{"id":21989,"date":"2012-10-08T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=21989"},"modified":"2012-10-05T17:22:09","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T16:22:09","slug":"why-the-us-demonises-venezuelas-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/10\/why-the-us-demonises-venezuelas-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the US Demonises Venezuela’s Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venezuela is about to hold impeccably free and fair elections [7 Oct 2012]. Yet the US treats it as a dictatorship.<\/em><\/p>\n

On 30 May [2012], Dan Rather, one of America’s best-known journalists, announced<\/a> that Venezuelan president Hugo Ch\u00e1vez would die\u00a0“in a couple of months at most”. Four\u00a0months later Ch\u00e1vez is not only alive and campaigning<\/a> but widely expected to win re-election on Sunday [7 Oct 2012].<\/p>\n

Such is the state of misrepresentation of Venezuela \u2013 it is probably the most lied-about country in the world \u2013 that a journalist can say almost anything about Ch\u00e1vez or his government and it is unlikely to be challenged, so long as it is negative. Even worse, Rather referred to Ch\u00e1vez as “the dictator” \u2013 a term that few, if any, political scientists familiar with the country would countenance.<\/p>\n

Here is what Jimmy Carter said<\/a> about\u00a0Venezuela’s “dictatorship” a few weeks ago: “As a matter of fact, of the 92\u00a0elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”<\/p>\n

Carter won a Nobel prize for his work through the election-monitoring Carter Center<\/a>, which has observed and certified past Venezuelan elections. But because Washington has sought for more than a decade to delegitimise Venezuela’s government, his viewpoint is only rarely reported. His latest comments went unreported in almost all of the US media.<\/p>\n

In Venezuela, voters touch a computer screen to cast their vote and then receive a paper receipt, which they verify and deposit in a ballot box. Most of the paper ballots are compared with the electronic tally. This system makes vote-rigging nearly impossible: to steal the vote would require hacking the computers and then stuffing the ballot boxes to match the rigged vote.<\/p>\n

Unlike in the US, where in a close vote we really have no idea who won (see Bush v Gore<\/a>), Venezuelans can be sure that their vote counts. And also unlike the US, where as many as 90 million eligible voters will not vote in November<\/a>, the government in Venezuela has done everything to increase voter registration<\/a> (now at a record of about 97%) and participation.<\/p>\n

Yet the US foreign policy establishment (which includes most of the American and western media) seethes with contempt for Venezuela’s democratic process. In a report timed for the elections, the so-called Committee to Protect Journalists says that the government controls a “media empire”, neglecting to inform its readers that Venezuelan state TV has\u00a0only about<\/a> 5-8% of the country’s audience. Of course, Ch\u00e1vez can interrupt normal programming with his speeches (under a law that pre-dates his administration), and regularly does so. But the opposition still has most of the media, including radio and print media \u2013 not to mention most of the wealth and income of the country.<\/p>\n

The opposition will probably lose this election not because of the government’s advantages of incumbency \u2013 which are abused throughout the hemisphere, including<\/a> the United States, but because the living standards of the majority of Venezuelans have dramatically improved<\/a> under Ch\u00e1vez. Since 2004, when the government gained control over the oil industry and the economy had recovered from the devastating, extra-legal attempts to overthrow it (including the 2002 US-backed military coup and oil strike of 2002-2003), poverty has been cut in half<\/a> and extreme poverty by 70%. And this measures only cash income. Millions have access to healthcare for the first time, and college enrolment has doubled, with free tuition for many students. Inequality has also been considerably reduced. By contrast, the two decades that preceded Ch\u00e1vez amount to one of the worst economic failures in Latin America, with real income per person actually falling by 14% between 1980 and 1998.<\/p>\n

In Washington, democracy has a simple definition: does a government do what the state department wants it to do? And of course here, the idea of politicians actually delivering on what they promised to voters is also an unfamiliar concept. So it is not just Venezuela that regularly comes under fire from the Washington establishment: all of the left and newly independent governments of South America, including Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia are in the crosshairs (although Brazil is considered too big to get the same treatment<\/a> except from the right). The state department tries to keep its eyes on the prize: Venezuela is sitting on 500bn barrels of oil, and doesn’t respect Washington’s foreign policy. That is what makes it public enemy number one, and gets it the worst media coverage.<\/p>\n

But Venezuela is part of a “Latin American spring” that has produced the most democratic, progressive, and independent group of governments that the region has ever had. They work together, and Venezuela has solid support among its neighbours. This is the former president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, last month<\/a>: “A victory for Ch\u00e1vez is not just a victory for the people of Venezuela but also a victory for all the people of Latin America \u2026 this victory will strike another blow against imperialism.”<\/p>\n

South America’s support is Venezuela’s best guarantee against continuing attempts by Washington \u2013 which is still spending millions of dollars<\/a> within the country in addition to unknown covert funds \u2013 to undermine, delegitimise, and destabilise democracy in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research<\/a> in Washington, DC. He is also co-writer of Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 guardian.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Venezuela is about to hold impeccably free and fair elections [7 Oct 2012]. Yet the US treats it as a dictatorship. Here is what Jimmy Carter said about Venezuela’s “dictatorship” a few weeks ago: “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” Washington is still spending millions of dollars within the country in addition to unknown covert funds \u2013 to undermine, delegitimise, and destabilise democracy in Venezuela.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}