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Venezuela: This Looks Like Another Coup Attempt
In 2002 the Bush administration orchestered a coup against the Venezuelan president Chavez. After the coup failed the U.S. embassy in Caracas continued to plot against the Venezuelan government. A cable sent by the U.S. ambassador was published by Wikileaks:
Dispatched in November of 2006 by Brownfield — now an Assistant Secretary of State — the document outlined his embassy’s five core objectives in Venezuela since 2004, which included: “penetrating Chavez’ political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” “protecting vital US business” and “isolating Chavez internationally.”
Chavez did win the 2012 election but died soon afterwards. Last weekend his successor Nicolas Maduro was elected as new president though with much less an advantage than polls had predicted. There are some genuine reasons for the relative tight result, won by some 250,000 votes, but there is no sound reason to suspect fraud.
But fraud is what the losing U.S. supported candidate for president Henrique Capriles Radonski alleges and he send his followers into the the street to demand a recount. This, predictably, led to riots with now at least seven people killed.
Doubting election results without evidence of fraud, demanding recounts, riots in the street are all signs of a typical “color revolution” like attempt to overthrow a legal government. As the U.S. has in the past actively supported a coup against Chavez and, even after that failed, worked hard to create an anti-Chavismo “civil society” with the aim to overthrow Chavez, we can assume that similar schemes are behind the current disturbances.
The U.S. is, predictably, intervening, and supports the oppositions demand:
“Given the tightness of the result – around 1 percent of the votes cast separate the candidates – the opposition candidate and at least one member of the electoral council have called for a 100 percent audit of the results,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told a news briefing.
According to the lasted results with 99% of the votes counted the candidates are separated by 1.77%, not 1% as the White House claims. By demanding a “100% audit” of the results the U.S. just makes sure that this demand will never be fulfilled and creates a new propaganda claim of “fraudulent elections” for which there is zero evidence.
Nicolas Maduro has won and he and his followers will now have to work hard to not fall in this coup attempt. As the legal winner he can and should use the force of the government to defend the result. At the same time he will have to recognize that the aims of Chavez’s revolution have not yet been achieved and that there is still much work to do to get the economy back on a sound footing and to win back those voters that Chavez could count on but Maduro failed to win.
The “fraudulent elections” meme has indeed been the plan from the beginning.
All this has been anticipated and was very much expected. Capriles never pledged to accept the results, even though he was constantly challenged by Maduro to do so during the electoral campaign. The only conceivable reason why he failed to, even though he was elected governor of Miranda state with a thin margin in the october elections, under exactly the same electoral system and rules, was to cast doubts over the electoral process to the fullfilment of said plan, opening the way to the presstitutes campaign, which is ongoing, and would certainly be much ampler and widespread if not for the Boston bombs.
The problem is, the election was amply supervised by international observers, Maduro has been recognized by all the governments of the Americas, with the exception of Panama, Paraguay and the US. Even Spain, whose foreign minister – probably under orders from Aznar – asked for a vote recount has backed off and has formally recognized the election results. Aznar who, by the way, in a meeting of a constelation of right wing foundations in Rosario, Argentina, between the 8th and 10th of April, set the tone denouncing bolivarian “populism” equating it with dictatorship.
Therefore I suppose the US will be isolated in it’s position in the probable company of Palau and Nauru. The rest of the world will recognize Maduro, the OAS just did.
I think Maduro fed Capriles the fuel he burned himself in. There was absolutely no way, in my opinion, of a rerun of the 2002 coup. The oposition is much weaker, has no control of the armed forces, and have lost all important states, except Miranda, where Capriles still rules. They might still have some control over police forces in some states, but not enough to go against the government. The riots were necessary to feed the meme, but will turnout to have the opposite efect. I suppose Capriles, having served his assigned purpose will end up as irrelevant as 2002 coup leader Carmona.
We will have to wait and see if the aftermath of the disorder will be so lenient as the aftermath of the 2002 coup. But, the leniency of 2002 allowed Chávez to purge the armed forces of CIA puppets, and in the last 10 years military cooperation has shifted from the US to Russia. That makes it dificult for the US to infiltrate it. Let’s wait and see how they will handle the private media, which was the great enabler of Carriles and of the riots. Some idiot journo tweeted there were ballots hidden in diagnostic facilities run by cuban doctors, which made the crowd attack and damage these centers. I expect Miami will see it’s nutcase population increasing again.
Having followed Maduro’s campaign through Telesur I think prioritizing the emotional appeal over the rational was a mistake and efectively wound up playing to Capriles advantage, leading to a result aparently noone was expecting, all polls pointing to a larger margin.
The real question now is how the new government will cope with the eficiency of the administration. Maduro promised a “street presidency” a presidency in constant contact with the people, starting imediately, with 2 priorities, fighting corruption and ineficiency, and restoring public safety. I sincerely hope he succeeds, in the present state of the world the only beacon of hope in ther future comes precisely from the latin american experiment which was, let’s not forget, in large measure made possible by the success of Hugo Chávez and Venezuelas democratic revolution.
The big challenge comes now, to consolidate the revolution has an efective alternative to neoliberalism and capital’s globalisation. I look forward a new type of globalisation, the globalisation of the peoples of the world, and the only place it can come from, right now, is from latin america with Venezuela in the forefront.
Posted by: estouxim | Apr 18 2013 3:44 utc | 25
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