Shortly after Chavez lost his bid to have the people of Venezuela endorse his bid for absolute dictatorship, I worried that the defeat was just a delay to his ambitions. Indeed, Chavez seemed to debate whether to accept the outcome:
There was a disturbing few hours after the vote, however, during which the government gave no results whatsoever and Chavez pondered what to do.
"I tell you from the heart: for a few hours I debated with myself, in a dilemma," Chavez said. "I've now left the dilemma behind and I'm calm. I hope the Venezuelans are as well."
He added: "Now, Venezuelans, let's put our trust in our institutions."
The Weekly Standard reports on a Newsweek story on what happened during those few disturbing hours:
[B]y midweek enough information had emerged to conclude that Chávez did, in fact, try to overturn the results. As reported in El Nacional, and confirmed to me by an intelligence source, the Venezuelan military high command virtually threatened him with a coup d'état if he insisted on doing so. Finally, after a late-night phone call from Raúl Isaías Baduel, a budding opposition leader and former Chávez comrade in arms, the president conceded—but with one condition: he demanded his margin of defeat be reduced to a bare minimum in official tallies, so he could save face and appear as a magnanimous democrat in the eyes of the world.
So the vote tally was rigged. This time, due to the efforts of the Venezuelan military, it was rigged to show merely a narrow defeat instead of the larger margin against Chavez. Without that intervention, the rigging could have been for any vote tally Chavez wanted.
I trust that Chavez won't be as careless as to let the military intervene the next time Chavez attempts to seize power. And Chavez will still have the ability to adjust the vote count that nobody has questioned in their relief of Chavez's defeat, thus by implication endorsing a system that is corrupt to the core.
Don't be surprised if the next vote magically endorses Chavez. The vote Chavez lost was rigged. Chavez will ensure he chooses the final numbers next time more to his liking.
