when they felt they were being excluded" said Janet Kelly, a Veneuelan political commentator. Columnist Patricia Poleo of the Caracas newspaper El Nuevo Pais joined several government officials when she later suggested that during Carmona's tenure, Isaac Perez Recao, a member of a family that owned a controlling stake in a firm called Venoco, a subsidiary of which Carmona ran, had allegedly been a key financier of the coup and had been pulling strings behind the scenes. "He immediately surrounded himself with people who invoked fear in Venezuela" complained one official about Cormona. "Obviously, this coup was very poorly coordinated. It caught the democratic opposition by surprise." The Miami Herald reported that "moderate politicians complained that Carmona, a centrist businessman, had been 'hijacked' by rightists". Speaking afterward about his one-day presidency, Carmona told The Miami Herald that he had been "misunderstood because ... the opposition wasted too much time forming a cabinet and naming the high military command", whereas if the coup had "been hatched in advance, those key decisions would have already been made". He regretted not stressing his plan to appoint "a 35-member representative council to help him run the nation" and to hold assembly elections in 90 days and a presidential election (in which he would not run) in December. He said he had suspended the assembly "because the new government would never have accomplished its goals with a congress so stacked to favor one party". "There was no rebellion or coup" Carmona told The New York Times after the counter-coup. "There was simply a vacuum of power that came about after the military announced the resignation of the president." Carmona said he had accepted the interim presidency because he was told by military officers that Chávez had resigned. "I was called by them to fill that role", he said. "I was called by officers and others to take over. And I had the courage to take that step." He told The Guardian that he took "full responsibility" for the actions he made, emphasizing that "there was no premeditation, no conspiracy" behind the coup and his elevation to the presidency. He said that after the 11 April march on Miraflores, he had been phoned by someone (whom he would not name) who said that Chávez had quit and offered him the presidency. "Everything happened so fast that mistakes were made", Carmona said. "If I could go back