Viva Chavez! posted by Richard Seymour

"Chavez claims victory" , says The Guardian. What they meant to say was that the Venezuelan electoral commission had pronounced him victor, but you can't fit that into a headline. Hugo Chavez looks to have won the referendum on his presidency, in the face of a vast, well-funded and well-organised campaign against him. Putschists and propagandists have descended on Venezuela like noone's business, some of them funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which is basically a front-organisation for the CIA. They have not so far succeeded, and Chavez's proferred reason for this seems credible - there is too much grassroots democracy for a coup to succeed. Chavez has delivered enough for the poor to maintain the support of peasants and workers alike, and they are numerous enough and organised enough to prevent their gains from being quoshed.



Suffice to say, the British and American media can't believe it. Why, just last night the Independent was predicting a success for the opposition. Neither can the opposition accept the result, alleging fraud. Jimmy Carter, however, says the opposition lost and lost fairly. And he's a man who knows a lost cause when he sees it.



See Tariq Ali's op-ed for the Independent if you haven't already. And check out those letters ...