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It was only 6% in the exit polls (43% to 37%), but I was hoping he would climb close to 50% for a stronger leftist mandate. (Probably--given likely Colorado Party election fraud efforts--he real mandate is closer to 50%.) It looks like the third candidate Oviedo had a surge and took votes from Ovelar. But we should remain aware--as Lugo certainly will be--that he did not receive a majority of the votes (apparently), and will have to work more by consensus and coalition. He certainly knows how to do that. He did an amazing job pulling the fractious Paraguayan left together for this historic victory. I remember predictions, when he first announced, that it would be nearly impossible to get them to pull together, and some comments around Christmas time that the coalition wasn't working. I don't think the pre-election polls ever put him higher than about 35% (in a multi-candidate field). This is truly a great victory. Now he has to pull the country together--and he may be facing a great crisis in neighbor Bolivia right away, if the white separatists split off their gas/oil-rich provinces (which border Paraguay) from the central government of Evo Morales, and there is a civil war in Bolivia--which I know the Bush Junta is working hard to instigate.
The final comments in this campaign by the Colorado Party leaders--candidate Olevar and former president Duarte--were very disturbing. They played the "terrorist" card, and as much as accused Lugo of being a "terrorist-lover" because, they said, there was evidence of FARC (leftist guerillas) in the poverty-stricken province where Lugo had been bishop for 12 years. The Bushites surely are advising the Colorado Party. They are trying to paint all of these new leftist leaders in South America as "terrorists.
They had Uribe (president of fascist Colombia) entice Chavez into hostage negotiations with the FARC, and then pulled the plug--Uribe suddenly announced that he was rescinding the request--just as Chavez was about to get the first two of six hostages released, and the Colombia military furthermore bombed the location of the first two hostages, as they were in route to their freedom, driving them back into the jungle on a 20-mile hike. (Chavez managed to get them out some weeks late--and then four more). This was colossal treachery by Uribe and the Bushites, and it's become clear, in retrospect, that the goal was to get Chavez associated with FARC in the public mind, to demonize him as a "terorist-lover" and probably to hand him a disaster (dead hostages). It was a set up.
You can see that Donald Rumsfeld was following this hostage matter closely, and was probably orchestrating the trap. He wrote about it in an op-ed in the Washington Post* the very weekend that the trap was to have been sprung--Dec 1, 2007--and mentions it in his first paragraph. (He says Chavez's hostages efforts were "not welcome in Colombia." But they had been welcome only days before. Was it Rumsfeld himself who called Uribe to spring the trap?) A couple of other things happened like this (treachery around hostages releases), then came a Colombia/U.S. military incursion into Ecuador.
Rafael Correa (president of Ecuador) almost got caught in this similar trap. He and the presidents of France--and possibly also Venezuela and Argentina--were in touch with the chief FARC hostage negotiator, Raul Reyes, with hostages negotiations "very advanced" (according to Correa, speaking afterward), including release of high profile hostage Ingrid Betancourt, when Colombia suddenly bombed a FARC camp inside Ecuador--using ten 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs" and U.S. survelliance (and very possibly U.S. aircraft and personnel)--killing Reyes and more than 20 others (including an Ecuadoran citizen and several visiting Mexican students), and then sent Colombian troops over the border to shoot any survivors. They had all been asleep; bodies were found in their pajamas shot in the back (according to reports from the Ecuadoran military). Rafael Correa was furious at this violation of Ecuador's sovereignty. He rushed military battalions to Ecuador's border. They were very close to war. Chavez also sent the Venezuela military to reinforce Venezuela's border with Colombia, probably to reassure Correa that he was not alone in facing Colombia/U.S. aggression. Chavez then talked Correa out of retaliating--a very smart move, because this, too, had been a trap--to draw them into a war, and create a major destabilization of the region. (About a week later, Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, called Chavez "the great peacemaker.")
When the Bushites couldn't draw them into war, they concocted documents, supposedly in a laptop computer taken from the bombed FARC camp, which Bush's pal Uribe started proclaiming as evidence that Chavez and Correa were funding, and/or being funded by, friendly with, and colluding with, FARC "terrorists."
So this has become the tenor of Bush Junta foreign policy in South America. Treachery. Wild accusations. Lies. Disinformation. (Just like the WMD lies about Iraq.) Trying to create suspicions, and "divide and conquer." Accusing others of what they themselves are doing (terrorizing). Destabilization. Destuction of the peace. Causing major trouble. Their goal, of course: to regain global corporate predator control of the Venezuelan and Ecuadoran oil fields. Chaos = opportunity. So they create chaos.
It is their M.O. in Iraq. It is Rumsfeld's M.O. And they are not done. They want an oil war in South America this year. And where they mean to get it started is Bolivia, right next door to Paraguay (because Venezuela and Ecuador wouldn't bite--wouldn't be baited--and everything else they've tried in those countries has failed; Correa is cleaning the CIA out of Ecuador's military, as we speak). So they want to exploit the civil war they've stoked up among the rich white separatists, on Paraguay's border, in Bolivia. And possibly they hope to draw Bolivia's strong allies, Venezuela and Ecuador (and maybe Argentina), into that conflict.
Duarte and Ovelar mouthing off about Lugo being a "terrorist-lover" occurred in this context. It is more than demagoguery. It is a war plan. And the Colorado Party seems to be playing the Bushite game.
Lugo's election is far more important that most North Americans realize. It is a huge monkey wrench in the Bushites' plan to destabilize the Andes region. Lugo opposes the U.S. air base in Paraguay, for instance, and wants it gone, and will certainly oppose U.S. interference in Bolivia. He is not in a terribly strong position to oppose them. He is new, and inexperienced, and has still to create a new, clean, reform government--after 60 years of entrenched fascism and corruption. (He repeatedly tells people that "I am not Hugo Chavez"--probably because the corporate crap rags keep asking him about it, and trying to paint him as a socialist firebrand and "friend of Fidel Castro" as they do to Chavez and every other pro-people leader in South America.) But he is not the corrupt, collusive , rightwing Colorado Party. He will not create an easy atmosphere for fascist/corporate plotting against his neighbors. He is an honest man, and a genuine advocate of the poor.
As for his safety, just remember that he is not alone. And Rafael Correa is not alone. And Hugo Chavez is not alone. And Cristina Fernandez (Argentina) is not alone. And Michele Batchelet (Chile) is not alone. And Tabare Vasquez (Uruguay) is not alone. And Lula da Silva is not alone. And Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) is not alone. ?They are all in this together. All the new leftist governments, and their millions and millions of supporters. It is a new day in South America. Everything has changed.
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