Last paragraph: "Since Chavez won a referendum last year, his opponents have struggled to overcome divisions and distrust of the electoral council, which they charge manipulated voting machines to help Chavez defeat a 2004 recall vote. Observers* said they found no vote-tampering in that referendum."
*("Observers" is quite an understatement. Hundreds of international observers, including the Carter Center, closely monitored this election and verified its results--amid endless whining by the opposition, on the basis of NOTHING (no facts), with their views trumpeted by US corporate news monopolies, much as they trumpet the views of the rightwing here. The Venezuelan oil elite simply does not want the majority of Venezuelans--the poor--to vote, and are very reminiscent of our own rightwing Bushite Republicans, who have the power in the US to purge black voters from the voting rolls in Ohio, Florida and other states, and who shorted poor, Democratic, minority and student voters on voting machines and precincts in Ohio in 2004, in open violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If the Bushite-backed minority in Venezuela could do this in Venezuela, they would. Venezuela has wisely opened its election process to international and OAS (Latin American states) monitoring.)
More from Reuters...
Venezuelan congressional election faces boycott
By Patrick Markey 2 hours, 47 minutes ago
"CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelans went to the polls on Sunday in a congressional election, with lawmakers allied to left-wing President Hugo Chavez expected to sweep most seats after major opposition parties urged a boycott.
"Chavez, a former army officer allied with Cuba, has accused Washington of orchestrating the strategy to try to destabilize his government. But he insists the boycott includes only a minority of candidates and will not invalidate the vote.
"Main opposition groups said they would abstain from voting after accusing electoral authorities of favoring the populist leader and manipulating electronic voting machines, despite agreeing previously to participate in the election.
"Chavez's supporters fired off rockets and blasted military trumpet salutes from speakers to mark the start of the vote. Early Sunday morning turnout in opposition strongholds in eastern Caracas was slim while in the western and poorer sectors lines formed outside voting stations.
"Pro-Chavez lawmakers will likely sweep to a huge majority in the chamber. Polls show they were set to win a strong lead even before the boycott was announced. National Assembly deputies backing Chavez currently hold 86 seats against 79 in the opposition camp. Two new seats are up for grabs this year.
"'The opposition are just a bunch of thieves who tried to sabotage the election,' said pensioner Pedro Zamora who was voting in eastern Chacao district. 'We can see the government are going to get most of the votes.'" (MORE)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051204/ts_nm/venezuela_elections_dc_8------------------
You can see Reuters' struggle to be objective, in this article. They start off by characterizing Chavez as "a former army officer allied with Cuba"--the sort of description we've come to expect from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and AP et al. Chavez has many OTHER allies besides Cuba, and is a "former army officer," yes, but one who has been REPEATEDLY ELECTED president of Venezuela by comfortable majorities, in internationally monitored elections--facts that are left out in this very SLANTED thumbnail characterization.
But, as the article proceeds, the facts and the truth of the situation become clearer, and what we have, by the end, is a mishmash of US/EU corporate and Venezuelan oil elite propaganda, mixed with some good efforts at objectivity.
Reuters'--whose reporters have been targeted and killed in Iraq--is fascinating in this respect. They are a London-based, independent news service that was founded in 1851 order to provide news and market information between the English and European financial communities, but which has since expanded into a general worldwide news service. Here's their self-description.
"Reuters is a global information company providing indispensable information tailored for professionals in the financial services, media and corporate markets. Our information is trusted and drives decision making across the globe. We have a reputation for speed, accuracy and freedom from bias.
"Although we are best known as the world's largest international multimedia news agency, more than 90% of our revenue derives from our financial services business."
http://about.reuters.com/aboutus/overview/http://about.reuters.com/aboutus/history/Notice how they stress "accuracy" and "freedom from bias." With English, European and worldwide subscribers and readers, they CANNOT slant the news the way our corporate monopolies do--but they are nevertheless a capitalist enterprise. This schizophrenia results in much better news reporting than we have here, where our major newspapers and services (with the exception of Knight-Ridder) have become propagandists for the Bush junta, because the junta is so lucrative for the US arms manufacturers and military contractors on which our economy is based.
Now that the junta has robbed our treasury blind with its Iraq war, and the war isn't going so well, and now that the corporations and the super-rich have gotten most of what they wanted in anti-poor bankruptcy bills, tax cuts, and nuked regulatory agencies, we're seeing reporting of some dissent on the war within the US corporate ranks (and their bought and paid for politicians). They want a more "efficient" war--read, continued massive US military presence--in the Middle East. And they want a military Draft (which Bush can't do). Expect a War Democrat to be "elected" by the corporate-controlled electronic voting machines in '08; and only very modest gains--certainly not a majority--by any real antiwar and leftist Congressional candidates in '06. And do not expect objective reporting about any of this from the US corporate news monopolies. It is not in their financial interest to be "accurate" and "free from bias."
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