Voter intimidation, also called voter manipulation, in Venezuela is underway. Even their state-backed polls reflect voter fear. President Hugo Chavez has stacked and packed all voting apparatus: there is nothing in that determinedly forlorn country that has one honest portion of the machinery of democracy left untouched/unmanipulated by Chavez's reach.

Investor's Business Daily commendably tells us how it is done and why Chavez's pollsters have tapped the local fear factor. In a real democracy, no one should fear anything about their secret ballot. In an alternative democracy- a parallel universe of fraud and deception, commitment to controlling the masses through fear is a tool of the state machinery. Mario Vargas Llosa recently sent a beautifully worded formal Letter to the OAS and Insulza furtively seeking help for democracy's state-eradicating flame in Venezuela. After many weeks.....the OAS replied by agreeing, with the EU and Jimmy Carter, to a ridiculously modified and meaningless monitoring deal which indicates that there will be no effective or normative monitoring...at all. The OAS demanded more funds and staff to do this.

What we do not know is when the Carter, OAS and EU monitoring deals will be stopped because they too are shameless instruments of deception and fraud. The OAS has refused to act on its own Democracy Charter, denying scores of requests to do so, and reminds us that the OAS is a failed instrument of democracy itself.

To the pro-democracy requests for help, the voters of Venezuela get cut-away deal conspired by Hugo Chavez to give a false face to his democracy-ending activities and provide a false assurety that democracy lives in Caracas, when it does not. The voters of Venezuela get a paid-by- Chavez and rumored financial backing by unnamed so called NGO donors for a pricey deal for Jimmy Carter to perform `analysis' of their voting machine apparatus, stretching strategically out for many weeks, with a Report promised long after Chavez has celebrated his triumphal Crown as Dictator for Life. 

This is simply a planned delaying tactic to insure that confused voters line up for the show of democracy, dishonestly knowing full well that the machinery is false. But Carter and the OAS and the EU do not want us to grasp the fact that democracy is dead in Venezuela and so they have conspired to enable and assist their friend, Hugo Chavez's lie that democracy is flourishing.

The face of democracy is getting washed by these dirty tricks and false actors. Democracy's face deserves better than a face wash in polluted dirt.

All involved in this charade are held reprehensible.

As with justice, democracy and truth that is delayed is democracy and truth that is denied.

Pedro Camargo
--------------------------

Letter from Mario Vargas Llosa to OAS Secretary-General

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,
We are deeply concerned about the Venezuelan election next December 3rd. Every thing suggests that they will be not fair, transparent or right. There is mounting evidence of the pressure exerted on voters to back the official candidacy of Colonel Hugo Chávez, such as the pressure suffered by thousand employees of Pdvsa, the state energy company.

Truly democratic elections require not only a thorough count of votes on the election day. Pre-election rules must be also observed -fair apportionment of the time for propaganda and information on the media, unbiased accreditation of voters and lack of coercion. In Venezuela, all pre-election rules are being infringed, and the voters' choice has been altered beforehand.

The role of the Organization of American States (OAS) is crucial for survival of the Venezuelan democracy. No other organization in Latin America has the authority to admit or challenge electoral processes. OAS must speak up overtly with regard to such violation of the laws that lay the foundations of democracy. And on December 3rd, at the very least hint of fraud, in the event of proving it, it should speak loud and clear and back steadily Venezuelans' true will. This is the fundamental raison d'etre of OAS, ratified in the Democratic Charter -to ensure individual freedoms, clean rules of the game and respect of the majority's will.

Sincerely,

Mario Vargas Llosa
Chairman, International Foundation for Freedom (FIL)

Board of Directors: Gerardo Bongiovanni, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Enrique Ghersi, Pablo Izquierdo, Ian Vásquez, Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quirós.