Merida, 7th October 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Hugo Chavez was won the Venezuelan elections with over 54% of the vote against 45% of the vote for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.
The results were announced by the president of the National Electoral Council, Tibisay Lucena, a few minutes ago.
Over 80% of the 19,119,809 registerd voters in Venezuela participated in the election.
Fireworks are already going off in the centre of the Andea city of Merida, and a massive crowd of Chavez supporters have begun celebrating in front of the presidential palace, Miraflores, in Caracas.
Hugo Chávez wins Venezuelan election, securing fourth term in office
And most of the early contributors to dKos and HuffPo on this issue are claiming that either the election was stolen or the voters in Venezuela are stupid. Waiting for one of them to say that it must be because 50% of the voters are lazy and like the free stuff Chavez has given them.
On matters of foreign elections, our Democrats can sound strikingly like Republicans. Fancy that.
Yes — saw it on full display in late 2002 and early 2003. Lots of faux hand-wringing, but they supported George’s Excellent Adventure in Iraq. Since then haven’t seen them not fall in line with whatever the DC consensus is — doesn’t matter if its a dictator or democratically elected government as long as it toes whatever line the US demands.
Guess that’s why I’m not optimistic that we won’t stop our warring before we’ve been crushed.
His margin of victory was below what some of the polls prior to the election were showing. I wasn’t surprised. I also wasn’t surprised to see exit polls promising a Capriles victory that would turn out to be fake. There is an historical precedent:
Here was the fake exit poll that we were warned about. So many on twitter (“left” and right) were lapping it up, while it lasted.
My congratulations to Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. The US is so lucky, even if it doesn’t know what’s good for it in the long run, that the people of Venezuela elected Chavez. For a starter, maybe now he’ll wean the spoiled USA-ians off oil.
Well, this is the thing. Chavez is perfectly happy to sell oil to the US, viz.:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/10/08/what-chavezs-reelection-in-venezuela-means-for-
global-oil-prices/
Chavez has always been a fairly moderate anti-imperialist in foreign policy. His efforts at “exporting revolution” as such have been diplomatic, not military. Ever hungry for an enemy, particularly a leftist one, our media has painted him as Stalin reborn. His most questionable foreign relations issues have been with Colombia, which is much easier to read as an old border issue than as the spectre of Communism looming over Latin America.
His “anti-Americanism” meaningfully ends at Venezuela’s border. His rhetoric will at times extend further. In essence, he doesn’t want any more Yankee interventionism in Venezuela or the region. This is not a radical position.
Wasn’t he the one who sniffed the air at the UN after Bush was speaking and said,”The Devil was here. I smell him.”?
Anyone who has looked at US Latin American intervention on behalf of large Corporations cannot wonder about anti-Americanism. The wonder is that anyone looks up to America.
Well, while he employed that rhetoric he also sold the US a ton of oil. Do the math. As I said, opposed to Yankee imperialism, particularly coups d’etat in Venezuela, but not exactly an existential threat.
Oh yeah, I agree. They deal with the US out of economic necessity, not love or hate. Chavez is smart, not crazy.
A friend from Lebanon told me this after the first Gulf war. “Everyone knows you can’t win a war against the United States. No one expected anything but a US victory. Saddam Hussein won stature in the Middle East just by standing up to Uncle Sam. Everyone, including him, knew he would lose, but he proved his manhood by standing up.” Chavez is smarter. He proves his cojones by standing up and mocking, but doesn’t try to deny the USA Venezuela’s oil, nor his country the Yankee Dollar.
P.S. I thoroughly agreed with him about the UN episode.
Chavez is a great example, if people would pay attention, that our “enemies” are generally interested in us not screwing with them. Not so interested in screwing with us. The exceptions are terrorists, whose stock in trade is provoking a response.
Generally true, but I’m not so sure about Putin.
Putin is entirely a believer in the notion of an international balance of power and spheres of influence. He wants the US out of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, i.e., a return to the status quo ante Yeltsin. The US for better or worse extended its influence into what had been Russian turf since roughly Catherine the Great. From the Russian perspective, its the US which is interested in transressing norms.
There will be no Russian invasion of Alaska on Putin’s watch.
Obviously–maybe not obviously, I guess–I’m very pleased Chavez won. He is enormously important, and the Bolivarian Revolution a light in the world. Everyone should read its Constitution.
At the same time, here is the concern. A revolutionary can, once in power, ruthlessly crush all of its opposition. Once the Civil War was happening, that was the Bolshevik response. That doesn’t mean that everyone was killed, but you’re damn sure that the Bolsheviks expropriated the entire capitalist class. Most of those people remained in Russia holding a grudge, many went into exile, some, through different processes were killed. Anyway, that crush meant that whatever else happened, Russia was not going back to the Old Regime.
Chavez and his supporters did not ruthlessly crush the opposition, though this may come as a surprise to people who only watch US news. The opposition–the wealthy–maintained control of broadcast media, retained their wealth, and Chavez did not take political prisoners, i.e., people whose sole crime was to hold oppositional political ideas. You participate in a coup against Chavez, you’re done, just like you would be in the US. You publish a cartoon depicting him as a monkey, you’re a free man.
The Bolivarian Revolution has remained intact because Chavez has become its rallying point. Groups of people can be bought off, but with individuals it’s a case-by-case basis. Chavez can’t. He hasn’t corrupted himself in the meaningful sense of selling out the revolution. A “strong man” can provide this kind of staying power for a revolution that allows its opposition to continue, because people in Venezuela know Chavez is still on board.
The danger I imagine it’s clear that I’m pointing to is that once Chavez leaves the scene that rallying point is gone, and the opposition, which has never accepted the Constitution, will likely want to turn the clock back entirely. Chavez wins and this is good, but the Revolution cannot be embodied in his person forever. It’s a huge problem.
Chavez needs to spend this term institutionalizing the revolution and coming up with some sort of viable succession. This can include grooming a “moderate” opposition, one that would keep the broader framework of the Constitution. Things ebb and flow, but with institutional change they do not need to flow backwards.
Well, I have to daubt ANY election conducted by Machine, including ours.
ES&S machines were thrown out by Hugo Chavez in 2000, so Bush administration tried to orchstrate an overthrow in 2003 on the sidelines of the Iraq invasion. This failed and the opposition was crushed and oil facilities nationalized. After the ES&S polling failure, Venezuela build their own Smartmatic polling machines with paper trail! These won’t quite sell in the States however as Congress will have nothing of it. The US electronic voting machines and systems remain in Republican ownership.
Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976 — just a few years before Chavez was elected.
You are right of course, under Chavez further nationalization after confrontation in 2003.