US
Secretly Funding
Opponents Of Chavez
By Andrew Buncombe
13 March 2004
Independent
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.
Documents obtained
under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that, in 2002, America paid
more than a million dollars to those political groups in what it claims
is an ongoing effort to build democracy and "strengthen political
parties". Mr Chavez has seized on the information, telling Washington
to "get its hands off Venezuela".
The revelation about
America's funding of Mr Chavez's opponents comes as the president is
facing a possible recall referendum and has been rocked by a series
of violent street demonstrations in which at least eight people have
died. His opponents, who include politicians, some labour leaders, media
executives and former managers at the state oil company, are trying
to collect sufficient signatures to force a national vote. The documents
reveal that one of the group's organising the collection of signatures
- Sumate - received $53,400 (£30,000) from the US last September.
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."
The funding has
been made by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) a non-profit
agency financed entirely by Congress. It distributes $40m (£22m)
a year to various groups in what it says is an effort to strengthen
democracy.
But critics of the
NED say the organisation routinely meddles in other countries' affairs
to support groups that believe in free enterprise, minimal government
intervention in the economy and opposition to socialism in any form.
In recent years, the NED has channelled funds to the political opponents
of the recently ousted Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide at the
same time that Washington was blocking loans to his government.
"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." In Venezuela, the NED channelled the money
to three of its four main operational "wings": the international
arms of the Republican and Democratic parties - the International Republican
Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
respectively - and the foreign policy wing of the AFL-CIO union, the
American Centre for International Labour Solidarity.
These groups ran
workshops, training sessions and provided free advice to three political
parties in Venezuela - Democratic Action, Copei and First Justice -
the leaderships of which have been at the forefront of efforts to recall
Mr Chavez.
Chris Sabatini,
the director of the NED for Latin America, claimed the organisation's
aim is to promote democracy and "build political space". He
told the New York Times that the endowment had been working with civic
groups in Venezuela with no political ties and human rights groups.
Relations between
the US and Venezuela have not been so tense since April 2002 when Mr
Chavez was briefly ousted by opponents who had been supported by the
US in the run-up to the coup. At the time, Washington blamed Mr Chavez
for his own downfall.
Washington's antipathy
towards Mr Chavez is fuelled by his friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro
and his open criticism of Washington-backed free market policies. But
Venezuela is also America's fourth largest supplier of oil - something
that gives Mr Chavez a degree of leverage but, at the same time, makes
him vulnerable to those who would like to see a more pro-American leader
in power.
In recent days,
Caracas and other cities have been rocked by demonstrations in support
of the recall vote. Those intensified after the supposedly independent
elections council ruled that government opponents lacked enough total
signatures to force the vote. There have also been large and vociferous
marches by thousands of supporters of the president who oppose the vote.