Old Allies Abandon Chávez as Constitution Vote Nears

Source: Washington Post

CUMANA, Venezuela -- Few associates had been as loyal to President Hugo Chávez as the governor of the coastal state of Sucre, Ramón Martínez. And few are now more determined to defeat Chávez as he campaigns for constitutional changes that, if approved by voters on Sunday, could extend his presidency for life.

Chávez, 53 and in his ninth tumultuous year in office, was until recently predicted to win a referendum that would permit him to run for 8office indefinitely, appoint governors to federal districts he would create, and control the purse strings of one of the world's major oil-producing countries.

But Martínez and a handful of others who once were prominent pillars in the Chávez machine, have defected, saying approval of 69 constitutional changes would effectively turn Venezuela into a dictatorship run at the whim of one man. They have been derided by Chávez as traitors, but their unimpeachable leftist credentials have given momentum to a movement that pollsters say may deliver Chávez his first electoral defeat.

"The proposal would signify a coup d'etat," said Martínez, 58, whose dapper appearance belies his history as a guerrilla and Communist Party member. "Here the power is going to be concentrated in one person. That's very grave."

Pollsters in Caracas say Venezuelans increasingly agree -- even those who continue to support the president but say the proposed overhaul of an eight-year-old constitution goes too far.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/29/AR2007112900005.html?hpid=moreheadlines

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I think Chavez' response when he was kicked out of mediation in Columbia will be considered the event that will end his regime.

I'm not saying he's ATTAINED Castro status...I'm just saying that I saw the same developments occur in the Cuban Revolution. Defections from the Movimiento del 26 de Julio...mass trials for "traitors", including some "barbudos" (bearded ones).

So far, Chavez has attained everything through referendums and constitutional means....but it never looks good when you're own supporters turn against you on the charge of becoming a dictator.

At this point, I don't support Chavez per say. I support the people of Venezuela and whatever they want...and if that is Chavez, then so be it.

I'm having trouble saying I support him given the preponderance of evidence piling up against him that he's concentrating power in a way that's not healthy for checks and balances and democracy.

May the people of Venezuela and Chavez himself prove me wrong. But I can't lie...I'm concerned....:scared:

It was not constitutional to replace the Supreme Court of Venezuela with Chavezistas.

where they elected to their posts? Were they appointed? Does he have the power in the previous constitutions to appoint Judges?

We've done the same here in the U.S., with both parties appointing judges they like. That's part of the checks and balances between an Executive and Judicial Branch.

So far, he hasn't broken the law, or the media would have pounced on him about it.

However...even following the letter of the law, I, like many of his former supporters, am wary of the possible outcome of centralizing so much power in a President...whether it's him or the one that comes after.

The people will vote the Majority will get what they want or deserve..

with your “reporter,” Juan Forero over and over. He keeps showing up using the same set of slimy writing habits. People have been “on” to him for ages. Example:

Also last April, New York Times reporter Juan Forero reported that President Chávez had “resigned” when, in fact, Chávez had been kidnapped at gunpoint. Forero did not source his knowingly false claim. Forero, on Apr. 13, wrote a puff piece on dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona — installed by a military coup — as Carmona disbanded Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution and sent his shock troops house to house in a round-up of political leaders in which sixty supporters of Chávez were assassinated. Later that day, after the Venezuelan masses took back their country block by block, Carmona fled the national palace and Chávez, the elected president, was restored to office.

Forero — who allowed US Embassy officials to monitor his interviews with mercenary pilots in Colombia, without disclosing that fact in his article — was caught again last month in his unethical pro-coup activities in Venezuela. Narco News Associate Publisher Dan Feder revealed that Forero and LA Times reporter T. Christian Miller had written essentially the same story, interviewing the same two shopkeepers in a wealthy suburb of Caracas, and the same academic “expert” in a story meant to convince readers that a “general strike” was occurring in Venezuela. The LA Times Readers Representative later revealed that Forero and Miller interviewed the shopkeepers together. Neither disclosed that fact.

In many ways, it has been the credibility problem posed by Forero that led to Toro’s hiring last November by the Times, and the importation of Times Mexico Bureau Chief Ginger Thompson to Venezuela last month.
(snip)

http://www.agrnews.org/issues/210/mediawatch.html

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~snip~
Chile's center-left president Michelle Bachelet -- who Rice name-drops every chance she gets to prove she can have socialist friends -- just last week warned Washington not to "demonize" Chávez. Yet despite this endorsement from Latin America's most lauded reformer, the Times on Saturday ran a 1300-word, front-page hatchet job by Juan Forero titled "Seeking United Latin America, Venezuela's Chávez Is a Divider; Some Neighbors Resent His Style as Meddlesome."
The article quotes seven sources, all openly anti-Chávez save for Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula, like Bachelet, has repeatedly defended his Venezuelan counterpart against Washington. But Forero ignores this support, instead choosing to cherry-pick through Lula's public statements to find, and take out of context, a rare criticism.
(snip/…)

http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/2903/9/

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The polling agency Juan Forero has chosen to quote as his authority has established itself long ago as a rabid anti-Chavez source, with Jose Antonio Gil Yepes who told the L.A. Times Chavez must be killed. Yessir. Here’s a reference:

In early February 2003, the anti-Chavez Venezuelan polling firms Datanalisis and Consultores 21 held a joint press conference in Caracas claiming to be "neutral parties"in the country's deeply polarized political conflict. Just over two weeks before the press conference, I reported that Datanalisis' President Jose Antonio Gil Yepes had told the Los Angeles Times in July 2002 that Chavez "has to be killed."I pointed out that a simple glance at Datanalisis' website revealed "the kind of blatant political partisanship that one normally does not associate with respectable polling operations"(as this report goes to print, Datanalisis' website has been running John Kerry's Chavez-bashing misstatement at the top of their "news"column for over a month).
Since I first reported on Datanalisis' blatant partisanship and biased polling, Gil Yepes has mysteriously disappeared as a public spokesperson for his company (although he occasionally pops up brandishing a letter from L.A. Times correspondent T. Christian Miller, who now supposedly claims that the pollster did not have criminal intent when he told Miller that Chavez "has to be killed").
With Gil Yepes' reputation in question, the job of restoring Datanalisis' mythic neutrality was left to company director Luis Vicente Leon. Never mind that Leon had also been making blatantly anti-Chavez statements to the press long before Gil Yepes blurted out his homicidal fantasies to the L.A. Times. In Venezuela, where Chavez-bashing journalists abound, "neutrality"means telling the business-controlled propaganda apparatus what it wants to hear.
(snip/…)

http://www.counterpunch.com/delacour08072004.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~snip~
Gil Yepes and Keller are not merely "anti-Chavez"; they are openly and
virulently anti-Chavez. In a July 8 article in the Los Angeles Times, Miller
describes Gil Yepes as a man of "Venezuela's elite" who "moves in circles of
money, power and influence" and "was educated in top U.S. schools."

It's certainly shocking that the LA Times quoted Gil Yepes saying that
Chavez "has to be killed."

But it is even more shocking that the LA Times and other commercial media
continued to use Gil Yepes' polling "results" after his homicidal fantasies
leaped out of the closet through the pages of last July's LA Times.

According to T. Christian Miller of the LA Times, Gil Yepes saw an
assassination as the only way out of the "political crisis surrounding
President Hugo Chavez." Gil Yepes has since claimed that his quote was taken
out of context, and that he was only making reference to an oft-expressed
sentiment among Chavez's opposition.
(snip/…)

http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0301/msg00110.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You seem to keep forgetting that at DU, there are MANY posters who read as much as time allows on the subjects some people are attempting to misrepresent completely.

but what concerns me, as an outsider, is the fact that many of his leftist supporters are concerned about the outcome of this referendum. And I join them. I support progressive politics...and I support checks and balances as a shield against abuse in the present and future administrations of different countries.

Frankly speaking, there's no policy that he couldn't legitimately propose to his National Assembly and deal with through established checks and balances. Some of the reforms give him "rule by decree" powers, and I don't like it here in the U.S. (executive orders), and i don't like it there.

While it may be expedient to do it that way, I prefer parliamentary systems like in Scandinavia, where policies are HEAVILY negotiated in parliamentary committees and rational policies are the outcome. No dictators...no dictator-wannabees...and most policies get so investigated that the likelihood of a stupid one is smaller.

Some of the reforms I'm in favor of (community councils, more social programs), but centralizing power wouldn't get my vote.

Would I be traitor to Chavez?

No, those are valid concerns. It helps to consider the political context he is working it, which tends to favor "big man" politics, and that there are outside forces that want to destroy him and his reforms.

I am not worried about his dictatorial tendencies much at this point because I have not seen him building the sort of pervasive police state apparatus one would need to support oppression, and because of the regular, free, and closely observed elections. If he has dictatorial tendencies, and who does not, he seems most anxious to disguise them with democratic consent.

but always be mindful. Castro began the same way...as a democratic revolutionary who later centralized power in one party and reformed the Constitution of his country to reflect it. In the process, he jailed and tried many of his own supporters.

Chavez began as a democratic populist...later became a Socialist...now he's asking to change the Constitution, and in the process is calling former supporters traitors.

All that is missing are the trials.

Again, I supported and continue to support Chavez. I'm just worried. I read history...i learn from it. I don't mind going down this path with Chavez...I just don't want to see the end that I fear becoming true.

And "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". I'm not much on trusting any politician.

Wow what a diktator!

in modern history in the American press. And, I don't think they've peaked yet.

see the link today on operation pliers, by our CIA.

I think a revelution is a hard thing to accomplish. Taking oil power away from the former supportive Sucre official is bound to make him mad.

All this negative press is trumped up.

Chavez has to clean house if his social reforms are going to last.

Our system of Democracy has FAILED for the last 60 years.
There is no balance here, just greed and manipulation.
How much house cleaning would it take to really change the US to social sanity?

Viva la revelucion!!!!

targeting a democratic socialist who is in the way of those who want Venezuela's natural resources. A man against "privatization" of the commons. Will they come out and say it? Nope..... So here we see the spin again, why? Because if they ever really and honestly told the public why they disliked Chavez so much, the public would see their greed and never go along with their attempts to smear.