According to the official, Ali Rodriguez was "offered the job last night," by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez but declined because of his commitments to OPEC.
Rodriguez has extended his stay in Venezuela by another week, OPEC's official said, a move which one OPEC source said could suggest that he is reconsidering the offer.***
This is not to say the coup was a necessary course of action, even from the standpoint of those who think Chavez must go. As Stephen Johnson of the Heritage Foundation points out, there were efforts already underway to remove Chavez from office through the devices of Venezuela's own constitution. It is possible to believe that his days were numbered without have to resort to extra-legal methods.
The coup went so badly that it's hard not to wonder whether Chavez didn't have a hand in it. He moves from a weakened position to a strengthened one. Let's be clear, however, in labeling this conspiracy theory as totally speculative. The enemies of the Bush administration won't be nearly so generous. Wednesday's New York Times, for instance, reports that Otto Reich urged Carmona not to dissolve the National Assembly, a claim the Times darkly interprets as "rais[ing] questions as to whether Mr. Reich or other officials were stage-managing the takeover by Mr. Carmona."
Except that Carmona apparently wasn't letting himself be stage-managed. But that doesn't matter. The Left now will make a determined effort to see the hand of Otto Reich behind it all - as if wishing would make it so.***