Venezuela is no tyranny

[AlphaCentauri]

As Latin Americans witness the return of dictatorship – with Honduras suffering political executions, widespread repression and condemnation from human rights organisations about curtailing of press freedoms – it seems a strange time for the media to repeat opposition allegations that Venezuela is becoming a tyranny.

Venezuela is far from the "dictatorship which has a facade of democracy" described by General Raúl Baduel, who has been accused of corruption. What kind of tyranny oversees a 70% increase of participation in presidential elections, as Chávez has, or the government holding 13 free and fair elections in 10 years?

Of course, Venezuelan society and democracy is imperfect. One example is that corruption remains a very real problem. Opponents have tried to use this issue to disparage the government, though it pre-dates the Chávez era. It is therefore ironic that when measures are taken to tackle it, as is the case in legal prosecutions, these are cited as examples of a clampdown on political freedoms. Many Chávez-supporting politicians are under investigation and it paints a distorted picture to focus only on prosecutions against those opposed to Chávez.

Taking the two most prominent cases of those aligned with the opposition. With Baduel, the military prosecutors investigating the disappearance of more than $18.6m in 2006 and 2007 while he was minister of defence have decided to prosecute. He has had all the rights to a defence lawyer and transparent trial, yet so far his defence has not produced any evidence to counter the charges of corruption.

Manuel Rosales, infamously a signatory to the decree backing the 2002 military coup against Chávez, is one of the most notorious cases. He has allegedly been unable to show the source of millions of dollars in assets both in Venezuela and abroad. He fled to Peru and requested political asylum, but being given asylum by Peru is not proof of innocence. Recently Bolivia nearly broke diplomatic relations with Peru for granting asylum to three ministers from a previous government charged with responsibility for the October 2003 massacre in which 67 people were killed by the Bolivian army.

What cannot be said of Venezuela is that the right to protest is threatened. This year alone, the opposition have staged dozens of marches free from state harassment. On numerous occasions opponents and marchers have been invited to address the nation from the National Assembly.

In contrast, it was only 20 years ago that protests were met by brutal repression in Venezuela, with the Caracazo massacre by state security forces leaving 276 dead according to official figures and up to 3,000, according to claims, once mass graves were uncovered.

The opposition's hostile views of the Chávez government dominate the Venezuelan media. But that is not the reason why some radio stations were recently closed. These were operating illegally without proper licences and continued to refuse to comply with the law. More than 200 radio stations, most of which identify with the opposition, that were also operating irregularly but did renew their franchises continue to operate freely.

Respect for democracy is intrinsic to the particular model being followed by the Chávez government. It does not resort to violence – it wins elections. In contrast, it is noteworthy that the notable elements of the Venezuelan opposition have broadly sympathised with the illegal de facto government of Micheletti in Honduras. Maybe in Honduras we have a serious glimpse of what "democracy" would have been like in Venezuela had its violent attempts to overthrow Chávez been successful?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/14/venezuela-democracy-honduras-chavez

[spanza]

1. I agree on many points he makes

And I don't think Venezuela is a tyranny neither. Thanks for the opinion article.

Some remarks though:
"Many Chávez-supporting politicians are under investigation and it paints a distorted picture to focus only on prosecutions against those opposed to Chávez".... many? which ones? I see Cabello, Rangel and Barreto enjoying freedom. What I have noticed is that when a chavista politician stops supporting Chavez, some corruption affair emerges immediately (Baduel, good example).

"it is noteworthy that the notable elements of the Venezuelan opposition have broadly sympathised with the illegal de facto government of Micheletti in Honduras.".... I haven't heard any notable politician from the opposition backing/sympathizing with the coup in Honduras. If someone has, I would welcome that information.

"Respect for democracy is intrinsic to the particular model being followed by the Chávez government. It does not resort to violence – it wins elections".... Sometimes, they have applied anti-democratic methods to regain power after losing an election. When the capital voted for an opposition mayor, they took away a big part of his budget, let the armed civilian militias throw him away from the City Hall and appointed an unelected "Chief of District" (rank that didn't exist before), putting her (Jacqueline Farias) on top of the elected mayor.

Finally, the author of the article is Dr. Francisco Dominguez and he is the Secretary of the VIC (Venezuela Information Center), so I don't consider him to be an impartial commentator since half the activities the VIC promotes take place in the Venezuelan Embassy or/and with Venezuelan diplomats.
http://www.vicuk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=7&Itemid=34&limit=8&limitstart=0

[Bacchus39]

4. thanks for the real information n/t

s

[AlphaCentauri]

5. Fox news in español

Alejandro Peña Exclusa:

Peña Esclusa llegó a Honduras como parte de un grupo de UnoAmérica y Fuerza Solidaria, organizaciones constituidas para enfrentarse al bloque de la Alternativa Bolivariana de las América (ALBA), con el fin de documentar una denuncia contra Chávez ante la Corte Penal Internacional (CPI), con sede en La Haya, Holanda.

Durante su estadía en Honduras se reunirá con autoridades del gobierno, líderes empresariales y otros representantes del conglomerado nacional opuestos al retorno de Zelaya al poder.
http://www.latribuna.hn/web2.0/?p=19564

:hi:

[spanza]

6. LOL

Do you know who this guy is?

Alejandro Peña Esclusa is part of an international neo-fascist organization called "tradition, property and family" (I think). He's known in Venezuela for being anti-"opposition" and anti-Chavez at the same time. For example, he was against the opposition in the last elections and is always accusing opposition politicians of being traitors in favor of Chavez. He is a sick person and his sick strange "sect" has been linked with the organization of two assassination attempts. One on the pope, in 1984 when he visited Venezuela, and another one on R. Reagan.
:crazy:

So when this ultra newspaper from Honduras tries to present him as an "opposition leader" in Venezuela, Venezuelan chavistas and non-chavistas laugh together. I'll repeat the exact words from my still-chavista friend when I showed him the article you sent: "estos golpistas hondureños ya no saben que carajo inventar para justificar la cagada que pusieron".

It's really funny and absurd.

:rofl:

[AlphaCentauri]

7. I know, I always like to remind my Venezuelan friends how Yon Goicochea

got 1/2 million dollars from the CATO institute then they started to criticize Goicochea after they saw him as the supreme leader of the students opposition. Isn't it funny that the opposition in venezuela change skins so often. When they get advise from the "Fundacion para la libertad" they proclaim that they are not manipulated from external organizations and now Alejandro Peña Esclusa is not one of them.

:rofl:

[spanza]

9. It is evident

and easy to understand why the opposition in Venezuela seems to "change skins so often". What you need to understand is that there's no possible symmetry when judging a government homogeneous group and an "opposition group" when the last one is composed of political tendencies going from the maoists to the demo-cristians (Goicochea).

Peña Esclusa opposes Chavez so when you say he's "one of them", it's pure tautology, since them = those who oppose Chavez. It's like if an european center-right supporter referred to the people who are opposed to his favorite government as "them" putting in the same basket hard right, hard left and moderate left. "Them" would have no political meaning in that case and would obviously be a tool of manipulation. Moreover, as I pointed out, Peña Esclusa was never part of any opposition group in Venezuela besides his own neo-fascist party which represents something like 2.000 votes in an electorate of 16 million (1/8.000). So trying to describe him as an "opposition leader in Venezuela" is just absurd.

[AlphaCentauri]

13. So who are the "real opposition" leaders?

is the opposition just a group of people defending their money without a specific ideology?

Like republicans do fight against universal health care without a single idea on how to fix the problem, I imagine that the opposition in Venezuela wants only to restore them self in a position of power.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thanks, AlphaCentauri, for a reality based article. Good points. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

3. 'Maybe in Honduras we have a serious glimpse of what 'democracy' would have been like in Venezuela..

"Maybe in Honduras we have a serious glimpse of what 'democracy' would have been like in Venezuela had its violent attempts to overthrow Chávez been successful?"--from the OP

Not "maybe." There is no question in mind that the "opposition" in Venezuela would be torturing and killing leftists, and massively suppressing leftist political activity and protests, if they had succeeded in overthrowing the Chavez government. Their very first act was to suspend the Constitution, the courts, the National Assembly and all civil rights! Why would anyone do that, who intended to respect the "rule of law"? We see this same kind of arrogant, violent fascism in Honduras. And for the same reason: the rich elites are NOT democratic. And it is damned rare when rich elites ever are.

I think Thomas Jefferson was right that there needs to be a new revolution every 20 years! Rich elites will always and forever seek to entrench themselves, in order to protect their untoward wealth and power against the poor majority, and, with their wealth, they almost always eventually succeed in gaining control of the government even in democracies. We have never seen anything quite so bad as the corporate elite that rules the US now and seeks to rule the world, for they have arranged for their wealth to be congregated in massive corporations that live forever, accumulating more and more property and riches over the decades. The only thing comparable in history is the Medieval Church which ruled over Europe for a thousand years, and was equally as acquisitive and propagandistic.

These local rich elites that we have seen in Venezuela and Honduras (and of course in the US and other countries) are now intimately tied up with the global corporate predators that are gobbling up all the wealth and enslaving us peons and cannon fodder--much like the kings and nobles of Europe who rode under the 'christian' banner. The Church was the enforcer and propagandist for their rule. Now we have the US military and lobbying/PR corporations and rightwing "think tanks" and the USAID, and the New York Grimes and the Associated Pukes, et al, to enforce and propagandize Corporate Rule (and sometimes the clergy as well, but not always).

The Venezuelan revolution--and most especially the people, who defended it, peacefully, in such great numbers, in 2002--has thrown off this Corporate Tyranny, and they will never cease to be demonized by Corporate propagandists for doing so. They are the very "Devil" in Corporate eyes--comparable to the "witches" and "pagans" that were demonized by the Catholic Church. And it is, specifically, democracy that the Corporate Tyrants and their greedy local rich elites hate so much. You could almost use it as a measure of democracy in Venezuela--the level of vitriol and loathing with which Venezuela's president is portrayed. They heap this demonization on Chavez, but their real targets are the people, the voters and democracy itself. They don't dare let that be seen or suspected--that it is the people who elected the Chavez government whom they most revile and want to disempower and destroy. So they personalize the attack, focussing on the chosen leader.

And then, when you look into the facts, you find that Venezuela has an election system that is far, FAR more transparent than our own; that free speech and citizen participation in politics and government are not only thriving in Venezuela but are encouraged by the government; that the government has a policy of using the oil revenues to benefit and bootstrap the poor, and has asserted Venezuela's sovereignty to renegotiate the oil contracts with multinational corporations so that they benefit the people of Venezuela. These and other facts support one's suspicion that the demonization of Chavez, that is so relentless in our media, is a goddamned lie. It is the opposite of the truth. And the more hysterical it is, the more credit must be given to the people of Venezuela for inspiring these tirades.

In Honduras, the local rich elite overthrew its own democracy, on behalf of their global corporate predator allies (and US war profiteers), because Honduras' president was leading a similar peoples' revolution. Unfortunately, they retained their vulture's grip on the government and are now doing to the people of Honduras what Venezuela's rich elite would have done to Venezuelans--ripping up their Constitution, denying them civil rights and brutality repressing any dissent.

[DutchLiberal]

8. I was beginning to doubt Chavez, but this article provides a logical defense...

Strong arguments, well-argued, well written. Didn't know that about Baduel and Rosales. Thanks.

[Braulio]

10. Venezuela ranks very high in corruption metrics

International agencies, including the World Bank, continue to rank Venezuela as a very corrupt place to do business.

[DutchLiberal]

11. World Bank should be the last to point fingers about corruption.

And of course they're going to say Venezuela is corrupt! Chavez kicked them out of his country! He has made his country independent from the evil organization. That's one developing countries less that the World Bank can screw over.

[ChangoLoa]

12. the hell with the WB!

but it's easy to check transparency international and other ngos that analyze corruption. you will see Venezuela is usually very close to the world's top 10. but Venezuela was a very corrupted country before Chavez even if it's true that it is getting worst.

[Braulio]

14. I don't think the World Bank cares one way or the other

I don't think it matters much to the World Bank if Chavez "kicked them out of his country". The reality is the World Bank doesn't operate in a country to make a profit, it does it to help out - as defined by the guidelines issued by its governing body.

The World Bank does have some policies which in the end backfire, but it doesn't do so because it's evil or has bad intentions. The World Bank is mired in the same issues which lead to the failure of foreign aid to Third World nations in general: giving money to people who are ill prepared to use it doesn't help, especially when a lot of the money happens to be recycled into purchases made in World Bank member nations.

Corruption in Venezuela is reported by many different institutions to be high - it seems to be institutionalized, in the sense that government policy is designed so that corruption is a lot easier to practice.

Today, the Venezuelan government is engaged in bond sales intended to prop up the currency black market. I know this sounds crazy, but the official (controlled) exchange rate is so unbalanced, they have resorted to boosting the currency value in the black market, in a sense legalizing it (even though it's illegal to publish black market exchange rates, the market flourishes and the quotes are available from sources OUTSIDE Venezuela). The bond sales are increasingly meeting resistance as the government goes deeper into debt, and there are signs the economy is likely to weaken.

Thus in the future Venezuela may become a debt basket case, such as Argentina or Ecuador. I suppose at that time they'll go hat in hand to the Chinese, and swap future oil deliveries for Chinese loans, rather than going to the World Bank. But the net result is the same, they'll be mortagaging their future - and putting themselves in the hands of cold-hearted bankers.