Venezuelan media wants to pretend that they are something different & Reply: The message he used to win his first election was to fight corruption

www.vheadline.com Posted: Monday, January 27, 2003 - 3:01:12 AM By: Hector Dauphin-Gloire

Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 17:23:24 -0500 From: Hector Dauphin-Gloire montonero22@hotmail.com To: Editor@vheadline.com Subject: Thank you for your service to the truth!

Dear Editor: I wish to thank you immensely for the service you are doing the whole world by courageously reporting a balanced viewpoint about the Venezuelan situation.

• In the barrage of half-truths and misrepresentations that come from the private media we seem to hear all manners of petulant complaints by an oligarchy intent on preserving its power.

Domestic readers can at least hear from the government and community media (thank God that they exist) but as far as I know there is no English-language service which provides a point of view sympathetic to the government, besides your own. *

But we should not be so hard on the Venezuelan private media. Sure, they are a corrupt oligarchy, but so is the private media in most countries throughout the world.

In the United States, too, the mainstream media is in the pocket of big corporations and you will rarely hear a word critical of neo-liberalism, capitalism, or other features of US society come out of their mouths.

Consider, too, the history of other countries in Latin America.

The press in Chile was solidly against Salvador Allende, and in favor of the right-wing Allessandri ... we saw what happened three years later.

The press in Brazil, today, savages the Landless Workers' Movement, accusing them of being Marxist, terrorist, brigands ... and they have the gall to say this at a time when these peaceful, Catholic, cooperative rural activists are being murdered by the landlords.

The press in Argentina was solidly against Peron, and many of them backed the 1976 anti-Peronist coup by three generals called "the Gentlemen" who proceeded to impale their prisoners on cattle prods, throw them from airplanes, and other "gentlemanly" behavior.

The private media in country after country has this stellar record of behavior.

Now the Venezuelan media wants to pretend that they are something different, heroic partisans of democracy ... their hypocrisy and mendacity is shining bright.

Hector Dauphin-Gloire montonero22@hotmail.com Environmental Technician

• Editor's note: Hector, let's get this straight.  VHeadline.com is in full support of the Venezuelan Constitution and democracy expressed by the Venezuelan people at the ballot box.  They happened to elect President Hugo Chavez Frias as Head of State of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela under the full terms and expression of the 1999 Constitution which was itself enacted by elected representatives of the people and ratified by a majority of those selfsame Venezuelan citizens on December 15, 1999.  If/when another President is elected under democratic forms by a majority of the Venezuelan people we will also observe traditional forms of democratic and constitutional expression under the law.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 3:13:07 AM By: Almira Atencio

The message he used to win his first election was to fight corruption

Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 21:39:17 -0400 From: Almira Atencio atencioalmira@hotmail.com To: editor@vheadline.com Subject: Comments

Dear Editor: commenting on a letter from Hector Dauphin-Gloire dated:26-10-2003.  Sure, the President was elected two times by the people of Venezuela: First without a national project ... the message he used to win his first election was the promise to fight corruption left in this country as a tradition that had destroyed democratic institutions.

When he won, he summoned Venezuelans to organize a national referendum, as an essential requirement for his government plan and organization of Venezuela's institutions, so damaged by democratic governors during the past forty years. People were  happy, accepted and believed absolutely in the President's plans.

After the referendum, which took two years in his first mandate, he found it necessary to legitimate his elections, so he organized more elections. Before this time, he did not have a majority in the National Assembly but this second election gave him more deputies than he had had before and he commenced to dominate the legislative power.

Meanwhile he also organized the domination  of the executive power upon the legislative power and decided that there was no President of the National Assembly, due to the referendum, giving to Miquelena, the first commander of his party, to be the authority of a similar creation of a legislative power called "el congresillo" (arbitrary and due to discretional power) whose mission was to control power, prepare  laws for his national plan and to approve them with new deputies after elections where he would legitimate his power with his own organization (new Assembly with absolute control of votes  by deputies of Chavez' political party would vote for the representatives of the Supreme court). All these  lawyers  elected by the National Assembly were to be the judges of the court (all of Chavez -- so he dominated the Supreme Court).

After he had absolutely all the power in his hands he went to elections and, since he had not yet governed, people voted again for him, so he could rule against demagogy and corruption. He won. People wanted him to win. There were no other candidates because he had not governed yet, nobody really new what he was preparing.

When he won the second elections, he had all power in his hands for the country, we would notice how this absolute power given and organized by him in a Machiavellian way would rest justice, respect for human rights and the rule for democratic system: the balance between power. After he had all this power he began to act in a arbitrary way, he never worked or presented an economic plan, the social security plan just approved in 1997 with resources of the Inter American Development Bank was eliminated by a new plan were radicalism and pragmatism were its entitle, as for the medias, there were object of violence, as for the court, justice was manipulated by politics.

So now that we know what he wants for Venezuela, now, that we are suffering totalitarianism, now that many people have died because of his cruelty with the opposition  and now that Venezuela's "technicians" that work in the petroleum industry do not want to let the President ruin our economy, the only thing we had left.

We are suffering radicalism just as you commenced to have signals of communist when Joseph McCarthy fought against violence born from these socialist or left intellectual's new raise in life.

Pray for Venezuela. Please.

Almira Atencio atencioalmira@hotmail.com