Venezuela: Manuel Rosales pulls out of elections
By Aleksander Boyd
01.12.05 | There was a huge question mark hovering over Manuel Rosales, Governor of Zulia state, and his party Nuevo Tiempo; would they join the rest of the parties and withdraw or would he oxygenate the deranged would-be dictator? Sources in Caracas just reported that Rosales has also decided to not participate in Sunday's elections. Therefore all the major political parties of Venezuela opposing the Chavez regime, namely Accion Democratica, COPEI, Proyecto Venezuela, Primero Justicia and Nuevo Tiempo have withdrawn from the race. This is actually the first time that I will speak kindly of Venezuela's opposition, for the way in which it has exposed the fraudulent nature of the National Electoral Council, coupled by how it has out-maneuvered Chavez, is without a doubt, a novelty.
Venezuela's opposition, as I wrote earlier, has recoup the long lost bargaining power. No amount of Cuban spin will change history and Venezuelans, from all sides, shall rejoice on that thought. Leopoldo Gonzalez kick-started a chain of events that shall have tremendous consequences. By demonstrating, before international observers, that the Smartmatic machines kept the sequence of the vote, after having celebrated a mock election, Gonzalez unveiled no small matter: the secrecy of the vote no longer exists in Venezuela.
Why are political parties "boycotting" the election?
The mainstream media (MSM) is yet to awake to the Venezuelan electoral reality. The BBC publishes today "Venezuela election boycott widens," in which Caracas-based Greg Morsbach tries to argue his utterly misleading case reporting "despite the boycott, a number of opposition parties are still committed to taking part." Disgusted by such poor reporting I called the BBC's Complaint Unit and had a conversation with a chap called Gary. He started, of course, defending the point of view of Greg Morsbach, however I got him to understand two things: the first is that there must be a reason for the "boycott" and secondly that in light of the reason, "boycott" was not an appropriate word. Nowhere in the article is mentioned that the core of the issue is the fact that CNE authorities are not in the capacity of guaranteeing the transparency of the process simply because the secrecy of the vote can be revealed with absolute certainty, as demonstrated by Leopoldo Gonzalez last Wednesday. That, and only that, is the issue in Venezuela. Regardless of whatever journalists infatuated with Chavez write, that is a statement of fact. Ergo no one, not even the bloody BBC, can pretend to place the blame on opposition's shoulders, for as Gary admitted, if such thing were to happen in Britain there would be no elections. Period.
The shocking aspect of this is that none of the reports and articles published to date by the MSM make the slightest of mentions about Mr. Gonzalez's findings or why the parties have withdraw en masse. What can be observed is that there seems to be an orchestrated media plan to misinform, confuse and put the errs and illegalities of chavista authorities on the opposition camp. Why? Of course, it would be just too much to bear to see the BBC actually reporting things accurately, wouldn't it?
The importance of Sunday's elections
Some people are calling for the suspension or postponement of elections. That, in my view, is a huge mistake. Jorge Rodriguez has repeated in the past, quite often, the '10 million turn out' argument. Very well then, let us see how the Smartmatic wunderkinder and the crooked Rodriguez's team manage to produce such a result in light of the huge credibility problem they have got. Let us see how many 'millions of Chavez's supporters' get to polling stations to 'defend' the pseudo revolution. Let us convince ourselves, once and for all, that the majority of Venezuelans still want Chavez in power. After all without the presence of discredited political parties, the election of candidates postulated by the 'charismatic leader' should be a walk in the park for Chavez, shouldn't it?
Public Apologies to Primero Justicia
I wrote a rather harsh piece the other day about Primero Justicia being in bed with Chavez. I retract my comments and would like to offer a public apology to them. I would also like to extend congratulations to those parties that have withdrawn for having shown courage, maturity and, above all, common sense. Venezuela lives times of great peril and it is only with the concourse of all of its citizens that it can overcome this most detestable period.
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