F
or
more than two years, Venezuelan government officials have been
hurling accusations at the Bush administration charging that it
was involved in the aborted April 2002 coup which overthrew,
albeit for only a short time, the country’s democratically
elected president, Hugo Chavez. Facing the possibility of being
recalled, President Chavez recently said he had evidence proving
that U.S. officials “met with rebel military officers [and]
U.S. military officers acted in the coup.” Chavez also pointed
out that “the U.S. ambassador was at the Presidential Palace
after the coup to applaud the dictator [Pedro Carmona]. The government
of the United States must answer before the world about the deaths
that occurred here in April of 2002.”
The
State Department’s Richard Boucher dismissed Chavez’s
char- ges, saying that the accusations were meant to “to divert
attention” from the referendum process currently underway in
Venezuela, Venezuelanalysis.com reported. Boucher, however, acknowledged
that the Bush administration is providing “funding to groups
that promote democracy and strengthen civil society in Venezuela
and around the globe.” Boucher claimed that the funds “are
for the benefit of democracy, not to support any particular political
faction.”
One
of the recipients of U.S. taxpayer money is a Venezuelan company
called Sumate, the organization that provided much of the logistical
support for the signature collection process in the current recall
campaign. Between September 2003 and September 2004, Sumate received
more than $50,000 from the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy.
The
“NED Report to the U.S. Dept. of State on Special Venezuela
Funds” documents that the organization received a million dollars
in April 2002 and, since June of that year, it awarded more than
$800,000 to organizations working in Venezuela, according to VenezuelaFOIA.info.
This non- profit website, sponsored by the Venezuela Solidarity
Committee/National Venezuela Solidarity Network, found that among
the organizations receiving funds were the Center for International
Private Enterprise, the American Center for International Labor
Solidarity, the International Republican Institute, and the National
Democratic Institute for International Affairs.
NED
is no stranger to Venezuelan politics. According to the
New York
Times
, the organization “funneled more than $877,000 into
Venezuela opposition groups in the weeks and months before the recently
aborted coup attempt.” More than $150,000 went to “a Venezuelan
labor union that led the opposition work stoppages and worked closely
with Pedro Carmona Estanga, the businessman who led the coup.”
At
its website, the National Endowment for Democracy modestly describes
itself as a “private, nonprofit, grant-making organization
created in 1983 to strengthen democratic institutions around the
world.” But the NED, over the years, has actively destabilized
governments in Central America and Eastern Europe. According to
William Blum’s book,
Rogue State: A Guide
to the
World’s Only Superpower
, the NED “played an important
role in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components
of Oliver North’s shadowy Project Democracy network, which
privatized U.S. foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs, and
engaged in other equally charming activities.” For years
the NED supported the Cuban exile community in south Florida, contributing
$250,000 between 1990 and 1992 to the right-wing Cuban-American
National Foundation.
In
1997, NED president Carl Gershman told Congress that the group’s
“four affiliated institutes, the International Republican Institute
(IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
(NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and
the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI) …operate a host of programs
that strengthen political parties, promote open markets, advocate
the rights of workers, and many related activities.”
NED
functions as a full-service infrastructure-building clearinghouse.
It provides money, technical support, supplies, training programs,
media know-how, public relations assistance, and state-of-the- art
equipment to select political groups, civic organizations, labor
unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers,
and other media. The organization’s aim is to destabilize progressive
movements, particularly those with a socialist or democratic-socialist
bent.
Chavez’s
well-funded opposition also appears to be receiving the tacit stamp
of approval from Henry Kissinger and his international consulting
firm, Kissinger and Associates. In late January, while the national
elections council was preparing to evaluate the authenticity of
the over two million petition signatures handed in by the opposition,
former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was presenting an award
to Venezuelan billionaire, Gustavo Cisneros, chair & CEO of
the Cisneros Group of Companies. According to the
Green Left
Weekly
, Cisneros has been “identified by
Newsweek
and Venezuelan publications as one of the protagonists and financiers
of the April 11, 2002, coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.”
In
a December 2003 press release announcing the upcoming awards ceremony,
the IAEC described Cisneros as someone who “consistently sought
to create an environment where business and government can work
together in meaningful ways for the betterment of society.”
It went on: “The council seeks to create a forum in which effective
policy making is made by the public and private sectors working
together. Cisneros’ life’s work parallels the council’s
mission.”
According
to the
Green Left Weekly
,
however, Cisneros is “credited
with being a driving force behind the December 2002 nationwide lock-out
and sabotage of the oil industry, which drove the Venezuelan economy
into the ground by causing a historical drop of 27 percent in the
country’s GDP in the first trimester of 2003.” The U.S.-based
NGO Global Strike for Women condemned the IAEC’s decision to
give Cisneros the award, charging that he was a leader of the lock
out “aimed at forcing President Chávez from office”
and that “he played a similar role in the more recent oil lock
out orchestrated by the CIA and aimed at paralyzing the whole country.”
Cisneros
owns one of the largest privately held media, entertainment, technology,
and consumer products organizations in the world. His holdings include
Univision Communications, Inc., AOL Latin America, DIRECTV Latin
America, Claxson Interactive Group, Venevisión (Venezuela’s
largest television network), Los Leones del Caracas, Regional Brewing
Company, Backus & Johnston Brewing Company, and Pueblo International,
LLC.
It
should be remembered that two days after the aborted coup, Kissinger
partner Thomas “Mack” McLarty, vice chair of Kissinger
McLarty Associates and former President Clinton’s top adviser
on Latin America, penned an op-ed piece that issued a stern warning
to Brazilian leftist Luiz Igacio Lula da Silva: “[W]hat happened
in Venezuela could be perceived as a sign that messianic solutions,
as opposed to genuine reform measures, lead to disaster. It bodes
well for those in the region who advocate for open markets in the
region. I don’t think this is a net positive for Lula’s
candidacy.” Despite the warning, six months later Lula was
overwhelmingly elected president of Brazil.
A
s
for the current referendum campaign, Sumate admitted “that
there were instances where people signed the petition who were not
supposed to or who did so incorrectly,” Gregory Wilpert recently
reported. But the company maintains that although the invalid signatures
number around 265,000, there are still some 3.2 million valid signatures,
“which would be more than enough for a presidential recall
referendum, which requires over 2.4 million signatures (20 percent
of the registered electorate).”
In
early March, the national elections council (CNE) said only 1.8
million signatures had been verified, which fell some 500,000 short
of the needed number for the recall. According to BBC News, the
opposition could “still reach” the target because the
council will “publish lists of the disputed signatures and
set up posts where people who find themselves on these listings
can go and validate their entry.” The opposition however, declared
it would “not accept the electoral commission’s plans
for voters to confirm their signatures, complaining this was not
included in the initial rules for the referendum.” According
to Wilpert, international observers from the Carter Center, and
the OAS will judge whether the CNE is doing an evenhanded job. If
the CNE changes its ruling, Chavez could appeal it to the Supreme
Court, thus delaying the recall election until after August which
would then allow Chavez’s vice president to succeed him should
the election be held and he is defeated.
In
President Bush’s 2004 State of the Union address, he pledged
to double the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy. When
former Minnesota Republican Congressperson Vin Weber, a close ally
of then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, took over as chair of
NED’s board in July 2001, he made it clear that the organization
was interested in once again playing a more muscular role shaping
and supporting U.S. foreign policy objectives. That’s exactly
what it appears to be doing in Venezuela.
Bill Berkowitz
is a freelance writer regularly covering conservative movements.