Reply #30: Yes, the OAS monitored Colombia's 2006 election, in which voter turnout was a miserable 55%,

[Peace Patriot]

and the best the OAS could say about Colombia's election is this:

“While it is known that Colombia is undergoing a difficult situation in terms of public order, which includes assassinations, intimidation and kidnappings by groups operating outside the law**, this electoral process demonstrated improved conditions for campaigning, which in contrast to previous elections, allowed the different candidates to carry out some public activities.”

http://www.oas.org/OASpage/press_releases/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-146/06

--

*(FYI, Most political assassinations in Colombia are committed by the Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads, against political leftists, union leaders, human rights workers and others who oppose or merely monitor the government. According to Amnesty International, 92% of the murders of union leaders, for instance, were committed by the Colombian military (about half) and its deaths squads (the other half). Only two percent were committed by the FARC. The rest were street crimes. How can anyone who knows anything about democracy claim that there are fair elections or fair polls of any kind in Colombia, in these circumstances? But, hey, candidates were able to carry out "some" public activities! Wow! And I'll bet some of the leftist candidates even survived the election!)

______________________

"That U.S. media consistently praises official U.S. friends and condemns official enemies goes hand-in-glove with their refusal to acknowledge polling that directly contradicts their justifications for U.S. Latin American policy. Young lists Latinobarómetro results showing 'Hugo Chávez's Venezuela is the third 'freest' country among the 18 surveyed,' while 'the three large countries whose governments remain closely aligned with the United States--Colombia, Mexico and Peru--rank well below Venezuela in every category" polled, such as 'Democracy guarantees the freedom to participate in politics,' 'Democracy guarantees freedom of expression, always and in all parts (of the country' and 'The most effective way to change things is by voting to elect those who defend my position.'"

http://www.fair.org/blog/tag/latinobarometro/

---

One of the points of the above article is to illustrate how bad the corpo/fascist 'news' coverage is, in the U.S., on Latin American issues. The corpo/fascist press closely follows the US government line--and sometimes leads it in LYING ABOUT the Latin American left. They--like the anti-Chavez posters in this thread--do not present a balanced view of Venezuela's or other leftist governments, do not seek objective information, ignore, suppress or minimize and belittle positive information (such as the poll the article is citing), and intend a demonization of hugely popular leaders, like Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia and Correa in Ecuador (whose approval ratings run in the 60% to 70% region).

By all measures--including many other polls I've read ('do you think your country is going in the right direction?'-type of polls), and transparent elections--these leaders are doing fabulously well, in the opinion of their own people--but that is NEVER reflected in the reporting on these leaders here. So, either the anti-Chavez posters herein are adopting the viewpoint of the corpo/fascist press inadvertently, through no fault of their own--because they have been brainwashed--or they have some kind of agenda. They are relentlessly anti-Chavez. They add their venom to that of the corpo/fascist media. That is a VERY, VERY unbalanced view.

I don't go around touting pro-Chavez information. I hardly ever do OPs. And generally I only mention positive facts and analysis on Chavez when I see these goddamn corpo/fascist LIES and this relentlessly negative viewpoint repeated here at DU, even in a thread about reports of Chavez falling ill!

And many of these posters, including yourself, keep posting as OPs yet more negative headlines from the corpo/fascist press--filling up the Latin American Forum with the Associated Pukes' view of Chavez and Venezuela.

This is intolerable to me--so I reply with facts and analysis that reveals the other side--why Chavez remains so popular with his own people, and why other leaders in Latin America are his friends and allies.

The leftist democracy movement in Latin America exhilarates me--even when it makes mistakes, even when it fails. It is an amazing and historic development, vitally important to our own democracy as well as to the welfare of the people of Latin America. And I could mention all kinds of mistakes and failures that I see. But why should I do that, when the corpo/fascist media bombards people with this constant rain of overt and covert propaganda to infuse our minds with an IMPRESSION that this democracy movement is Stalinist (bad, totalitarian)? It is the opposite of totalitarian. REAL democracy has come to Latin America. That is why our corpo/fascist press, and our corporate-run government, hates it and reviles it so much. Real democracy is the last thing in the world they want for Latin Americans or for us.

And it is extremely ironical that they would call Chavez a "dictator," on the one hand, and then blame him for not solving street crime in Caracas, or problems in the health care system, yesterday. If he's a "dictator," why doesn't he put all these people in jail, take away Venezuelans' guns, send the army into the hospitals? Why doesn't he? BECAUSE HE'S NOT A DICTATOR. He's merely a president. Presidents have to work mostly by consensus and persuasion.

This recent harping on street crime, and the hospital crisis, it seems to me, is the result of the complete failure of all the prior bogus charges against Chavez. He is, as Lulu da Silva has said, a strong democrat (with a small d). He has broken no laws. He has scrupulously adhered to the Venezuelan Constitution. He has killed no one, jailed no one unfairly, tortured no one, repressed no one, invaded no one; he is not in power as the result of rigged elections, etc. These are the signs of a tyrant. He has exhibited NO signs of tyranny! He's a strong leader, yes--but that is not the same thing as a tyrant.

That was the mantra of the first group of anti-Chavez posters at DU--they were pushing the "Chavez the dictator" line. And, gee, I wonder why I would be skeptical when a whole new group of anti-Chavez posters show up promoting a different line--Chavez's failures.

And yet, somehow, the people of Venezuela just don't seem overly upset by these failures--and keep voting for him and his government, and keep giving him high marks in every kind of opinion poll.

And to those who would attribute this to "hand-outs" to the poor (which one of the posters here has said), I would ask: Who does the oil belong to? Is this not what a small elite group of rich people do, with a country's resources--hand the profits out to each other? Why not make the hand-out more widespread, and use it to promote education and other bootstrapping? Why should the rich's hand-outs to the rich be okay, but the poor peoples' president's hand-outs to a much larger group not be okay? And which hand-out is more liable to improve the country's future?

Anyway, the oil is not Chavez's to hand out. It belongs to the people of Venezuela--ownership that he has helped to enhance and enforce, on their behalf, as their elected president, with their approval. Benefits from the oil are not "hand-outs." They are the real owners of the oil yielding the profits. A 'peoples' Wall Street.' Wall Street with justice.

It is up to the true owners of Venezuela to see to problems like street crime and troubled hospitals, and to insist that government attend to them, and Venezuelans have the democratic tools to make this happen. I don't see the relevance of obsessing on problems like these here, except to further berate Chavez, and we've had quite enough of that.