VHeadline.com commentarist Elio Cequea writes: 

Dear Mr. Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

I have read the letter that you sent to the President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, to the president of the Venezuelan Supreme Court Ivan Rincon and to the president of the National Assembly (AN) Francisco Ameliach.

I will borrow some of your own words to minimize the possibility that you might misunderstand what I am going to express.

I am deeply concern about your position with regards to the organization Sumate. The leaders of this organization are not “fellow democrats” to anybody in Venezuela. They were not exercising their civic rights while participating in the presidential referendum process … at least not the rights of the kind of organization they are supposed to be.

Their role was a little too big, obviously biased and far from democratic.

I am appalled of the magnitude of the ignorance you and the people who signed that letter have about what is going on in Venezuela. Pardon my “English,” but there are no better words to express it … well, there are but I will not use them in this letter.

The only other possible explanation for such a sorry and pitiful display of international bureaucratic political artillery is that all of you are working for “somebody.” Your letter seems to be in line with the recent recommendation of Senator Richard Lugar, Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Affairs Commission. He called for a “muscular engagement” with regards to Venezuela. That will not do much to strengthen your integrity because by writing this you are showing little regard for facts and truth.

Sumate, ladies and gentlemen, is supposed to be a Non-Governmental Organization. It is also a non-profit organization .. this non-profit NGO has acted, since its creation, as a regular, common and vulgar political party in Venezuela. Part of their democratic “civic education efforts” in the presidential referendum was running publicity campaigns in favor of the SI (YES) option, exactly what the rest of the parties in the opposition were doing. As you know, I hope you do, the SI option was to remove the President.

This NGO, ladies and gentlemen, also paid a couple of dummies with college degrees to come up with a statistical study that concluded that in the referendum there was a 99% possibility of fraud. At this point in time, more than two months later, nobody has been able to show not even 0.01% of proofs of any fraud. They left 1% of possibility that there wasn't any fraud. Figure that out!

I hope you heard about the coup of April 11, 2002. Dictator for a day Pedro Carmona canceled by decree all the democratic institutions.

Democratic friends and human right defenders of the world, that decree was a real and “grave threat to democracy”. Maria Corina Machado, the leader of the group “whose deep commitment to democratic principles you share and applaud,” signed that decree.

Your support to this person and her organization is what I would call “clearly” inconsistent with international democratic norms.

I have not read the regulations established in the Inter-American Democratic Charter or the Warsaw Declaration of the Communities of Democracies. But, I know that the US follows those regulations.

Respectable ladies and Honorable gentlemen, by the Federal Law of the United States of America, it is illegal for any foreign organization to give contributions to the Republican, Democrat or any political organization engage in politics.

So it is in The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela!

If you would like to hear about dead people “democratically” signing the petition for the presidential referendum, please let me know. I will be glad to tell you about it.

If you would like to spend your money in a true pro-democracy organization, send it to VHeadline.com.

We are open for democratic business!

Respectfully,

Elio Cequea
mailto:elio@vheadline.com

www.vheadline.com/cequea commentaries by Elio Cequea