Polls say Chavez's party on track to win a solid majority in the National Assembly

[Peace Patriot]

I guess voters in Venezuela aren't paying attention to the rightwing "talking points" that naaman fletcher has been posting here at DU, from the New York Slimes' notorious Chavez hater, Simon Romero, and others.

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As PSUV and Opposition Intensify National Assembly Campaigns, Polls Indicate Majority for Socialists

By JAMES SUGGETT - VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM

Mérida, August 17th 2010 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – As candidates from the pro-government United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the opposition United Democratic Roundtable (MUD) sharpen the focus of their campaigns for Venezuela’s 165 National Assembly seats, recent polls indicate the PSUV is on track to win at least a solid majority in the September 26th vote.

The PSUV, which is headed by President Hugo Chavez, and the MUD, a coalition of opposition parties, constitute the two main political blocs that are presenting candidates for the National Assembly. Both blocs have focused their campaigns on either approving or disapproving of President Hugo Chavez and his project of building “21st Century Socialism,” rather than specific legislative agendas.

Members of the PSUV’s 36,000 local patrols, each of which consists of between 10 and 50 party activists, are in the midst of a nationwide, door-to-door campaign to spread word about the Chavez government’s achievements over the last 11 years. The canvassers highlight increases in education enrollment at all levels, access to free health care, food consumption, life expectancy, and mass political participation through communal councils.

(SNIP) (And here follows the rightwing/NY Slimes "talking point"--street crime--which is all they have. The material gains for most Venezuelans--in jobs, good wages, workers' rights, educational opportunities, health care, big gains in eliminating poverty and many other Chavez policies are just too real and too impressive, and must make the rightwing agenda of selling the country back to Exxon Mobil look pretty paltry. So, like rightwingers everywhere, they fall back on "law and order" and fearmongering.)

As part of the opposition’s electoral campaign, national daily newspapers aligned with the opposition regularly publish front-page articles on crime and print gory photographs of bloody bodies at murder scenes.

Last Friday, the newspaper El Nacional printed a color front page photograph of corpses in a Caracas morgue under a headline about the high number of illegally possessed weapons in the country. PSUV officials responded to the incident by accusing the newspaper of “journalistic pornography” and calling it an attempt to frighten the public about crime. The Attorney General's office opened a legal investigation and obtained a Caracas court order prohibiting such bloody images in news media, under Article 79 of the Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents. (Note: This court order was rescinded days later.)

(MORE)

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5576

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Even the opposition polls are predicting a big socialist (pro-Chavez) win in the National Assembly. The various polls are discussed at the end of the article. One impressive stat: a 70% voter participation rate is expected!

[Judi Lynn]

1. Very interesting learning their polling companies are don't have real oversight!

The last paragraph:

Polling firms in Venezuela are not systematically regulated or monitored for accuracy, and in the past they have produced notoriously inconsistent, subjective, and inaccurate results. The director of Datanalisis, Luis Vicente Leon, regularly makes anti-Chavez statements to opposition media, and the current director of GIS XXI is Jesse Chacon, a long-time Chavez ally and former Communications Minister. It is somewhat uncommon for polling firms associated with distinct political camps to concur on predicted results.

The recent past head of Datanalysis was more than a little anti-Chavez. He made a public statement in Mexico that Chavez should be assassinated.

That's NOT the kind of statement you want to see from one of their country's largest polling organizations.

Hoping that prediction of 70% will be realized. The new society is going to have to be a constant effort, in a state of change, and conscious working toward their goals every year until they have arrived at a REAL democracy.

[bherrera]

2. I don't think election results will be important

President Chavez has already shown he is an autocrat, he ignored the election results when the people elected a chavez opponent to become the mayor of the city of Caracas. This mayor visited Spain and explained how the Chavez government ignores election results. The concentration of power is very high, and the man rules by fiat. Thus the end of the true democracy of Venezuela is evident, and they are to become similar to the North Koreans, where the personality worship of a crazy ruler is the norm.

[Mika]

3. Just come out and say it.

ELECTED DICTATOR!

Oh, and,

FOR LIFE!

:dunce:

---

[CJvR]

4. Remember...

Just because you are dictator for life doesn't mean you have job security.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Some questions I have for you...

"I don't think election results will be important."

Do tell us what "this mayor" who "visited Spain" said, that invalidated all elections in Venezuela. Name and occasion would help too. Who was he speaking to? And was a Chavez government spokesperson invited to speak. If so, what did he/she say in reply? And if not, why not? (You only listen to one side?)

"...and the man rules by fiat."

Please explain what Chavez has done by "fiat" that was not his right under the Constitution or rightfully delegated to him by the National Assembly.

{i]"Thus the end of the true democracy of Venezuela is evident..."

You do not make any kind of case for "the end of true democracy" in Venezuela, let alone one that is "evident." "Evident" to whom? To the 60% of Venezuelans who have voted for the Chavez government, supported the Chavez government in opinion polls and/or expressed their satisfaction with their democracy and the direction of their country? And what is the "evidence" that makes "the end of true democracy" in Venezuela "evident"? You base this extraordinary statement on the opinions of one rightwing mayor who visited Spain And your analogy to North Korea is ridiculous. Please provide a specific, detailed case, including EVIDENCE for "end of true democracy" in Venezuela.

What I see, in Venezuela, is the opposite--that Venezuela has never had a more democratic government--nor a more popular one, nor a more beneficial one. Venezuela's elections are far, FAR more transparent, honest and aboveboard than our own. The result is that people have been able to elect a government that acts in their interest--a government that has reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by 70%, that has vastly increased educational opportunities for the poor, that has provided free universal health care, that has renegotiated the oil contracts with multinationals in Venezuela's favor, that presided over 5 years of astonishing economic growth--most of it in the private sector--prior to the Bushwhack Great Depression, and landed Venezuela on its feet in the face of this worldwide Depression, by having achieved low debt, high cash reserves, good credit, low unemployment and other positives for the previous five years. Public participation is high--with a projected voter turnout of 70% for the upcoming National Assembly elections. The Chavez government has, all along, been supported by a widespread grass roots movement and has strongly advocated for public participation in government, including many programs aimed precisely at that purpose.

So, you're going to have to marshall quite a case for "the end of true democracy" in Venezuela to convince someone like me, who has actually been following developments in Venezuela closely. The rightwing here called FDR a "dictator," too. This is just rightwing bullshit, from what I can see. Propaganda. No basis in reality. Chavez is doing the will of the people, and the rightwing and their USAID funders don't like it. And all they have, and all you have, is this lame bogeyman "dictator" crapola. That's what I see. And I challenge you to convince me otherwise.

[bherrera]

8. These are comments about the Ledezma case in the world press

http://www.worldmayor.com/contest_2010/comments-caracas.html

http://www.noticias24.com/actualidad/noticia/101265/%20ledezma-habla-para-el-pais-y-tacha-de-cavernicola-la-politica-de-chavez/

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/07/venezuela.mayor/index.html

I usually read things in Spanish, but I did use google to find some comments about Ledezma, the city mayor of Caracas, who was elected by the MAJORITY of the people of the Caracas Matropolitan region, in 2008. This election was ruined by Mr Chavez, who ordered his puppets in the National Assembly to designate a law to create a new Vice presidency to be in charge of Caracas. This vice presidency, of course, is not elected, it is designated by the autocratic megalomaniac fascist Chavez.

And this is the reason why this man, this fascist called Chavez, is not a man who supports democracy, nor is he a true socialist.

Regarding your comment about the Venezuelan government being invited to comment when Ledezma comes to Spain, then I ask you, why does the Venezuelan president take over the Venezuelan tv all the time, and there is no allowance for an opposition leader to speak after he is finished, and point out the man is an incompetent fascist?

[Peace Patriot]

9. Ah, so the members of the National Assembly, who are independently elected by

the people of Venezuela--in an election system that is far, FAR more transparent, honest and aboveboard than our own--passed a law creating a federal office to oversee Caracas, the seat of government, and this is Chavez being "an incompetent fascist"? You said that Chavez is ruling by "fiat." Clearly, in this case, he wasn't. He did not enact the law. The National Assembly did. But what strikes me as odd about your view is that, if this law was Chavez's doing, as you claim, it can hardly be described as "incompetent"--your word--nor as "incompetent fascism"--your phrase. In your view, he ended up with the law he wanted, in order to have some federal control of the seat of government. Is that "incompetent"? As for it being "fascist," I don't see that either. The rightwing in Caracas are the ones who mounted the 2002 coup attempt, whose first act, after kidnapping the elected president, was to suspend the Constitution, the courts, the National Assembly and all civil rights. The Chavez government and its ELECTED supporters in the National Assembly, have a legitimate concern about a rightwing mayor controlling Caracas. That is not fascism. It is just common sense. The National Assembly has the right and duty to pass laws that they believe are in the national interest. If this reduces the power of the mayor of part of Caracas, too bad. The U.S. Congress has passed laws aimed at federal control of Washington DC. The laws may not be fair but then what you do is advocate against them, and try to elect representatives who will change them.

You, on the other hand, in promoting these truly fascist "talking points"--for instance, that Chavez is an "autocratic megalomaniac"--seem to be angling for a quite different method of change, than honest advocacy and electing representatives to the National Assembly. You seem to be trying to justify a coup. And, in promoting such a "Big Lie" here, at DU, among mostly U.S. Democrats, you seem to want the U.S. to do it for you, since your rightwing compadres in Venezuela were so incompetent at it the first time.

Although I don't think that you are interested in honest discourse--but rather in just repeating certain anti-Chavez phrases over and over again--I want to make a point about the media in Venezuela, for the sake of those who are interested in honest discourse. The rightwing in Venezuela gets plenty of exposure of even its most rancid and crazy opinions, on Venezuelan TV/radio stations controlled by rightwing media moguls. The counter-balance of Chavez speaking directly to the people of Venezuela is a good one. I wish our president would do the same--instead of allowing the corpo-fascist media to filter him through their narrow corpo-fascist focus. This is another parallel between Chavez and FDR, who spoke directly to the American people, in weekly radio broadcasts, bypassing the rightwing press of that era, which also called FDR a "dictator."

[bemildred]

5. "Just because Chavez has twice been elected President by the largest margins in Venezuela's history,

and just because his government has twice the number of elected representatives that its opponents have, that does not mean it can go around passing any legislation it wants."

-- Monty Python's Terry Jones weighs in on the failed ouster of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. (2002)

[Judi Lynn]

6. Terry Jones is so right. Also, just because Hugo Chavez's supporters poured into the streets

and without weapons brought so much pressure to the forced kidnapping of the elected President, and the planned armed takeover of his government, that the Venezuelan people created the only known overturn of an armed military coup in our modern history.
p
The clowns who keep storming our message boards are doing double duty right now as the next national election sneaks up upon them, and they know they'll take it in the shorts again because the Venezuelan people WANT this democratic change AWAY from the filthy, violent feudal state ruled by a small group of expensively dressed greedy, unevolved scums.