The Assassinated Press
Dictatorship of the Rich Strikes a Blow!
USAID, Venezuelan Kleptocracy Prove There Is Still Only One Thing Money Can’t Buy, Deny Chavez Additional Authority.
Rallying Cry of the Anti-Chavez Forces--"Where Are the Fucking Soap Operas?"By WAN DAYOYO
Assassinated Presss Foreign Service
December 3, 2007CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 3 – The U.S. State Department delivered a stinging defeat to President Hugo Chávez on Sunday, blocking proposed constitutional changes that would have given him political supremacy and accelerated the transformation of this oil-rich country into an egalitarian paradise. “We couldn’t let Chavez and his people create another threat of a good example in this hemisphere, especially not with billions in fucking oil revenues to actually use to improve people’s lives,” commented Patrick ‘Howdie’ Duddy, U.S Ambassador to Venezuela. “Fuck. If we’re gonna shit on little impoverished countries like Cuba and Evo Morales’ Bolivia, how hard do you think we’re gonna lean on Chavez. Until we tip his ass over . I suspect.”
Hours after the final ballots were cast, the National Electoral Council announced at 1:15 a.m. local time Monday that voters, by a margin of 51 to 49 percent, had rejected 69 reforms to the 1999 constitution. The modifications would have permitted the president to stand for reelection indefinitely keeping the Venezuelan ‘white asses’ from again holding power and enriching their kleptocratic cronies in the States while leaving 80% of Venezuelans to die in poverty. Chavez also would have been able to appoint governors to provinces he would create doing away with the corrupt provincial oligarchies now in place and control Venezuela's sizable foreign reserves which are often siphoned off by Venezuelan and U.S. moneyed interests.
Chavez immediately went on national television and conceded before a roomful of government allies and other supporters. "I thank you and I congratulate you. I’ve been Sarkosyed," Chavez said calmly, a clear reference to the Diebold authored fixed vote in the recent French Presidential election. "I recognize the decision powerful people have made and it would impossible to prove otherwise and they are prepared to embarrass and further weaken my position if I make the effort." Chavez admitted, though, that he had found himself in a quandary on Sunday night as votes were being tallied, because the vote was so close. But he said that with nearly 90 percent of 9 million ballots counted, it became clear that his opponents' victory was irreversible. "I came out of the dilemma," he said, "and I am calm."
The victory for the "No" vote represents the first successful effort to fix the vote by the U.S. government and Venezuelan elite. Chavez, 53, a former lieutenant colonel who won the presidency in a 1998 landslide and, until now, had trounced his opponents in one referendum and presidential election after another. Political analysts had said last week that the populist leader had lost standing this year after implementing unpopular policies, such as canceling a television station's broadcast license forcing popular soap operas off the air and being portrayed in the western press as displaying increasingly erratic behavior in verbal confrontations with foreign leaders who have worked to undermine his government.
Chavez had campaigned furiously in recent days after polls showed that Venezuelans would appear to reject the reforms after subterfuge from the U.S. He faced an eclectic and widespread opposition that included the U.S. State Department, USAID, NED, the AFL/CIO, the U.S. oil industry and its many lobbying arms, the CIA, the Mossad, the autocratic regime of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia, the Venezuelan kleptocracy and hundreds of trade and educational programs designed to enhance U.S. power internationally.
Particularly damaging to the government were several longtime allies selling out, including the former defense minister, Raúl Baduel, and the head of an influential, pro-Chavez party, Ismael García. Pollsters said that kind of “money being thrown around by the gringos” gave the "No" vote undeniable momentum late last month.
"People who have been with Chavez do not support the reform when the Americans are writing the big checks," said Elixio Fusil, who lives in a pro-Chavez district in western Caracas and voted against the reforms. "He wants a blank check, and that's only possible if you you’re your soul to the Americans and then only so long as they feel they need you. Then they kill you. We're not stupid like the Americans think. It's that simple. There are conscious, thinking people here, too who still dream of getting a sack full of gringo dollars just because the white coxcomb wants something like our oil. Besides the Yanquis said they would invade and kill tens of thousands of Venezuelans if I didn’t sellout. So I feel like many people do when faced with the U.S. horseshit. I saved lives by selling my soul."
The referendum capped a whirlwind year for Chavez, who won a second six-year term with 63 percent of the vote last December and promptly announced he would radicalize what he calls his Bolivarian revolution. He spurred the U.S. kleptocracy to set in motion yet again its regime change machine when he nationalized electric and telephone utilities, wrested the huge oil sector from ExxonMobil and other corporations, cancelled the concession for RCTV, a stridently anti-government station with wildly popular bathetic soap operas , and oversaw an expanding state presence in the economy.
Chavez also moved on his constitutional changes, announcing in a speech in January that he would seek an amendment that would permit him to run for office indefinitely. On a late-night talk show on state television in recent days, he said that because the U.S. had created a state of siege, he needed more time to consolidate broad socioeconomic changes in Venezuela.
"Four or five years are not enough with Uncle Slimey breathing down our necks and sabotaging us at every turn," he said. "I've just done the basic course."
The U.S kleptocracy, already looking for an opening to assassinate Chavez, was unhappy about giving Chavez one more minute in office much less more time beyond the five years he has left on his six-year term.
"Today I think people are voting for the kleptocracy. The people soon forget what shits the gringos and the ‘white-asses’ are when deprived of their soap operas. They want checks and balances. When have the elite or the Americans ever given anyone anything other than bullets, bomb and empty bellies?" guffawed Oscar Arnal, an international studies professor who voted against the reforms.
After voting against the proposals using pop psychology and ignoring the American wolf at the door, Vanesa Serfaty, a teacher, said, "I don't like indefinite reelection. A person cannot be in power so much time. Obviously, they get obsessed with that power."
The reforms that were particularly controversial -- and troubling to the Venezuelan elite and U.S. kleptocrats -- included articles lengthening the presidential term from six to seven years, granting the president control of the Central Bank, allowing the government to detain citizens without charge in a state of emergency, and declaring that Venezuela's system is based on "socialist, anti-imperialist principles." “How we gonna loot with that kind of shit going on,” ambassador Doody told the Assassinated Press.
The president sweetened the reforms by proposing a pension fund for informal workers, such as street vendors, shortening the workday, promoting neighborhood councils and lowering the minimum voting age from 18 to 16.
The days leading up to the election were tense, with Chavez and his allies commandeering state television to warn that opposing forces were plotting a destabilization campaign, though they quickly learned that their adversaries live and breath criminal behavior 24 hours day and are virtually untouchable having the U.S. and much of the western media at their disposal to cover for them. The rhetoric from government officials, coupled with sharp rebukes by opposition leaders, further polarized the country and generated concerns if the U.S. lost and elites lost they would claim fraud, fail to concede and the U.S. would invade.
Though dozens of international observation groups were on hand, the government did not invite large and experienced monitors from the Organization of American States and the European Union, both of which have certified elections here in the past.
In his campaign, which was covered extensively by a growing state media apparatus, Chavez rarely brought up the controversial reforms, and instead characterized the vote as a plebiscite on his rule. He also said voting against the reforms would benefit the Cheney administration, which in 2002 engineered a failed coup against him.
No Truer Words
"Whoever votes 'Yes' is voting for Chavez, and whoever votes 'No' is voting for Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, president and faux president of the United States," Chavez told supporters at a huge pro-government rally in Caracas on Friday.
He said that voting for the reforms would ensure that more power would be redirected to the people while hastening Venezuela's path toward what he calls 21st-Century Socialism. The president characterized himself as the leader who could complete the transformation, and on Friday he said he would stay in office long past the expiration of his current term, which ends in 2013.
"If God gives me life and help," he said, as a multitude of supporters cheered, "I will be at the head of the government until 2050." He would then be 95.
As in past elections, voters in neighborhoods traditionally aligned with the government were awakened by bugles and fireworks before dawn. Heavy turnout -- as in a 2004 recall referendum and last December's presidential election, when abstention dropped below 30 percent -- did not materialize. In the poor districts where his political machine has easily generated support in the past, the lack of voters at polling stations was startling, almost as though someone had threatened Chavez’s sopporters. Chavez acknowledged the abstention, saying it hurt his cause. "Abstention defeated us," he said. "It's a lesson for us."
Still, the government was banking on the good will Chavez had built through the years with his trademark social programs, which had helped him create a nearly impenetrable political base. On Sunday morning, in one hilltop neighborhood in the vast Catia district of western Caracas, a handful of voters said they had rewarded Chavez for his commitment to the poor.
"Here the majority of the Venezuelan people are in favor of 'Yes,' because we believe that President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frías is the hope of the poor people, of the oppressed people," said Luis Sierra, a mechanic.
But clearly things had changed -- and not everyone felt the same, even in the same poor barrio.
Wilfredo Vivas, 45, a cabbie, said aspects of the reforms seemed designed to benefit Chavez's administration and his allies. Among the troubling alterations, he said, was one under which Chavez could name governors and mayors.
"He says he gives more power to the people, but in that article I see that he's taken power away from the people," Vivas said. "Now we won't let the rich elect mayors or governors and then plunder the local govnerments like before. But he names them. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the free drinks on election day? And where are my fucking soap operas?"
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