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'Mr. Fraud' Chavez tells foes 'accept defeat'
Chavez is living in a leftist dream world.
Venezuela's president has urged his opponents to accept his victory in last Sunday's referendum on his rule. "I invite my countrymen to talk,
while he murders
even to my most bitter enemies I offer my hand," said Hugo Chavez, whose populist policies have split Venezuelan opinion. Mr Chavez officially won 59% of the vote, sparking allegations of vote-rigging from the opposition. The country's electoral authorities say preliminary results of an audit on the vote show there was no fraud.
(Sure, not one little vote out of place.)
The result has also been endorsed by international election monitors. Mr Chavez said his opponents were "embarrassing themselves in front of the whole world".
There is that thing with the exit polls...
"These are absurd charges of a fraud that has not appeared anywhere and will not appear anywhere," he said during a late-night broadcast. Electoral authorities say more than 30% of 150 randomly chosen polling sites have been checked so far - confirming the outcome of the vote there. The outcome of the audit is expected to be published over the weekend.
(This problem is not over by a long shot.)
It is being carried out by the official electoral authority - the Venezuelan National Electoral Council - and international observers from the Carter Center and the Organization of American States (OAS). They are checking the results produced by voting machines in 150 polling stations against paper records, in the presence of government and opposition representatives. The main opposition parties have refused to send representatives, saying the review would not properly investigate their allegations of massive fraud in the vote. They are calling for checks to include touch-screen voting machines, saying many were rigged - allegations rejected by electoral officials.

Announcing the audit on Tuesday, former US President Jimmy Carter said he and the OAS had suggested the move to allay fears over the validity of the outcome. He stressed that he himself had "no reason to doubt the integrity of the electoral process or the accuracy of the referendum itself". The opposition has fought a tireless campaign to see Mr Chavez ousted. The president survived a short-lived coup in April 2002 and a two-month strike that badly damaged the economy later that year. The referendum was called after the opposition collected signatures from 20% of the population - a recall mechanism inserted into the Venezuelan constitution by Mr Chavez in 1999.
Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-08-21
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=41170