[Marxism] NACLA, Michael Coppedge and ?political risk? in Venezuela

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

For the first time in many months, I took a look 
at the latest issue of NACLA­a journal on Latin 
American politics that was launched by 60s 
radicals but today is anything but. Despite the 
presence of contributions by some decent people, 
like William Robinson who used to write for the 
radical American newsweekly the Guardian, it 
contains an article that can best be described as disinformation.

Titled ?In Defense of Polyarchy,? and written by 
Notre Dame Professor Michael Coppedge, it states:

"I recognize that Hugo Chávez, or his candidates 
or proposals, have won at the polls consistently 
and repeatedly since 1998 (although if the 
government had not delayed the recall referendum 
by more than a year, he would have been voted out 
in 2003). But polyarchy requires more than 
winning elections, even though some in the U.S. 
government sometimes forget this when it suits 
their purposes. Polyarchy also requires holding 
fair elections, and there have already been some 
abuses of this in Venezuela: physical 
intimidation of opposition voters at the polls; 
preferential registration of likely Chávez 
voters, including some noncitizens; and possible 
small-scale electronic fraud. And there are good 
reasons to believe that future elections will not 
be fair, if the government needs them not to be 
fair. There has been proof that voting machines 
can be used to invalidate the secret ballot if 
the government wants to do that. There is now an 
unreasonably partisan electoral council that has 
repeatedly shown that it does not make fair 
decisions, and the courts are stacked in a 
systematic way so that it?s impossible to turn to 
them to appeal these decisions of the electoral 
council. For all these reasons, there are 
questions about whether future elections will be fair."

As is so often the case with these sorts of 
scholarly pieces, it is difficult to figure out 
where the author is coming from ideologically. A 
check of Professor Coppedge?s CV at the Notre 
Dame website provides some background.

In 2005, Coppedge was a ?Member of expert group 
advising academics contracted by USAID to do a 
quantitative assessment of its Democracy 
Promotion activities?. Great, just what NACLA 
needs­contributors who consulted with USAID on 
?democracy promotion?. Anybody who has followed 
Venezuela politics over the past 5 years knows 
that the USAID has funded and advised anti-Chavez 
groups. What audacity. Coppedge writes about the 
threat that Chavez poses to Venezuela democracy 
when he is on the payroll of an outfit that has 
promoted coup attempts repeatedly.

full: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/02/03/nacla-michael-coppedge-and-political-risk-in-venezuela/ 


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