More Right-Wing RantTM from Howie:Glad to see the people of Venezuela smartened up, and realized that Chavez is loco..........until Chavez declares that the voting machines were vandalized, and he really won, and declares his dictatorship for life............Seig Heil.......
Yes, Howie, that's exactly what happened. Anyway...
Venezuelans did narrowly reject the referendum that would have eliminated term limits (by the way, that's all the referendum called for, the elimination of term limits -- he would not have been put in power indefinitely, he would still have had to run for re-election at the end of each term, like in the United States for the first 180-plus years of its existence). And that's the end of the story.
"From this moment on, let's be calm," Chavez declared. "There is no dictatorship here."
There is no dictatorship that disrupted the elections, and there would have been no dictatorship had the vote gone the other way. It's a thing right-wingers like Howie don't understand: it's called democracy.
Of course, spinmeisters in the US State Department make the result of this referendum look like the hope of all future democracy in Venezuela:
"Clearly this is a message from the Venezuelan people that they do not want any further erosion in their democracy and their democratic institutions," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.
...conveniently forgetting that Chavez has been twice elected, once returned by popular support after surviving a (US supported) coup, and won a recall election. In other words, it has been the triumph of democracy, like it or not, that got Chavez to the place where he could lose even lose a referendum to eliminate term limits and be re-elected as many times as Franklin D. Roosevelt (who we could use right now).
In the meantime, Chavez still enjoys broad powers that the voters gave him in previous referenda (unlike the broad powers that the Bush administration have assumed unconstitutionally and without so much as a "MayI?").
So, Howie, and all your right-wing friends:
STOP WHINING!!!
UPDATE: Renegade Eye has an excellent analysis of the referendum and its outcome. Even if I were not still working on my book, I couldn't have been more thorough. Check it out.
4 comments:
Answer this:
Why did it take the Electoral Council (CNE) five hours to reveal the results?
Chavez acknowledged he knew since 9 pm what the results were. The precedent exists in previous elections, Dec 2006, results were given promptly.
All of us Venezuelans spent hours glued to the television waiting for the results into the early morning. Honestly, if you know your subject, that "narrow" percentage must've been quite resounding for Chavez to ADMIT any defeat. Don't kid yourself thinking that there is such a thing as an annonymous vote in Venezuela. Your fingerprint is scanned and tracked much like a foreigner entering your country.
I am proud of the student movement and all they did to "wake" people up from their indiference, apathy and resignation. Even Chavez supporters in Venezuela "El Pueblo" do not agree with him. These are his people. Think about that. Baduel, the person who brought him back from the failed coup, dissents and understands the personality behind this revolution. Chavez is not done, he will be back worse than ever.
We dodged a bullet, and I am relieved, for now, that at least this small victory has given us hope for a true democracy.
Well, first of, the closer the margin, the more carefully one must count the votes. It happens all the time in democracies. Get used to it.
Second of all, in a free-market communication environment, anyone can post anything anytime. Anonymity does not boost your credibility.
Good Lord, so your vote count wasn't released for 5 whole hours.
Cry me a river....
Here in Columbus OH I watched the debacle of the Congressional 2006election here, between Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy and Bush Sock-puppet Debbie Pryce. Thousands of uncounted "provisional ballots", mostly from OSU students who were heavily in favor of Kilroy, mysteriously couldn't be counted by Franklin county election officials for over 4 weeks, their excuses included the OSU/Michigan game(!) Meanwhile, Pryce declared herself the winner, and by the time that the highly questionable ballot counting took place, Kilroy had pretty much rolled over. If you want to see real election fraud, check out a few places here in the US (Florida 2000, Ohio 2004 for openers)
One of the team members of my blog, was in Venezuela last year during the presidential elections as an election observer. Venezuela has one of the best vote systems in the world.
The opposition gained no significant numbers. The real headline, is why did Chavez supporters stay home?
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