By Franz J. T. Lee

A few days ago "Time" magazine published an interesting world article, "Is Chavez's Opposition For Real?", edited by its correspondent in Caracas, Jens Erik Gould.

Apart from the standard ideological arguments and hints that are being launched internationally against the Bolivarian Revolution of the Venezuelan government of democratically elected President Hugo Chavez Frias ... who already fully participates in the next presidential campaign and who is even more popular than ever ... surprisingly, this editorial is very informative.

According to the author, "nobody doubts" ... who knows, probably not even Bush, Rice or Rumsfeld would doubt ... that President Chavez is a "brilliant politician". However, against his only surviving competitor ... the current governor of Zulia state, the unified candidate of the "opposition" ... Manuel Rosales, Chavez is "virtually" unchallenged. However, he has an aggressive weakness, he simply "loves to pick fights with the U.S." About Chavez picking fights with poverty in the world, the author is dead silent.

This is one of the Big Lies that is being disseminated by the international information war agencies against Venezuela across the globe. Like in all such cases of fascist Orwellian propaganda the truth is exactly the opposite!

Who and what are picking a fight here are the United States sponsored and directed NGOs, CIA, paramilitary forces, SUMATE, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the American Embassy in Caracas.

Nonetheless, the editorial admits that it is very difficult to imagine how Chavez could be toppled democratically, by the ballot, "because his opposition has proven to be one of the most incompetent and fractured in the hemisphere", also because "divisive infighting has been the opposition's norm". Well, on the one hand, the author argues that the "opposition" is "incompetent" to depose Chavez, but, on the other hand, it is not clear what makes the author believe that these "fractured" leaders would be competent to rule Venezuela in the age of globalization. What is the ultima ratio that Chavez should be ousted from power when the majority of Venezuelans are happy with his current government, sufficient reason to re-elect him again?

In the last analysis, whose class interests do the Time magazine and its Latin American correspondents really represent and defend?

However, out of authentic journalistic fairness we have to acknowledge that the author mentions a number of key truths about Venezuelan reality that seldom are published in the huge global mass media.

According to the article, the opposition "failed to wrest power from Chavez with a coup d'etat in 2002". This is very interesting news indeed.

According to the "opposition" in April 2002 there was a "power vacuum" in Caracas that it heroically tried to fill. Categorically the leaders of the "opposition" deny that they ever had in mind to unseat Chavez by means of a violent, terrorist coup d'etat. If Time magazine should be telling the truth, then the Venezuelan "opposition" has become a lair of venomous vipers, a golpista nest, that nurtures the human "leftovers from the corrupt political class", who have ransacked Venezuela for 40 years, and who with their oil sabotage have committed high treason and really deserve to serve long sentences in jail.

If they did what they were doing here in the USA or France, they would have been arrested immediately, and for the rest of their lives they would have vegetated behind bars. In fascist countries, in past military dictatorships or massacres, like we had in Indonesia, Chile, Argentina and even in Venezuela, they would have been placed along the wall and shot dead already on April 15, 2002.

They should thank their lucky stars that they live in democratic Venezuela of the Bolivarian Revolution. Thanks to Chavez that these treacherous golpistas are still alive! Next time, for one moment they should reflect this historic truth, before they continue with their diatribal speeches against human rights in current Venezuela.

Bingo, for Time magazine, there was an attempt of a military coup d'etat in 2002; de facto, it lasted only 47 hours.

Really, in Venezuela human rights and freedoms have no limits. With all its human experiments, this is a real, true democratic society, which has very few parallels in history.

But look who all are afraid of the following: the "opposition widely complains that irregularities in the voter registry could help the government tamper with election results"? Well, its leading political figures have participated in previous electoral "irregularities"; by now they should be experts in tampering with votes. After all, in Florida and Oregon, also in Peru and Mexico, Big Brother, his Quislings and his supreme courts have taught us how to perform democratic fraud with an innocent republican face.

This is another Big Lie that the Caracas correspondent of Time magazine conveniently forgot to obliterate. Chavez does not need fraudulent elections, only losers, like George, take it all, rob votes.

Now, suddenly the "opposition" is realizing that "we have to build something bigger than us" (Julio Borges). Of course, to achieve this, it has to affirm Chavez, to negate Bush, to convert the social projects of the Bolivarian Revolutionary into Latin American reality, and only then, they could have a slight possibility of surpassing Chavez. This would be something really bigger than the current decadent "opposition", than the loyal henchmen of United States imperialism.

Another true dialectical opposite, a dialectical negation, is already being born within the very ranks of the Bolivarian Revolution itself. Its dynamo of class struggle ... guided by a youthful praxis and theory, by a new, young generation of revolutionaries who will eventually replace this "opposition", including the "chavistas without Chavez" ... eventually will oust these political dinosaurs, the leftovers of an opulent, dying, parasitic class.

And, after the official inscription of his candidature, how is Rosales trying to affirm Chavez? He offers Venezuela what Chavez in any case has been doing over the last seven years already:

"He has promised to counter the surging housing deficit and to fight the out-of-control crime and police corruption that has fueled public anger. In an effort to move beyond his core backers in the middle class, he also promised to distribute Venezuela's oil wealth more equally than the current government, proposing a direct payoff of petro-dollars to families."
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1225944,00.html

What the "opposition" really has in mind we are not being told. The 47 hours of their "golpista" glory tell the whole story. If they ever should come to power again, we will experience the next "Djakarta Massacre" in Venezuela, a military "dictatorship of 20 years" (Carlos Ortega). We surely would not enjoy the democratic luck of the current golpista opposition! Hence, emancipators beware!

To what conclusion does the author come?

To: Within the next six years, in Venezuela "anything can happen".

"Still, with 55 percent of Venezuelans expecting to vote for Chavez, many pro and anti-Chavez Venezuelans alike take it for granted that he will win another six years in power. But then again, this is a country that over the last four years has seen a failed coup d'etat, two-month oil strikes and a referendum on the president's rule. In other words, in the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez, anything can happen." (ibid.)

On August 12, during his address to the nation, accompanied by ten thousands of loyal comrades, with regard to his future political plans of elevating the Bolivarian Revolution to a higher plane, Chavez confirmed that:
“The birth of popular power starts first with the creation of popular organizations and from the political leadership, both those responsible for the direction of the country from the political, economic, military and social standpoint to those responsible at the social basis, at the grass roots�?.

The dice is cast: in Venezuela the presidential campaign has begun. All over the country the various states have been instructed to win a certain minimum amount of votes, which finally should add up to the nationally desired ten million votes. I

In the case of the state of Mérida, where Governor Florencio Porras has asked me to help in the political assessment and revolutionary direction of the presidential campaign, we have to obtain a minimum of 300 000 votes. Hence, our political battle also has begun, against many counter-revolutionary tricks that the "opposition" has in store for Venezuela. At the eleventh hour, knowing that it has no chance whatsoever of victory, Manuel Rosales may play the famous sabotage card again, that is, to retire from the presidential elections.

In such a case of political boycott, of a constitutional coup, President Chavez, like President Fidel Castro Ruz did in the past, would have to call for a national referendum and have to ask the millions of proletarian voters if they deem it necessary that their beloved president should stay on till 2021 or even till 2030.
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=66124