Throughout November, as in this Nov. 4 march, Venezuelans have been filling the streets. Having tasted justice since Hugo Chavez became their president, their appetites are whetted and they won’t stop ‘til justice is chiseled into the constitution! Photo: Venezuela Information Office

The Associated Press, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post and many local papers characterized the democratically elected president of Venezuela as a strongman with dictatorial urges, hoping to consolidate power through the passage of some 69 constitutional updates. Public opinion polls were cited, opposition leaders were quoted and the general tone was set to present the reforms as inherently undemocratic and serving only to centralize state power, embodied by none other than Evildoer-of-the-Year President Hugo Chavez.

With the groundwork laid, those same newspapers issued editorials last week reiterating the anti-Chavez bias already demonstrated in reporting on the reform process. The Chicago Tribune falsely reported that the reforms would ban due process during states of emergency. The Washington Post claimed, against all evidence, that the reforms would curtail freedom of expression in Venezuela.

The Washington Times stated inaccurately that Chavez "controls most major Venezuelan media," an allegation easily refuted by a quick review of Venezuela's overwhelmingly privately-owned news outlets. The Times' particularly uninformed editorial followed an opinion piece earlier in the month penned by none other than notorious Cold War player Oliver North, who believes Chavez has "pulled a coup" on the Venezuelan people. Similar egregious opinion pieces followed in the national press.

Afro-Venezuelans tend to be loyal Chavistas – appreciating a president who proudly describes his roots as African and Indigenous. Photo: Venezuela Information Office

Will this paternalistic attitude toward the Global South ever end? Ratliff, who made a career of anti-Communism at the ironically named "Independent Institute," made the arrogant claim that Venezuelans do not understand the political process underway in their country. Just what have the Venezuelan people been duped about?

Perhaps it is Article 337 on states of emergency, which, following debates by lawmakers, now surpasses international requirements for citizen protections as set out by the U.N.? Could it be the reform legalizing continual terms for presidential incumbents, a measure which our own FDR advocated and used to remain in office for four terms? Or is it the article that would officially recognize Afro-Venezuelan culture as an integral part of Venezuelan's national identity?

These reform measures are not an attempt by President Chavez to pull the wool over the eyes of the Venezuelan people. Nor are other proposed constitutional changes that would lower the voting age from 18 to 16 years of age, make resources available to districts and cities that have been long forgotten due to economic and infrastructural factors, and put the power to decide Venezuela's short term interest rates in the hands of elected officials rather than Central Bank appointees. These reforms have been proposed in an effort to expand the existing process of social and economic transformation currently underway in our neighbor to the South.

It is hard for most Americans to remember a time when the poor in the U.S. were this enthusiastic about their president and their future. Photo: Venezuela Information Office

Despite reports in the U.S. media that student views are silenced, opposition students have met with Venezuela's National Assembly, Supreme Court and National Electoral Council. Each of these three branches of government have received student protesters - lawmakers invited them more than once - and heard their concerns.

Violence at student marches has been infrequent and isolated. However, when gunfire erupted on a university campus in Caracas, the U.S. media was quick to attribute the aggression to pro-Chavez students. The Wall Street Journal later let slip that students in support of the reforms were targeted and trapped in a burning building, thus locked in a "standoff with a crowd of students, until a group of armed civilians on motorcycles intervened to allow the Chávez supporters to escape."

Last month, Brazilian President Lula da Silva urged the international community and press to evaluate the situation in Venezuela honestly before jumping to conclusions. "Please," he said, "invent anything to criticize Chávez, except for lack of democracy. I have been in office for five years and run twice for president and twice for mayor. As far as I am concerned, during that very period, there have been three referendums, three elections and four plebiscites. Everything but discussion lacks in Venezuela."

Ten electoral processes have occurred during the nine years that the Chavez administration has been in office. International monitors from the Carter Center, the OAS, the EU and the NAACP have deemed elections free and fair and witnessed impressive rates of voter turnout. In their 2006 presidential election report, the NAACP stated that "the Venezuelan government has gone to great lengths to ensure the legitimacy of the electoral process."

While the turnout of 300,000 on Nov. 21 is the largest in the campaign leading up to the Dec. 2 vote on constitutional reforms, this march on Nov. 4 was also massive. Photo: Venezuela Information Office

As Venezuelans prepare to head to the polls this Sunday and vote to approve or reject the new constitutional reforms, more balanced and truthful reporting on the political situation of the country is needed. Although the mass media and the Bush administration, who too often seem to finish one another's sentences, may not approve of the results, Venezuelans have the right to reform their constitution.

Let us not forget the words of founding father Thomas Jefferson, who supported this democratic measure when he said, "No society can make a perpetual Constitution. ... The Earth belongs always to the living generation. ... Every Constitution ... naturally expires at the end of 19 years [a generation]."

Olivia Goumbri is the director of the Venezuela Information Office in Washington, D.C. She is the editor of The Venezuela Reader (EPICA 2005). For more information on Venezuela, visit www.veninfo.org.

Editor's note: Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff, whose uncle, Dr. Leo Ratcliff, a neurosurgeon, added the letter C to the family name Ratliff, wonders whether William Ratliff, who wrote the Los Angeles Times opinion piece mentioned above, is descended from slavemasters who "owned" the enslaved Africans from whom he descends.

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