Hail Chávez’s Electoral Victory
Hugo Chávez and the ‘Great
Patriotic Pole’ (GPP), the alliance of left parties led by the United Socialist
Party of Venezuela (PSUV) – which includes the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) who supported and worked for the Chávez campaign – have won a comfortable victory in the
Venezuelan Presidential Elections. The size of the victory, with Chávez a
clear 10 percentage points ahead of his nearest opponent, is significant in a
country that doesn’t make voting mandatory and yet secured a turnout of over
80% of those eligible to vote. This shows the importance that ordinary
Venezuelans placed on these elections, rightly perceiving that their future
could be very different depending on which way the vote went.
The main opposition candidate, Henrique Capriles,
acknowledged defeat quickly, probably against the advice of US ‘advisors’, but
it shouldn’t be taken from this that he and the ‘Coalition for Democratic
Unity’ (made up of a variety of rightist parties) ‘played fair’ or honourably
during these elections. Henrique Capriles, who refers to himself politically
as “left of centre” but is a member of the right wing Justice First
Party, although getting 44% of the vote, had most of his support clustered in
the three states he managed to win. Meanwhile Chávez claimed victory
in 21 out of the 24 states, including some that were supposed to be
opposition strongholds. Despite these figures, the imperialist press is still
referring to this election as ‘close’ and a ‘tight contest with a narrow win
for the incumbent’ and this is being done for two reasons:
1. To try and make the
result look tenuous – because the one thing Chávez (and those who stand with
him) do is to set a terrible (for imperialism) example to the rest of South America, not to mention countries further afield.
2. To support the
claims of Capriles that there was a huge violation of normal electoral
procedure in regard to press coverage and intimidation of voters (among other
things). The line being ‘suggested’ by the ‘impartial’ imperialist media is
that if the elections had been ‘fair’ their man (literally) would have won
because it was so close!
Regarding point 1, the facts speak for themselves
as the table [A] below shows – all figures taken from the Venezuelan ‘National
Electoral Council’ (CNE). The margins of this result, especially with an 80%+
turnout, if achieved in elections in Britain or the USA, would be called a
landslide and a massive mandate for the winning candidate.
As far as point 2 goes, the claims that President
Chávez had huge press and TV coverage during these elections that was denied to
his main opponent, Capriles, is almost funny, and anyone with any sense of
irony will be amused if not amazed by the claims. Capriles is ‘Washington’s man’ and as such will have had no shortage of money pumped into his campaign
both from the wealthy in Venezuela and direct from Washington. He will have
been supplied with up to date technology and advisors on political and media
manipulation. In most countries around the world that are targeted for ‘regime
change’ through elections, this is usually enough to get the ‘Washington’s
puppet’ into the top job, but Chávez has something most progressive and
anti-imperialist governments don’t have: oil! And lots of it! This his
government has diverted away from the grasping hands of imperialism and its
puppets so that it can pay for work, food and housing programmes for the
poorest in Venezuela. Also, Venezuela is not isolated from the rest of the
world, and the imperialist press is freely available there and their radio and
TV channels can be accessed as they broadcast from nearby countries. Also
along with the ‘outside’ advertising of ‘their man’, there are major private TV
and radio channels operating within Venezuela giving total support to
Capriles. That Chávez appeared on the State TV regularly is hardly surprising
either, as he is involved with many news items etc. on many subjects not just
the elections. In fact one dirty trick of the Capriles camp proves that there
were internal Venezuelan TV channels supporting him. In early
July 2012 Capriles published a document allegedly showing that the government
had ordered all military personnel not to view private television networks. The
publication coincided with a political TV advertisement that Capriles was
running at the time aimed at the military. The document was proved by
state-run news agency Agencia Venezolana de Noticias to be a crude
forgery, showing the document alongside the original and highlighting the changes.
Based on non-classified military order 4926 from September 2011, the document
had been re-dated to 31 July but was published several weeks before that date,
still bearing the original signature of the minister of defence in September
2011, Carlos José Mata Figueroa (who had been replaced in January 2012). The
document bore the original document number, and had the “not classified”
stamps replaced with “confidential”, but retained the original “NOCLAS”
(“not classified”) classification mark. The source of
the document was not identified but all the imperialist countries have large
military/espionage departments dealing with dirty tricks of this type and US
political ‘advisors’ to Capriles would certainly be aware of how such things
would work.
Another ‘trick’ that certainly had
the fingerprints of the CIA all over it had been carried out earlier in March
2012 when at a Capriles rally, a group of armed men began firing guns “in an
apparent effort to break up the rally”. According to news reports,
five people were injured, including the son of an opposition member of
the National Assembly of Venezuela. Capriles was subsequently taken safely
from the scene. Journalists for TV channel Globovisión had been
covering the rally; according to reporter Sasha Ackerman, both she and her
cameraman were threatened by the armed men, who confiscated their equipment and
footage of the shootings. A Globovisión statement the next day tried to claim
that the armed men were PSUV supporters, saying “These groups wore
red shirts identifying them with a political tendency. More importantly, it was
an armed and organized group that fired weapons against people”. Venezuela’s justice minister, Tarek El Aissami, said that the attacks were perpetrated
by opposition supporters “to generate this show”, while some
witnesses said that Capriles’ bodyguards “were the ones to start shooting”.
The state news service Agencia Venezolana de Noticias reported that a
local resident said that a group of individuals arrived on motorbikes, changed from
yellow shirts to red in front of her house, and then began shooting.
Opposition supporters had been
violently attacking journalists at opposition campaign events, including
reporters for local public station Catatumbo Television at an event in
Zulia, and reporters for VTV at events in Aragua, Tachira and
Barinas.
It is well know that President Hugo
Chávez has had cancer and during the election received treatment for cancer in Cuba including radiation, chemotherapy, and two operations. Venezuelan journalists
sympathetic to the opposition were busy fueling rumours
about Chávez’s cancer claiming that they had access to medical sources. This
was designed to sap the morale of Chávez supporters and make them worry about
the wisdom of voting for someone who may not even survive the elections. This
sordid speculation was jumped on immediately and taken up with glee by the
imperialist media who went into a virtual frenzy about whether Chávez would
live through the elections, and there being no clear successor in the PSUV etc,
etc.
One thing that neither the Venezuelan
opposition nor their puppet-masters in Washington could use for the purpose of
dirty tricks and confusion was the ballot itself.
Voters first register themselves by inputting their
name, national identity number and thumbprint into a console. They then cast an
electronic vote for their preferred party candidate on a touch-screen. Their
vote enters the central counting system and is also printed so that they can
confirm that it has been recorded properly before putting this hard copy in a
ballot box (more than half the contents of which will later be cross-checked
with the electronic data to ensure the system has not been hacked).
Voters must then sign a form to confirm they have
cast a vote. Before they leave, the little finger on their left hand is marked
with indelible purple ink so they cannot return to vote a second time.
“This system is 100% fraud proof and has been
recognised as such by outside political institutions,” said Luis Guillermo
Piedra, of the National Electoral Council, and even former US president Jimmy Carter has described the system as superior to that of the US- although that in itself is no great achievement! It is this secure system of voting
that has really saved Venezuela from the post election result announcement
violence that some other target countries have faced from US puppet oppositions
who immediately challenge the result and bring their hired mobs onto the
streets to take by force what they couldn’t win by the ballot. Indeed, so used
is everyone to that particular scenario that one rabidly right-wing website,
The Daily Caller, reported at 8.10 pm, 7 October 2012: “Tanks
in the streets as Venezuelan electoral council declares Hugo Chávez victory.”
And later at 10.50pm the same day, he declared in terms so laced with hatred
that we can only imagine the writer slavering at the thought of a possible
violent overthrow of the elected Venezuelan President: “According
to the Associated Press, Venezuela’s electoral council has declared that
Hugo Chávez beat Henriques Capriles in Sunday’s presidential election with
about 54 percent of the vote, despite exit polls showing otherwise.
“Venezuela Twitter users have claimed Chávez’s
victory was wrought with election fraud, and that the socialist incumbent
president sent tanks into the streets of his country as those exit poll reports
showed him losing. A picture of the tanks surfaced on Twitter Sunday
evening.
“The British Guardian newspaper reported that
Chávez also sent troops armed with AK-47s into Venezuela’s streets to fight
against any protests in case unrest came as a result of the news.”
Presumably to the chagrin of the half-wit who wrote
those words (perhaps the Guardian writer shared those feelings with
him/her?) – but to the relief of most Venezuelans – there was no post election
violence. We have no copy of the above ‘quoted’ exit polls but the pollsters
were back and forth all the way through the election and rarely were they all
in tandem as the list in table [B] below shows.
As for tanks and
troops with AK47s on the streets of the capital, pictures relayed through
Twitter or any other of the social media can be from anytime sent from anywhere
and are no proof of anything! The Guardian newspaper is a paid up,
fully-fledged part of the imperialist lie machine and not the principled teller
of the truth that many woolly-minded liberals think it is. If you can
understand why the Sun writes what it does, why can’t you see that the Guardian
does exactly the same job but with a different target audience?
But what if tanks and troops were on the
streets in case of organised violence from the opposition when they lost
through the ballot box? Has there not been justification enough around the
world with the many US backed colour ‘revolutions’?
Wasn’t 2002 justification for such caution
remembering when the US used its puppets to remove Chávez in a coup?
That illegal government that took his
place for a matter of 47 hours was recognised immediately by the US, and they have not forgiven the Venezuelan masses for rising up ten years ago and putting their
elected President back in office. We shall give the last words on that subject
to comrade Chávez: “Let the dogs of the empire bark, that’s their job; ours
is to battle to achieve the true liberation of our people.”
Looking now at this latest electoral
struggle and victory of Chávez, the parties and organisations that make up the
Great Patriotic Pole and the poorest Venezuelan people who support them, we
cannot but be impressed. The imperialists are accusing Chávez of buying votes
with the many programmes for the poor, but they themselves have never been
against buying votes. What really upsets them is that if these programmes are
bribes, then he is using them all the time whether there is an election or not,
and he is using the oil to finance these constant ‘bribes’ to raise the
standards of the poor, when any imperialist can see that oil revenues should be
invested in the realisation of even greater profits for the wealthiest few –
not wasted on the many poor. However, as impressed as we are with the conduct
of President Chávez, there are some who call themselves ‘progressive’ and sit
in judgement (not in judgement of the imperialists of course) twittering and
writing material for liberal trendies to discuss and eventually to use as
excuses for not supporting anti-imperialist struggles. Such an organisation is
‘Human Rights Watch’. This group, at a time when the US and its puppets were drooling at the prospect of ending Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, in
July this year published a detailed study entitled “Concentration and Abuse
of Power in Chávez’s Venezuela,” which claimed to expose the Chávez “regime’s
many arbitrary attacks on the judiciary, the media, and human rights defenders.”
Saying of the Venezuelan government’s policies: “At best, much energy, hope,
and money are devoted to policies that bring short-term relief to targeted
groups at the long-term expense of those groups themselves and all others.”
These pro-imperialist so-called human-rights watchers similarly attacked
Gaddafi’s Libya and now attack Syria just of each of these went under the
imperialist cosh. So disgusting is ‘Human Rights Watch’ that only the
bourgeoisie, Social-Democratic traitors, revisionists, Trotskyists and assorted
cretins would give them any credence at all.
Sincere messages of congratulations have poured
into President Chávez from all over the world and comrade Chávez has taken the
opportunity, following his re-election, of once again condemning imperialism,
especially of the US variety, and of speaking of the barbaric torture and
murder of a close friend and comrade, Colonel Gaddafi, at the hands of US and
EU mercenaries and puppets. He once more stated total support for Syria and President Assad as they face terrorist war from those same sources. Returning to
the election he had just won, he said: “We didn’t just defeat Capriles.
We also defeated an international coalition. This wasn’t just a domestic battle.”
He said voters had been inundated with 500,000
automated messages from the US and Europe urging them to back Capriles.
“How much did this cost? Who has the
capacity to do such a thing?” he asked. “The great transnational phone
companies were supporting Capriles. It was electoral harassment.”
As the State Elections loom, Capriles and other
leaders of the Democratic Unity Coalition are now preparing to struggle on
behalf of their US masters in the state governor elections in December. They
and their US backers were hugely disappointed at winning a majority vote in
only three of Venezuela’s 24 states on 7 October, and will now try to win more
governorships, hoping to chip away at Chávez’s popular influence. We wish the
Venezuelan people and their elected President, Hugo Chávez, every success in
destroying the dreams of the reactionaries yet again.
TABLE A
Candidate
Party
Votes
%
Hugo Chávez
Great
Patriotic Pole
8,136,964
55.25
Henrique
Capriles
Democratic
Unity Roundtable
6,499,575
44.13
Reina
Sequera
Workers’
Power
69,533
00.47
Luis Reyes
Authentic
Renewal Organisation
8,169
00.05
María
Bolívar
United
Democratic Party for Peace
7,339
00.04
Orlando Chirinos
Party for
Socialism and Liberty
4,105
00.02
Valid
votes
14,725,685
98.11
Invalid/blank
votes
284,899
1.89
Total
15,010,584
100.00
Registered
voters/turnout
18,606,798
80.67
Voting intention (%)
Pollster
Publication
date
Chávez
Capriles
Radonski
Hinterlaces
Jan 2012
50
34
IVAD
Feb 2012
57
30
Hinterlaces
Mar 2012
52
34
IVAD
Mar 2012
56.5
26.6
Consultores 21
Mar 2012
46
45
Datanálisis
Mar 2012
44.7
31.4
Varianzas
April 2012
49.3
45.1
GIS XXI
May 2012
57
21
Varianzas
May 2012
50.5
45.7
GIS XXI
June 2012
57.0
23.0
Consultores 21
June 2012
47.9
44.5
Hinterlaces
June 2012
51
34
Consultores 21
July 2012
45.9
45.8
IVAD
July 2012
54.8
32.9
Varianzas
July 2012
50.3
46.0
Datanálisis
July 2012
46.1
30.8
Hinterlaces
July 2012
47
30
GIS XXI
Aug 2012
56
30
Varianzas
Aug 2012
49.3
47.5
Hinterlaces
16 Aug 2012
48
30
Datanálisis
20 Aug 2012
46.8
34.2
Consultores 21
24 Aug 2012
45.9
47.7
IVAD
2 Sept 2012
50.8
32.4
Hinterlaces
6 Sept 2012
50
32
Consultores 21
19 Sept 2012
46.2
48.1
Datanálisis
24 Sept 2012
47.3
37.2
Hinterlaces
25 Sept 2012
50
34