. As long as this system prevails, the US
electoral process is fraudulent on its face making a sham of the notion
of the kind of free, fair and open elections that are a hallmark of the
way things are run under Hugo Chavez.
-
- It's what one observer, commenting on US elections, calls
the "ultimate crime" as the very bedrock of democracy depends
on the right of the electorate to exercise its will at the polls without
it being subverted by private or other interests. Its importance is what
Tom Paine said about it at the nation's founding: "The right of voting
for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are
protected. To take away this right (as has happened in the US) is to reduce
a man to slavery."
-
- Subversion with electronic voting machine manipulation
is only part of the problem as investigations have also uncovered much
more revealing a systematic perversion of the democratic process. In the
2000 and 2004 national elections in the US, millions of votes cast were
never counted that included "spoiled ballots," rejected absentee
ballots and others lost or deliberately ignored in the count. In addition,
there's been massive voter roll purging, for a variety of reasons, that
added up to one common denominator - eligible voters disenfranchised were
likely to vote for the "wrong" candidates so they were denied
the right to vote at all. In Venezuela under Hugo Chavez today, every
eligible voter can register and is encouraged to vote without fear their
vote cast will disappear, go to another candidate or they will be purged
from the voter roles. That's how a true democracy is supposed to work,
and in Venezuela today it does. In the US it doesn't, and it shows in
the results. It also shows in that half or more of eligible voters here
never bother showing up on election day believing, with justification,
their votes don't count.
-
- Another major difference between the two countries is
in Venezuela the people are informed well enough to understand what the
candidates stand for, how their government serves them, and they're willing
to actively engage to keep their hard-won democratic rights and social
benefits they won't give up without a fight. In contrast, in the US, the
public is lulled into believing in an illusion of democracy and the rights
of the people guaranteed under one that don't exist anymore, if they ever
did. Because of their apathy, they're not in the streets like the people
of Venezuela, their comrades in Mexico, who aren't as fortunate, or the
anti-Bush/Olmert masses comprising up to half the population of Lebanon
in the streets of Beirut demanding real democracy, justice and an end to
Western domination. Instead, they're home or out shopping because they
fail to understand unless they go there in large enough numbers for the
rights they don't, in fact, have, they'll never get them.
-
- Chavez's Goal to Build A Socialist Society in the 21st
Century
-
- Chavez first announced to the world his hope to build
a socialist society in the 21st century in Venezuela at the January 30,
2005 Fifth World Social Forum. He wants a humanistic one based on solidarity,
not the bureaucratic kind that doomed the Soviet Union and Eastern European
states where governments were top - down with no participation of the people
who ended up ill-served. Later on, Chavez elaborated saying "We have
assumed the commitment to direct the Bolivarian Revolution towards socialism....a
new socialism....a socialism of the 21st century....based in solidarity,
fraternity, love, justice, liberty and equality" beyond the free-market
model based on exploitation of working people for the interests of capital.
-
- The Chavez government has pursued these goals incrementally
since it came to power in February, 1999 following Hugo Chavez's election
in December, 1998. He promised Venezuelans his vision of a Bolivarian Revolution
to free them from what 19th century liberator Simon Bolivar called the
imperial curse that always "plague(d) Latin America with misery in
the name of liberty." His Movement for the Fifth Republic Party (MVR)
got a peoples' mandate for change at its outset to draft a new constitution
that transformed Venezuela from an oligarchy serving wealth and power alone
to a model humanist democratic state serving everyone based on solidarity
and the principles of political, economic and social justice.
-
- He delivered in ways unimaginable in the US where essential
government-delivered services for the people are denounced as radical and
denied in a nation now dominated by a reactionary ideology and the notion
that only neoliberal market-based solutions are acceptable - even though
it's proved they don't work. Under this flawed model, government only works
for the privileged few that benefit under its law-of-the-jungle rules that
come at the expense of the great majority losing out the way it always
happens in a top-down society run by and for them. This is the state of
things today in the US, a nation where its founding principles have been
turned upside down and is now run by and for plutocrats with values corrupted
by false notions of fairness, equity and justice.
-
- That was how Venezuela was governed before the age of
Hugo Chavez. In the 28 years before he was first elected, the people suffered
from deprivation, neglect and indifference. Venezuelan inflation-adjusted
per capita income fell 35% in those years, the worst decline in the region
and one of the worst in the world. Chavez halted the decline and turned
it around as high oil prices and a favorable economic climate lifted the
nation's growth to the highest level in the region following the crippling
2002-03 oil strike and destabilizing effects of the short-lived coup deposing
Hugo Chavez for two days in April, 2002. Since that time, unemployment
declined and the crushing poverty level in the country fell from a high
of around 62% in 2003 to a level near 40% today and falling.
-
- Chavez, however, went much further by enshrining the
principles of a participatory democracy and its social revolution in the
new 1999 Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It mandates
revolutionary structural changes for political, economic and social justice
that include quality health care for all as a "fundamental social
right and....responsibility....of the state." It bans discrimination,
guarantees free expression Chavez's fiercest critics enjoy and use to the
fullest against him without recrimination, provides for housing assistance,
an improved social security pension system for seniors, assures support
for the rights of indigenous people, and requires quality education be
made available for all to the highest level that virtually eliminated illiteracy
- compared to the stated 20% level here in the US according to the Department
of Education figures but which, in fact, is much higher and increasing
based on the best evidence of functional illiteracy among the secondary
student populations of the nation's inner cities.
-
- That would now be unacceptable in Venezuela where Chavez
post-election wants to take his Revolution to the next level doing more
than ever for his people. Along with all of the above, the government additionally
already provides subsidized food for those in need, land reform, job training
and micro-credit. It's a country in which most of the productive capacity
is state or privately owned, but a great emphasis has been made to be innovative
and go in new directions, experimenting with the idea of co-management
with state-owned enterprises allowed to be jointly managed by the workers
in them. A major effort has also been made to expand the number of cooperatives
outside of state or private control, and since Chavez was first elected
the total number of them has grown from 800 to 100,000 employing 1.5 million
people or 10% of the adult population and rising.
-
- Another of Chavez's top priorities since first taking
office in 1999 has been land reform. The country has long been run by
rich oligarchs including large land-owning ones that allowed 5% of the
largest landowners to control 75% of the land and 75% of the smallest ones
to have only 6% of it. Chavez is trying to implement land reform legislation
allowing underused land owned by the latifundistas (the large rich landowners)
to be redistributed to landless campesinos who'll put it to productive
use and improve their lives in the process.
-
- Chavez also wants to continue enhancing all the above-listed
programs that have improved the lives of his people including the many
innovative social Missions using the country's oil wealth to do it. His
impressive electoral victory gives him a greater mandate than ever to advance
his Bolivarian Project to the next level and his vision of socialism or
social democracy in the 21st century. It won't be a simple task as the
power of the oligarchs supported by the Bush administration, and what may
succeed it, are powerful obstacles in the way of social advance. So far
he's achieved wonders for the past eight years in the face of great odds,
but much more needs to be done. With the power of the Venezuelan people
standing with him, not willing to give up the great gains already gotten,
Chavez is now looking ahead to advance the country's social democracy well
into the new century.
-
- Hugo Chavez is now an empowered symbol and leader of
a growing social revolutionary populist movement slowly spreading in the
region that needs to be turned into an unstoppable juggernaut. It represents
a hopeful and promising alternative to generations of entrenched elitism
backed by military power along with oppressive US dominance and the poisonous
effects of the neoliberal Washington Consensus model savagely exploiting
the Global South for the interests of capital in the North. It's a way
to be free from the US-controlled IMF and World Bank debt-bondage demanding
in return punishing fiscal austerity, state-owned industry privatizations,
social neglect, the loss of organized labor rights in a system of market
deregulation benefitting the privileged alone at the expense of staggering
levels of poverty, deprivation and inequality for the majority. It's a
way to build a free society of, for and by the people unbeholden to wealth
and power. It's a way to reduce poverty and inequality and improve the
lives of ordinary people in ways never thought possible in the developing
world until Hugo Chavez had a vision and was able to implement it and begin
its spread.
-
- Chavez now has allies in Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina,
Cuba, Nicaragua, Uruguay and even Chile that still exists under the shadow
of Augusto Pinochet and his 17 year dictatorship that crushed the strongest
democracy in the region and from whose rule the country has yet to fully
recover, but hopefully has a chance under its new more enlightened leader.
They represent what author Tariq Ali refers to in the region as an "Axis
of Hope," and Chavez has now earned enough political capital to bring
it closer to fruition.
-
- The momentum in Latin America is with Hugo Chavez and
his allies if they can seize it and take it to the next level. The chance
for success has never been better with the US more vulnerable than ever
and staggering from its loss of dominance in the Middle East and the forces
arrayed against it there showing they can stand up to the most powerful
nation on earth and prevail. It's a sign America is not all-powerful,
is in decline politically and economically and choosing an independent
course is an alternative that can work if enough nations unite and do it
together.
-
- The region's most dominant nations have already shown
they can oppose Washington and prevail. Following Argentina's IMF-imposed
structurally adjusted economic meltdown at the end of the 1990s, President
Nestor Kirchner got the financial markets in 2005 to accept his take-it-or-leave-it
offer of 30 cents on the dollar payment on the country's unrepayable sovereign
debt of around $130 billion and have to accept it in the form of long-term,
low-interest bonds.
-
- Then, events at the November, 2005 Summit of the Americas
in Mar del Playa, Argentina sounded the death knell for the US-proposed
Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) expansion of the disastrous
NAFTA model because the dominant Southern Common Market Mercosur countries
in the region of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela want
no part of it signaling for scholar Immanuel Wallerstein that "The
Monroe Doctrine is dead. And there are few mourners."
-
- And yet another blow to US-promoted globalization came
with the collapse of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha (so-called
"Development") Round talks in July, 2006 because more developing
countries now realize the US/Western-one-way trade deals have been disastrous
despite disingenuous rosy promises of economic growth and prosperity that
only delivered increased poverty, deprivation and environmental destruction
instead.
-
- Before these agreements from hell were ever agreed to,
average per capital income growth in Latin America was 82% from 1960 to
1980 (4% per person, per year). Once the notion of globalization took
hold after 1980 based on the Washington Consensus neoliberal model, the
rate of income growth in the region through 2000 fell to 9% (less than
half of 1% per person, per year), and since 2000 it dropped to 5% - a stunning
indictment of how so-called "free-trade" US-style (that isn't
"fair trade") is a formula for economic ruin for those countries
adopting it, and significant ones like Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia
and others in Latin America want no more of it.
-
- It remains to be seen going forward if this kind of momentum
can continue, gain strength with new allies working together for the common
self-interest of all to break free from the dominant US chokehold by asserting
their independence as Venezuela under Hugo Chavez has shown can be done
and be able to get away with it and benefit as a result.
-
- Further success in Venezuela and elsewhere depends on
breaking free from what South African born and now activist and distinguished
Bolivarian Venezuelan Professor of philosophy and political science Franz
Lee says must be accomplished ahead: "(Getting) rid of all the five
tentacles of capitalist imperialism: exploitation, domination, discrimination,
militarization and alienation....in a class struggle against global fascism."
In Venezuela, the process has only just begun. Hugo Chavez has taken up
the challenge to move it ahead, but he'll need the support of other enlightened
leaders to boldly go with him where he's already gone and then take it
a lot further to achieve a peoples' victory over the forces that have long
held them down and denied them the equity and justice they deserve.
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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