- -- Hugo Chavez declares himself a dictator and promises to send Church hierarchs literature on Marx and Lenin so that they'll understand what his 'socialism of the 21st century' is all about.
- -- Officials from Venezuela, by any measure an underdeveloped country, sign in London, by any measure and in itself one of the world's leading economies, an agreement to subsidise fuel of its public bus fleet.
- -- Hugo Chavez sort of makes official his break up with Israel.
- -- Hugo Chavez nationalizes local and foreign owned power and telecom companies.
- -- Hugo Chavez reasserts his personal commitment to close Venezuela's oldest TV station.
- -- Officials from Venezuela interfere openly in the internal politics of neighbouring countries.
- -- Officials from Venezuela declare that the DEA is a drug cartel, while tons of cocaine originated from Venezuela are seized the world over.
- -- The bloody coup d'etat staged by Hugo Chavez in 1992 is turned into a national day of sorts. Officials not only celebrate the criminal attempt but stress their pride in it.
- -- The former chair of the purportedly independent electoral council is appointed by Chavez as Venezuela's Vice President. Former Vice Presidents include the current Attorney General.
In any democratic country any of the above would have caused a political earthquake. In Venezuela these events have become part of the idiosincratic political framework, to the point that new scandals overshadow 2 or 3 day-long ones. The whole country suffers from attention deficit disorder, considering the speed at which new issues pop up. It is therefore risible the late 'rebellion' that allegedly some communists are staging in Venezuela in purported 'open and frank opposition' to the hegemonic construct that Chavez has in mind. In my opinion this amounts to no more than an orchestrated charade by which ignorant fools are led to believe that democracy is thriving in Chavezland. What a load of nonsense.
The stint could be consider newsworthy had the actors performing the show not being PODEMOS, PCV (Venezuela's Communist Party) and some other chronic underachievers. In truth the ones involved have had a go at being in power thanks to the charity of the supreme leader, and under no circumstances should anyone entertain the thought that they shall risk their current bourgeois status for an alleged dispute over Chavez's project of unifying all his minions under one roof. Those salivating over it should be reminded that that's precisely what takes place in communist regimes: one leader, one party, one voice of command, or are we to believe that Venezuelan communists are dyed-in-the-wool democrats after all? Give me a f**ing break, surely Ismael Garcia won't give up his jet rides and über rich lifestyle...
2 comments:
Chavez knows the Western media, the intelligentsia and the European left-wing better than we know him. At first he pretended to preserve freedom of speech and democratic checks and balances; but anyone in Venezuela knew from the start that these were just appearances. Now that it is too late and everyone has been duped, there are some that still fight for their dream of a new socially just Venezuela under a dictator. A sort of "end-justifies
-the-means" self-deception. It also saves face for many. Chavez is pathologically hungry for absolute power, like so many dictators before him, of the right and the left. A dictatorship is a disease of the society and of the person. He is an imperialist and a fascist. All populist alms to the poor serve his ultimate end of absolute power. That is all. To believe otherwise is to be willfully naive.
Carmen
Well Carmen I have a different take on that. What Chavez is very very good at is at exacerbating and exploiting people's resentments. It follows that in lands where racism is at the core of society his try and tested formula works like a charm; he just voices what others wouldn't dare but feel passionately about.
Take for instance his English apologists, these are the same people that loath Blair for what they perceive as a servile relationship with Bush. But this lot won't be caught dead uttering one word of criticism towards that abnormal and almost homosexual fixation that Chavez has for Castro, a brutal communist dictator. Nor will they say anything about Chavez's militarism, which in itself is reason enough to cause all true leftists to despise Chavez.
Chavez, we must agree, has achieved iconic status. However his fan base is far from mainstream and fortunately has no political power in industrialised nations.
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