Did Chavez cheat? Do bears.......?
Chávez Is Declared the Winner in Venezuela Referendum
By JUAN FORERO
CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 16 — Venezuelans have voted to keep Hugo Chávez as their president, electoral authorities said early this morning after 18 hours of voting that tested Venezuelan democracy and the patience of voters.
The national electoral council president, Francisco Carrasquero, announced at 4 a.m. that Mr. Chávez had won the backing of 58 percent of voters, with 42 percent supporting the opposition's drive to recall him.
But the opposition, which soon after the polls closed at midnight had giddily predicted victory, said that the government had cheated and that it had won by a wide margin. The Organization of American States and the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which monitored the election and conducted their own highly accurate voting samples, had not commented on the dispute as of 8:30 a.m.
"We categorically reject the results," Henry Ramos, spokesman for the Democratic Coordinator, the umbrella of 27 political parties that opposes the government, said in a televised announcement. "They have perpetrated a gigantic fraud against the will of the people."
Holding a microphone and standing in a balcony of the Miraflores presidential palace, Mr. Chávez spoke to a throng of supporters in a predawn address, telling them that the "the Venezuelan people have spoken."
"The Venezuelan people have spoken and the people's voice is the voice of God!" Mr. Chávez said. He was also conciliatory toward the opposition, which he has called "squalid ones" and a "rancid oligarchy" in the past.
"This is a victory for the opposition," the president said. "They defeated violence, coup-mongering and fascism. I hope they accept this as a victory and not as a defeat."
Bloomberg News reported that crude oil futures fell from record highs after the vote was announced. There had been concerns in the oil markets that a defeat would have disrupted supplies from this country, the world's fifth-largest exporter of oil and a key supplier to the United States.
Brent crude oil for September delivery, which expires today, fell as much as 58 cents, or 1.3 percent, on London's International Petroleum Exchange and was down 43 cents to $43.45 at 12:04 p.m. local time, Bloomberg said.
With about 60 percent of Venezuelans voting, the results appear to permit Mr. Chávez to finish out the two years left on his tumultuous term, which began after he won re-election in 2000.
The results were issued just four hours after polls closed in the election, the first in Latin America that would have permitted the recall of an elected leader. The votingwas sluggish, as huge numbers of Venezuelans swamped 8,394 polling sites.
The victory means that Venezuela will continue to be led by a pugnacious former paratrooper who has riled the United States with his sharp attacks on the Bush administration, his leftist policies and his friendship with President Fidel Castro of Cuba.
Mr. Chávez has declared itself at odds with nearly all facets of American policy in Latin America, such as its military aid to neighboring Colombia and its efforts to expand free trade agreements across the region. But Mr. Chávez has said that Venezuela would continue to provide the United States with the 1.5 million barrels of crude that it receives from this country daily, about 14 percent of the total amount of oil the United States imports.
The stakes in the election were huge.
The opposition promised that ousting Mr. Chávez would revive a battered economy that shrank by nearly 20 percent in two years and do away with a leader who had kept Venezuelans in a state of constant commotion since he was first elected in 1998 on a promise of transforming this country.
Mr. Chávez's government pledged that it would continue with its so-called Bolivarian revolution, named after the country's independence wars hero, Simón Bolivar, purging elites from institutions and funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into health and social programs.
Under a blazing sun for most of the day on Sunday, voters waited hours — in some cases as many as 10 hours — to cast their ballots. Newly obtained fingerprint scanners used to ensure against fraud slowed the process considerably, with several voters — including Mr. Chávez — repeatedly having to place their fingers on a digital pad before a computerized registry could be made.
Voters also had to provide a manual fingerprint, to ensure their names were on precinct-wide lists of registered voters and then cast their ballot on new touch-screen machines.
The sheer size of the electorate seemed to have taken electoral authorities by surprise, with political analysts predicting that the abstention rate would come out to about 20 percent.
"You have to be patient," sighed Alvaro Sucre, a volunteer poll watcher for an anti-Chávez group, as he talked with two foreign reporters while affluent voters waited to cast ballots in the afternoon on Sunday. "People have worked hard for this and they will be ready to wait until midnight if need be to exercise their rights."
In the end, that is exactly what happened after electoral authorities ruled that voting booths, which had been scheduled to close at 4 p.m., would remain open until midnight to accommodate all voters.
"This is the largest turnout I have ever seen," said former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center in Atlanta monitored the electoral process and has observed dozens of elections worldwide.
Buoyed by high oil prices that have left Venezuela awash in cash this year, Mr. Chávez's government worked for victory by embarking on a $1.7 billion social spending program that includes offering everything from literacy classes and expanded school hours to medical house calls and subsidized food.
The government also spent handsomely on a sophisticated campaign that scared Venezuelans into believing a "yes" vote for the recall would be a vote for American imperialism and the corrupt political parties that had ruled this country in the past.
"If yes wins, everything will go backwards, and that's why we need to say, no," María Arevalo, 43, a seamstress in a poor neighborhood, said moments before casting her ballot for the president. "We have worked so hard for all of this."
In the 23rd of January housing project, a sprawl of Soviet-style buildings where Mr. Chávez himself voted, Yanursy Palencia, 45, said she could not bare to see her president thrown out.
"I admire him, I respect him, and he has helped his people," she said after voting.
But the voting, if anything, showed clearly that millions of Venezuelans — not just the very rich, as Mr. Chávez contends — want him out.
So though the opposition seems to have fallen short, it has clearly demonstrated to the government that it has alienated much of the populace. Mr. Chávez's challenge will, in part, be to show that he can be conciliatory, instead of demeaning, as many Venezuelans charge. Some political analysts, even those who see positive policies in the Chávez government, believe it may be hard for the president.
"He cannot resist a fight," Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington-based policy group, said in a recent interview. "He's a taunting man, with almost a kind of childish irresponsibility."
Mr. Birns added that Mr. Chávez must learn that his mannerisms infuriate opponents, to the point where it is counterproductive for his own government. "Is he wise enough to learn?" Mr. Birns wondered.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
