Zuckerman: Crack Down on Chavez

Looks like Jimmy Carter's meddling has created a significant problem right in our own backyard. Add to that Chavez's love for Castro and things really get ugly. Mort Zuckerman weighs in on how Carter's meddling has created this potential problem. Remember, Mort is no neocon. - Sailor

Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005 2:35 p.m. EST
Zuckerman: Crack Down on Chavez

"A danger to democracy is brewing right here in our backyard," writes U.S. News and World Report publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman in his recent column.

By "backyard" Zuckerman is referring to Venezuela and its Castroite president, Hugo Chavez.

For years conservatives have been worried about the growing menace of Chavez.

But Zuckerman, a centrist Democrat, adds weight to their concerns.

Zuckerman blames the situation on "an ill-judged intervention by former President Jimmy Carter," which allowed Chavez to narrowly survive a recall election and enabled him to accelerate "his subversion of Venezuela's democracy by a scummy deal with Fidel Castro. ..."

Carter, he writes, "compromised the hopes of Venezuelans in the recall election by prematurely endorsing the vote that Chavez did not earn or deserve."

According to Zuckerman:

Carter's people counted votes at fewer than 1 percent of the polling stations, which, instead of being selected at random, as originally anticipated, were selected by Venezuelan officials.

Even then, only 76 of the previously agreed 192 ballot boxes were counted, with either opposition witnesses or international observers present at only 26 out of the 76 boxes reviewed.

The Chavez-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) forbade access to the tallying centers, not only to Carter's people but also to representatives of the opposition, and even to the two members of the CNE who opposed Chavez.

Two professors from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report concluding that there was at least a 99 percent chance the election was a fraud. The audited sample (Carter's) was simply not a random sample, the professors concluded.

Various independent exit polls showed that Chavez had lost the vote by 59 percent to 41 percent, instead of Chavez's contention that he had won by that margin.

"Jimmy Carter, in effect, provided a seal of approval for a left-wing demagogue intent on destroying democracy in Venezuela even as he seeks to extend his ideology to other parts of Latin America," Zuckerman charged. "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was correct when she pointed out that Chavez is a danger not just to Venezuela but to much of Latin America. Very soon, we must translate those wise words into an effective policy."

Zuckerman cites a story in Miami's El Nuevo Herald, which reported that Chavez has granted Cuban judicial and security forces extensive police powers within Venezuela.

The paper also reminds us that Cubans are already running the intelligence services and indoctrinating and training the military.

Zuckerman predicts that Venezuela will become almost a fiefdom of Castro's Cuba.

He says Castro's thugs "will effectively bypass what is left of Venezuela's judicial system when they exercise new powers to investigate, seize, detain, and interrogate Venezuelans and Cubans living in Venezuela, with the right to extradite them to Cuba and try them there. This threatens the safety of some 30,000 Cubans in Venezuela."

Chavez's attack on democracy is "reducing state institutions to mere shadows with only ceremonial powers," says Zuckerman. He reports that Chavez has:

rewritten Venezuela's constitution to enhance his powers;

purged critics in the military;

set up legislation to pack the Venezuelan Supreme Court;

intimidated the media by threatening the expropriation of the licenses of private television stations that supported the opposition; and

given succor to thousands of Castro's military and intelligence officers, along with many social and medical workers, while tens of thousands of young Venezuelans have been sent to Cuba for indoctrination.

In return, Chavez provides his Communist mentor Castro "with 80,000 barrels a day of essential oil. Venezuela's rich flow of oil revenues has enabled Chavez to buy the support of sectors of Venezuelan society and assert himself as the leader of what he calls a 'jihad' against American imperialism."

And if you want proof of the degree to which Chavez is intimidating his opponents and harassing dissidents ...

A new criminal law that Chavez pushed through the legislature states, "Any individual who creates panic in the community or makes it restless by disseminating false information via print media, radio, TV, phone, electronic mail, or pamphlets will be punished with two to five years in prison."

The U.S. News editor laments, "Even the most popular form of political protest," the inncocuous "banging pots and pans," which is done in the presence of members of Chavez's own government, will get you three months in jail.