In what may be the least surprising story of the year, Newsweek reports that Chavez might not have been so gracious in defeat after all:
[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 IsaÃas 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 after this purportedly narrow loss Chávez did not even request a recount, and nearly every Latin American colleague of Chávez’s congratulated him for his “democratic” behavior.
If it’s true, one would expect the purges to begin in Venezuela any moment now. But don’t expect any deep introspection on the left, where the new story of Chavez shows Bush what real democracy is has already become a favorite narrative. HT: Farley
