U.K. Independent 13 March 2004:
| Washington has been channelling hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the political opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - including those who briefly overthrew the democratically elected leader in a coup two years ago.
...Jeremy Bigwood, a Washington-based freelance journalist who obtained the documents, yesterday told The Independent: "This repeats a pattern started in Nicaragua in the election of 1990 when [the US] spent $20 per voter to get rid of [the Sandinista President Daniel] Ortega. It's done in the name of democracy but it's rather hypocritical. Venezuela does have a democratically elected President who won the popular vote which is not the case with the US." ..."It the sort of stuff that used to be done by the CIA," said Mr Bigwood. "I am not particularly interested in Mr Chavez - I am interested in what Washington is doing." |
U.S. New Pravda (aka New York Times) 11 March 2004:
| Under United States pressure to allow a recall referendum against his rule, President Hugo Chávez has in recent days counterattacked, charging that the Bush administration is trying to oust him by aiding his adversaries, including those who briefly overthrew him in a 2002 coup.
Mr. Chávez has seized on the information in reams of United States government documents, made public by a pro-Chávez group in New York that show Washington is trying to strengthen political parties and other antigovernment groups that want to remove the populist firebrand through a recall. ...Endowment aid had fallen to $257,000 in 2000, as political parties and other beneficiaries in Venezuela were left crippled after Mr. Chávez's sweeping victories in elections. Assistance more than tripled to $877,000 in 2001 as political parties reorganized to counter the president. In 2002, aid rose again, to $1.1 million. |
YWA 16 February 2004
| [From VHeadline.com] President Chavez questions the support given by the US Department of State to groups seeking to oust him. He held copies of declassified documents (obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act) which show monetary support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to groups such as SUMATE which provided logistical support for the recall drive last November ... criticized at the time by electoral authorities for illegally using portable computers with databases of voters at petition collection centers ... "now we know where they got the money to buy those portable computers." |
Previous posts on Venezuela
More information on Venezuela
Chavez rally last month in Caracas (Egilda Gomez -- Miraflores Press Via AP)
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