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   From: pedro1940@progression.net   
      
   Editorial    
   by Mortimer B. Zuckerman    
   Cracking down on Caracas    
      
   While we have our eyes on the Middle East and the recent good news out of   
   there, a danger to democracy is brewing right here in our backyard. Venezuela,   
   long one of Latin America's strongest democracies, is now under siege by its   
   president, Hugo Chavez.    
   Thanks to an ill-judged intervention by former President Jimmy Carter, Chavez   
   narrowly survived a recall election and has now accelerated his subversion of   
   Venezuela's democracy by a scummy deal with Fidel Castro.     
      
    Browse through an archive of columns by Mortimer B. Zuckerman.    
       
   According to Miami's El Nuevo Herald, Chavez has granted Cuban judicial and   
   security forces extensive police powers within Venezuela. Cubans are already   
   running the intelligence services and indoctrinating and training the   
   military. They 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.   
      
   All this is a culmination of Chavez's frontal attack on civil society,   
   reducing state institutions to mere shadows with only ceremonial powers. Just   
   for starters, Chavez has rewritten Venezuela's Constitution to enhance his   
   powers, purged critics in the    
   military, set up legislation to pack the 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.   
      
   Spots and pans. havez, in turn, provides 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. Chavez's sense of moral justice is   
   manifest in his alliance with the worst criminal organizations in Latin   
   America, especially the narcoterrorists in Colombia. Just recently, he   
   denounced Colombian authorities because    
   they arrested a senior member of the narcoterrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces   
   of Colombia (FARC) who had been given sanctuary in Venezuela.   
      
   To get a sense of the degree to which Chavez is intimidating his opponents and   
   harassing dissidents, just read the language of a new criminal law that he   
   pushed through the legislature: "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." Even the most popular form of political protest, banging pots and   
   pans, done in the presence    
   of members of his government, now carries with it up to a three-month jail   
   sentence.   
      
   A distinguished international coalition, including former Czech President   
   Vaclav Havel, Sen. John McCain, and former Secretary of State Madeleine   
   Albright, wrote to Chavez expressing concern that his actions are "a grave   
   threat to democracy."   
      
   Alas, our own President Carter compromised the hopes of Venezuelans in the   
   recall election by prematurely endorsing the vote that Chavez did not earn or   
   deserve. Carter's people counted 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 to the   
   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. 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.   
      
      
      
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