Chavez Tried To Overturn Vote

Remember all the platitudes thrown at Hugo Chavez last week when he conceded defeat.  Some lefties went on to call the guy a progressive leader:

For anyone who hasn’t had time to keep up, the news is that the
peaceful, progressive leader of Venezuela lost the vote on
constitutional reforms in a transparent and orderly election.

But big shocker, it’s now becoming known that Chavez did in fact try to overturn the results but was threatened with a coup if he did:

Most of Latin America’s leaders breathed a sigh of relief earlier
this week, after Venezuelan voters rejected President Hugo Chávez’s
constitutional amendment referendum. In private they were undoubtedly relieved
that Chávez lost, and in public they expressed delight that he accepted defeat
and did not steal the election. But by midweek enough information had emerged to
conclude that Chávez did, in fact, try to overturn the results. As reported in
El Nacional, and confirmed to me by an intelligence source, the Venezuelan
military high command virtually threatened him with a coup d’état if he insisted
on doing so. Finally, after a late-night phone call from Raúl Isaías Baduel, a
budding opposition leader and former Chávez comrade in arms, the president
conceded–but with one condition: he demanded his margin of defeat be reduced to
a bare minimum in official tallies, so he could save face and appear as a
magnanimous democrat in the eyes of the world.

So after this purportedly narrow loss Chávez did not even request a recount,
and nearly every Latin American colleague of Chávez’s congratulated him for his
“democratic” behavior. Why did these leaders not speak out? Surely they knew of
Chávez’s machinations, and with the exception of Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega,
Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and, to a large extent, the
Argentine Kirchner duo, none of the region’s heads of state sympathizes with the
Venezuelan revolutionary.

The reason for the silence: these leaders know Chávez can count on a fifth
column in nearly every country in the region. Even while he denounces the
policies of his opponents and throws vitriol in every direction, he also uses
his nation’s resources to befriend their constituencies. These acolytes are
devoted to his ideals and, more important, to his funding. They are boisterous,
or powerful, or both, and they can make life miserable for governments ranging
from the emblematic left (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil) to the liberal
right (Mexico’s Felipe Calderón or Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe).

Expect the purges of the military to commence immediately.

Curt

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