Venezuela Solidarity Network (US) on the Dec.2,2007 Referendum

Venezuela Solidarity Network (US) Statement on the
Dec. 2, 2007 Referendum

Dec. 3, 2007

With a registered voter turn-out of about 55%,
Venezuelan voters rejected two referendum questions
asking for approval of a total of 69 amendments to
their constitution. Each question was defeated by a
margin of 1.5 percentage points.

As a result, Venezuelans will not have a constitution
that gives them a 36 hour work week, that gives
informal sector workers social security, that
recognizes the contributions of African and indigenous
peoples to the building of Venezuelan identity, that
eliminates discrimination in all forms. They also
won’t have a seven year presidential term without term
limits, definitions for the four classes of property,
and other changes that – on paper – would move the
country more rapidly toward what is being called “21st
century socialism.”

Venezuelans get to vote on constitutional amendments
unlike citizens in the United States. In the US,
two-thirds of both houses of Congress must approve an
amendment and then it must be approved by three
quarters of the state legislatures. Voters never get
a direct say. Which country has the greater
democracy? With 11 national votes in the past nine
years since Hugo Chavez was first elected president in
1998, is it any wonder that Venezuelans follow only
Uruguay among Latin Americans in their satisfaction
with their democracy?

It is time for the US government and the US corporate
media to acknowledge that Venezuela is a vibrant
democracy and that Hugo Chavez is its elected
president. He is not a dictator and he obviously does
not have autocratic control of the system or the
amendments he supported would not have been voted
down.

It is time for the US government and the US corporate
media to acknowledge that freedom of speech and
assembly are alive and well in Venezuela. The wealthy
opposition to the “Bolivarian process” owns the great
majority of print and electronic media and was
completely free to attack the proposed amendments and
Chavez himself, which it did daily and in language
that we would never see outside of blogs in the United
States.

It is time for the US government and US corporate
media to acknowledge that Venezuela’s electoral
process is free and fair. Its electronic voting
machines issue paper receipts which make fraud almost
impossible. We only can wish that electronic voting
in the US were as reliable. A defeat by only 1-1/2
percent would have been converted to a victory by
those in power in many countries. Mexico’s long
tradition of dirty elections easily comes to mind.

It is time for the US government to stop interfering
in Venezuela’s democracy and time for the US corporate
media to stop aiding and abetting it. Reports are
that the US government, through the US Agency for
International Development and the National Endowment
for Democracy, spent $8 million of US taxpayer’s money
to influence the vote on the referendum. That would
be the equivalent of a foreign country spending $92.6
million on a national referendum – if we had such a
democratic tool – in the US. Would we tolerate that?
The Venezuela Solidarity Network organized a
delegation to Venezuela in October of 2006 to
investigate US government interference in that year’s
presidential election. The US embassy official who
met with us freely admitted that the US was spending
$26 million on Venezuela’s presidential election.
What would be the reaction in the US if Venezuela
spent the equivalent $301 million on our upcoming
presidential election?

It is time for the US government to close the Office
of Transition Initiatives housed in the US embassy in
Caracas. Venezuela’s transition to a real democracy
that began with the rejection of the old political
parties of the elites in 1998 is alive and well and
doesn’t need any so-called “democracy building” from
the United States. Indeed, there’s a lot we could
learn about democracy from the Venezuelans.