Chavez, populist. posted by Richard Seymour

So, the results for the Venezuelan National Assembly elections appear to show a straightforward victory for pro-Chavez candidates. This after some mysterious explosions on polling day. The excuse is already available: because opponents of the election boycotted it, the vote is "illegitemate":

Maria Corina Machado, who leads the U.S.-backed vote watchdog group Sumate, called the vote "illegitimate."

"We are going to have a single party parliament that doesn't represent ample sectors of society," Machado said in a statement.

Government officials say the U.S. has been meddling in the elections through Sumate, which receives money from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, a private group funded by Congress.

So, who is this Maria Corina Machado, and what is Sumate? Well, Maria seems to have taken a shine to the short-lived coup President, Pedro Carmona, as she managed to attend his swearing in ceremony and slap her fins together along with all the other performing seals (you have to see the footage to realise how craven those present were: they were literally moist about everything that was happening). Take a look at this:





Signature at the bottom left-hand corner. Sumate was contacted about this, and responded: "Everyone was sort of summoned to the palace and they just passed around this piece of paper and everyone signed." Oh, sure. The coup which had been glowingly reported as a "return to democracy" by all the mass media was somehow shrouded in mystery for these guys. I don't suppose they would have noticed that they were being 'summoned' to the Palace by a whole new gang? Machado herself denied having signed the statement (bottom left-hand corner, dammit), and said that what actually happened was that she visited the palace at the invitation of Carmona's wife, who is a good friend of hers. She's well-connected, I'll give her that.

Sumate is not, as CBS maintains, a 'vote watchdog'. It is an organisation formed to oppose Chavez, and took part in the unsuccessful recall campaign in 2003. It has received tens of thousands of dollars from the NED, an off-shoot of the CIA. The group, according to the Washington-based Council for Hemispheric affairs, is nothing other than an anti-Chavez front.

Suffice to say, Machado and three other leaders of her group face treason charges and could end up spending a bit of time in the nick if they are found guilty of having conspired in the overthrow of the elected government. And Vaclav Havel is very unhappy.