[News] Chavez and Washington Post on Venezuela Recall

Thu May 27 08:36:48 EDT 2004

Chavez and Washington Post on Venezuela Recall

1. Ready for a Recall Vote (By Hugo Chavez)
2. Mr. Chavez's Claim (Editorial)

====

Ready for a Recall Vote
By Hugo Chavez

Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A55957-2004May25.html

Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A27

CARACAS, Venezuela -- For the first 24 hours of the
coup d'etat that briefly overthrew my government on
April 11, 2002, I expected to be executed at any
moment.

The coup leaders told Venezuela and the world that
I hadn't been overthrown but rather had resigned. I
expected that my captors would soon shoot me in the
head and call it a suicide.

Instead, something extraordinary happened. The truth
about the coup got out, and millions of Venezuelans
took to the streets. Their protests emboldened the pro-
democracy forces in the military to put down the brief
dictatorship, led by Venezuelan business leader Pedro
Carmona.

The truth saved my life, and with it Venezuela's
democracy. This near-death experience changed me.
I wish I could say it changed my country.

The political divisions in Venezuela didn't start with
my election in 1998. My country has been socially and
economically divided throughout its history. Venezuela
is one of the largest oil exporting countries in the
world -- the fourth-largest supplier to the United
States -- and yet the majority of Venezuelans remain
mired in poverty.

What has enraged my opponents, most of whom are from
the upper classes, is not Venezuela's persistent misery
and inequality but rather my efforts to dedicate a
portion of our oil wealth to improving the lives of the
poor. In the past six years we have doubled spending on
health care and tripled the education budget. Infant
mortality has fallen; life expectancy and literacy have
increased.

Having failed to force me from office through the 2002
coup, my opponents shut down the government oil company
last year. Now they are trying to collect enough
signatures to force a recall referendum on my
presidency. Venezuela's constitution -- redrafted and
approved by a majority of voters in 1999 -- is the only
constitution in the Western Hemisphere that allows for
a president to be recalled.

Venezuela's National Electoral Council -- a body as
independent as the Federal Election Commission in the
United States -- found that more than 375,000 recall
petition signatures were faked and that an additional
800,000 had similar handwriting. Having been elected
president twice by large majorities in less than six
years, I find it more than a little ironic to be
accused of behaving undemocratically by many of the
same people who were involved in the illegal overthrow
of my government.

The National Electoral Council has invited
representatives of the Organization of American States
and the Carter Center to observe a signature
verification process that will be conducted during the
last four days of this month. That process will
determine whether the opposition has gathered enough
valid signatures to trigger a recall election, which
would be held this August. To be frank, I hope that my
opponents have gathered enough signatures to trigger a
referendum, because I relish the opportunity to once
again win the people's mandate.

But it is not up to me. To underscore my commitment to
the rule of law, my supporters and I have publicly and
repeatedly pledged to abide by the results of that
transparent process, whatever they may be. My political
opponents have not made a similar commitment; some have
even said they will accept only a ruling in favor of a
recall vote.

The Bush administration was alone in the world when it
endorsed the overthrow of my government in 2002. It is
my hope that this time the Bush administration will
respect our republican democracy. We are counting on
the international community -- and all Venezuelans --
to make a clear and firm commitment to respect and
support the outcome of the signature verification
process, no matter the result.

The writer is president of Venezuela.

C 2004 The Washington Post Company

washingtonpost.com

====

Mr. Chavez's Claim

Editorial

Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A55981-2004May25.html

Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A26

IN A COLUMN on the opposite page Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez makes the remarkable assertion that he
hopes his opponents will succeed in triggering a recall
referendum that could cut short his term in office.
Remarkable, because polls consistently show that Mr.
Chavez would lose the referendum -- less than 40
percent of the population supports his eccentric,
quasi-authoritarian populism. Contrary to his claims,
he has impoverished as well as polarized his country:
Venezuela's per capita income has declined by a quarter
in the six years he has been in office, and the poor
are worse off than ever.

More to the point, the president's words conflict
with his actions. He has spent the past year doing
everything in his power to prevent a democratic vote on
his tenure -- and has repeatedly vowed that no
referendum will take place.

So why would Mr. Chavez claim otherwise? Because the
latest propaganda strategy of this would-be "Bolivarian
revolutionary" is to portray a complicated petition
verification process scheduled for this weekend as an
impartial procedure whose outcome should be accepted as
a fair resolution of the country's political conflict.
In fact, the procedure should not be taking place at
all: It is the result of an attempt by Mr. Chavez's
appointees to invalidate on bogus technicalities 1.6
million out of 3.4 million signatures the opposition
collected to trigger the recall election. By all
rights, the election should have occurred months ago,
because the opposition gathered 1 million more
signatures than required by the constitution and has
now collected more than enough signatures for a recall
vote on two occasions. Instead, after protracted
wrangling, authorities have set aside two days in which
hundreds of thousands of would-be voters must return to
confirm their signatures. Unless at least 600,000
manage to do so despite numerous procedural obstacles
and intimidation by government goon squads, Mr. Chavez
and his cronies will declare the recall a failure.

Sadly, the odds are that Mr. Chavez will carry out this
coup-by-technicality and thwart a democratic resolution
to Venezuela's long-running political crisis. The
president points out that some of his opponents
previously supported a coup against him (Mr. Chavez
doesn't mention that he also once led a military
rebellion against a democratic government); but now
that the opposition has committed itself to an
electoral solution, Mr. Chavez refuses to allow it.
About the only hope for a fair outcome is the presence
of observers from the Organization of American States
(OAS) and the Carter Center who could call attention to
acts of overt fraud and intimidation; Mr. Chavez tried
to exclude them from the verification process but was
obliged to give in late last week.

Mr. Chavez swallowed the observers for the same reason
he penned his op-ed: He hopes not only to block the
referendum but also to head off any subsequent decision
by the OAS to invoke its democracy charter, which calls
for sanctions against governments that interrupt the
rule of law. Even if it decided to act, the OAS
probably wouldn't be able to stop Mr. Chavez from
destroying what remains of democracy in Venezuela.
Already, the president's only real friend in the
outside world is Cuba's Fidel Castro. But if he
proceeds to deny his country a democratic vote, Mr.
Chavez should, at least, be denied the pretense that
his actions are legal, or acceptable to the region's
democracies.

C 2004 The Washington Post Company

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