Jack Sweeney
Monday, Aug. 16, 2004

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  However, at 3:47 a.m. Monday the National Electoral Council (CNE) officially pronounced Chavez the winner by an equally lopsided 58.25 percent to 41.74 percent, based on a count of 94.49 percent of the automated acts transmitted by some 9,000 voting centers to the CNE.

According to the CNE´s official numbers, Chavez won 4.99 million votes, about 1.2 million votes more than he won in the 1998 presidential elections, when the abstention rate topped 56 percent. The CNE also put the abstention rate at 40 percent.

Some CD leaders immediately charged that the government committed a massive electoral fraud. However, if a fraud was indeed committed within the CNE, the CD could have difficulty proving it.

Senior CD officials such as Miranda state Gov. Enrique Mendoza have not made any public declarations as of 11:30 a.m. local time. However, if the CD cannot prove that fraud occurred and Chavez´s CNE-declared victory is ratified by the Organization of American States (OAS) and Carter Center for Democracy, it´s likely that the CD will implode.

Meanwhile, Chavez lost no time proclaiming his victory to the international community. He also declared the referendum's results validated his mandate to advance his Bolivarian Revolution.

If the CNE's numbers hold up, the question is what happened to the political opposition. Was the CD guilty of hubris? Are its leaders incompetent? Did the opposition underestimate Chavez? In our view, the answer is all three of the above.

The political opposition in Venezuela has always underestimated Chavez. This isn't a gratuitous criticism if one considers that the Clinton and Bush administrations with all their supposed resources at the State Department and other U.S. government entities also have consistently underestimated him.

$1,200 a Vote

Chavez might not have committed fraud. However, he did buy the election in a way, spending at least $6 billion on social 'missions' that boosted his favorable ratings from 28 percent to 40 percent in only four months.

Caracas-based analyst Michael Rowan calculates that Chavez won close to 5 million votes at a cost of about $1,200 a vote in a country where two-thirds of the population earn less than $800 a month per capita and the remaining third less than $400 a month.

With oil prices topping $45 a barrel, Chavez has plenty of cash to continue spending on the poor to retain their support, possibly assuring his re-election in 2006 for a second six-year term in power.

Chavez also has lots of ready cash to spend on his international Bolivarian causes in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and other countries.

Bush's Headache

The Bush administration, meanwhile, has a major geopolitical headache. The State Department was quietly hoping the referendum would solve Venezuela's democratic crisis by resulting in Chavez's resignation. Instead Chavez now has a re-legitimized democratic mandate, and State doesn't have any fallback options except to congratulate him.

If the results of the recall referendum are validated by the OAS and Carter Center (and we think it´s likely they will be), Chavez would have a democratic mandate he likely will use to continue his anti-U.S. foreign policies in Latin America, Likely U.S. casualties of these Bolivarian policies will include the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the Andean expansion of Plan Colombia and other U.S. interests in the region.

Chavez's referendum victory is a huge boost for the expanding Castro-Chavez-Lula axis in Latin America. It will invigorate extremist nationalst groups in many countries. Chavez's win is also a major security setback for Colombia, particularly if Chavez now starts to expand Venezuela's military capabilities.

An interesting factoid: The number and percentage of votes CNE gives Chavez is nearly the mirror image of votes Coordinadora claims were yes votes for recall. Some foreign observers (press) think the government did commit electronic fraud, but they also think Gaviria and Carter will validate the results as honest and transparent.

Jack Sweeney writes for Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington.

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