April 17 (Bloomberg) -- In the two years since she signed a petition that forced a recall vote on President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan lawyer Rocio San Miguel says she lost her government job, colleagues became afraid to talk to her, and her husband, a pilot, was taken off active duty from the Air Force.
The practice of denying government jobs to some of the 3.4 million Venezuelans who signed the petition has intimidated voters and will help Chavez win re-election in December.
Thousands of people who signed the petition have been fired from the civil service and taken out of the running for government contracts.
This Chavez seems like such a nice guy. But how does he tie in with Peanuts Carter.
US News and World Report
In fact, it's something of a scandal that American news media have been taking the official vote count in Venezuela at face value. There is very good reason to believe that the exit poll had the result right, and that Chavez's election officials—and Carter and the American media—got it wrong.
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has been running an authoritarian regime. By various means he has taken control of the legislature, the courts, the armed services and the police. His thugs have been intimidating and even killing the regime's opponents.
Chavez is an ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro and an enemy of the United States, and he has shown no commitment to democratic principles.
Jimmy Carter has opposed independent exit polls in countries where he has observed elections.
Jimmy Carter did not remain in Venezuela long after the polling and, after a superficial look at the central counting center, pronounced the election fair and the result accurate. He could not have determined whether the counting computer was misprogrammed
Schoen has little doubt what happened. "I think it was a massive fraud," he told me..
The Opinion Journal Online (Wall Street Journal)
None of this would matter if the auditing process had been open to scrutiny by the Carter observers. But as the economists point out: "After an arduous negotiation, the Electoral Council allowed the OAS [Organization of American States] and the Carter Center to observe all aspects of the election process except for the central computer hub, a place where they also prohibited the presence of any witnesses from the opposition.
Venezuala is an important country in our hemisphere. They are sitting on quite a bit of oil. Jimmy Carter has given Chavez an enemy of American interests the appearence of legitimacy.
There's no doubt that the people of Venezula don't want Chavez to be in leadership there. The exit polling showed him losing 60-40. Jimmy Carter betrayed the Venezualan people. Now Chavez is taking it out on the folks that worked for change and won change only to have it stolen by Chavez with Carter's help.
Did it not occur to Jimmy Carter that he can't monitor an election without monitoring the computer that counts that ballots? What does Carter think election monitoring is?
Back when he was President Jimmy Carter announced that he would promote human rights before American Interests. Now we find that Carter despises American interests more than a lack of human rights. He's willing to work against American Interests even when that's in conflict with basic human rights.
Can't we just send Carter to France?