http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/world/americas/venezuelans-vote-for-successor-to-chavez.html Rejecting the policies of the oligarchs which the US supports, Maduro and the party of Hugo Chavez won reelection. The elections were clean, but the opposition lost by about 276,00 votes per a Democracy Now program I heard in my car. The opposition is taking their typical tactic of refusing to accept the will of the majority by launching street protests backed by the local oligarchs and, as Wikileaks or history will show undoubtedly the US.. The US government controlled under the influence of corporate oil lobbyists will sadly want to return Venezuela to the old split of oil profits that existed before Chavez. Needless to say there is much resentment among the conservatives in Venezuela and abroad that Venezuelan oil money is being "wasted" providing health care and basic education to the lower class Venezuelan people when they would prefer for it to be sitting in their accounts in the Caymans and invested in Asian or other foreign stocks or real estate. It will be interesting to see if the US backed folks who lost the election can by force overturn the election. You can be sure thereis a lot of cash being waived at various officers in the military to try to entice a violent coup by these alleged friends of democracy.
What exactly do you disagree with. For instance Maduro won? The US will keep working to remove him from office before the next election? Chavez and Maduro benefitted the lower and small middle class more than the previous governments?
Glynch's ardent support of Hugo Chavez should serve to destroy any credibility he has on this forum. It's laughable. You'd decry many on this forum as being ideagogues, but you, my friend are the biggest of them all.
Well, it depends on where you are coming from. Glynch is 100% right about the meddling of the U.S. government in Venezuelan affairs, and in the oligarchical leaders of our country and theirs wanting to horde money at the expense of the common person in Venezuela -- and we certainly do this all over the world and use the military and intelligence agencies as tools in this neo-colonialism. My question to Chavez supporters (and the supporters of any other State Socialism (even Democratic ones)), is, aren't the established and entrenched leaders of Chavismo a new Oligarchy, that is just as dangerous to the interests of the common person as the capitalist oligarchs? I think the accusation of corruption of Chavez's political machine are not completely unfounded, and are in fact typical of history. These people have become a new ruling class in competition with the established capitalist ruling class, and as all rulers do, they are privately profiting at the expense of the people using the public power they have been invested with.
Exactly, the .1% always wins. The people in the .1% might change, but pretty much no matter who is in power, the current .1% will win until the next revolution when they are replace with a new group of .1.
Mr. Maduro was supposed to ride Mr. Chávez’s immense popularity and the wave of mourning over his death last month to a resounding victory that would ratify the leader’s idiosyncratic revolution. Instead he squeaked by, with 51 percent of the vote, compared with 49 percent for the opposition leader,Henrique Capriles Radonski, according to an updated vote count released by electoral authorities. They reported that Mr. Maduro had gotten about 262,000 more votes out of more than 14.8 million cast. The result is politics turned on its head in Venezuela, with an election winner who appears weakened and a loser who seems strengthened. Now, the country seems headed toward a high stakes political showdown. The Electoral Council, which has a majority of government loyalists, certified the voting results on Monday even though Mr. Capriles, claiming he is the winner, had asked for a recount. as did the Organization for American States, through its secretary general, José Mighel Insulza. In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, said a recount was “an important, prudent and necessary step to ensure that all Venezuelans have confidence in these results.” Denied the recount, Mr. Capriles called on his supporters to protest. As the Electoral Council head, Tibisay Lucena, read the official certification, hundreds of demonstrators, most of them young people, faced off with National Guard troops in Altamira, a middle-class section of Caracas that is an opposition bastion. They burned rubbish and blocked a highway, as National Guard soldiers fired tear gas and anti-riot projectiles. Some in the growing crowd demanded a recount. Others chanted, “Fraud! Fraud!” And as Mr. Maduro gave a speech broadcast nationally on television and radio, opponents in cities around the country banged pots and pans and honked car horns in a traditional sign of protest. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/w...omy-for-nicolas-maduro-of-venezuela.html?_r=0 Looks like more than just Capriles is asking for a recount. What's Maduro afraid of? The Middle Class? That he really didn't win due to voter fraud? Guess we'll never know since the Electoral Council, packed with Chavez loyalists, refuse to consider anything other than a Maduro victory.
Copied from other thread: http://www.voanews.com/content/venezuela-under-pressure-for-election-recount/1642261.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/04/20134146504879826.html This appears to be barely reported in Western media from my limited google searching. Not sure how much it's been covered on TV news. The few single-paragraph reports from a few outlets which have explicitly written an article about the White House requesting a recount in Venezuela don't seem to reflect the abhorrent behavior of the White House in this respect, particularly considering the hypersensitivity of Americans to even OBSERVING an election process of their own. Nevermind the irony of the White House giving advice on how Venezuela should conduct an election. Various examples from various places at various times: From past elections:
Haven't seen this here yet - It concerns me to see the winner so quick to ask for the arrest of the loser on what seems to be trumped up charges. Arrest Warrants Issued For Leaders of Venezuelan Opposition Party http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...r-leaders-of-venezuelan-opposition-party.html Luisa Estella Morales, the Supreme Tribunal chief in Venezuela, has issued arrest warrants against Henrique Cabriles, the loser of Sunday's presidential election, and members of Voluntad Popular for instigation to commit crimes. In addition to Cabriles, Chief Morales has also issued arrest warrants for members of Cabriles' team, as well as Leopoldo López, the leader of Voluntad Popular. All of this comes after the election results sparked massive protests accross the country with claims that the election was fixed. Since then, Chief Morales has stated that there will be a manual recount of the election results. The official results of Monday's election was 50.8% to 49%, in favor of Hugo Chavez protégé, Nicolas Maduro. José Ignacio Hernández's piece in the Venezuelan paper, Prodavinci, explains why a recount should and must take place (H/T Juan Cristobal Nagel). In these Presidential Elections, there were news of violent inappropriate acts which fall under the scope of what is required to contest the election. In the first case, the authorities could void the results from the entire election. In the second case, the authorities could void the votes from the affected centers, and a new election would have to be called for those centers alone as long as this affects the total outcome of the election. The other possibility is to contest the vote tallies (total votes and number of people who voted) when there are discrepancies. That way, if the electoral result as shown in one of the documents is different from that shown in the ballots, the document would be declared void and a manual recount will have to take place (Article 221, Organic Law of Electoral Procedures). Here, you wouldn’t have to repeat the election.
Opposing US policy (whatever that means) does not make the opposition a group of saints. Give us a break.
