Miguel Octavio, resident Venezolaan bij Salon Blogs, wat het niet eens met het artikeltje van de mens van Fark:

When 1.5 million people, mostly adults, in a city of 3.5 million go to a march to ask Chavez to resign, I dont think you can say this is a minority. Moreover, the “white” people in Venezuela are less than 20% of the population. there are no race issues in Venezuela, there are social ones, Chavze ahs done littel for the poor except to create violent, paid neighbor groups to terrorize people. Hugo Chavez is a criminal, responsible for 250 deaths on his first coup in ’92 and a documented genocide in April of this year. Human Rights Organizations have found over 400 violation to human rights and freedom of speech. The OAS has placed cautionary protection on orders not only on the media, but also on local Human Rights Organizations. Chavez spent last week two hours defending the confessed assasin of Plaza Altamira. 8 of 20 members of the Supreme Court said last week they cant work under the pressure and persecution of the Government. A referendum requested by 2 million Venezuelans is not recognized by the Governemnt despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled twice to reject suits by the Government agaisnt the referendum. The Governemnt and the National Assembly refuses to fund the referendum. Initially the Chavez Governemnt had 132 out of the 164 deputies of teh Assembly, today its majority is 83, Why do you think that is? We Venezuelans discovered long time ago that nobody, whether the US or Europe will help us get rid of Chavez, so we will, and we dont give a damn what people say, we will have a free, democratic Government for all Venezuelans and we will get rid of the madman that is Hugo Chavez. And it will happen sooner rather than later. We have pots abd pans to protest, Chavez has guns…We will prevail.

Democracy is like being pregnant: you can’t be half democratic and reject elections or demand unconstitutional referenda just because you don’t like the man in power. I guess.

Look at the USA: Al Gore should by rights have won the elections. He didn’t. Tough. That he didn’t win because of Bush’s underhanded dealing in Florida doesn’t matter. He didn’t, and the US (and the rest of the world) had to resign itself to living with Dubya.

It’s been said that out of 200 million voters, 150 did not vote for Bush–quite a different statistic from Venezuela you’ll have to agree. Now could the people that actually voted for Gore demand a referendum? Sure they could. But can they demand a binding referendum that would force the elected president to step down? No they can’t.

Because, and this is very important, they have to play the game by the rules. As Churchill had it: “Democracy is a very bad form of government. Unfortunately all the others are so much worse.” Once you decide to break a rule or two, there’s no telling where you’ll end up. Chile 1973, anyone?