President Hugo Chavez Wins
February 18, 2009
I spent over 10 years in Venezuela as a journalist and I know pretty well “who is who” in that country’s political elite. If asked whether there is now a real alternative to Hugo Chavez, someone capable of taking this governmental post, I would without hesitation answer “no, there isn’t”! There is no one among his colleagues in the Bolivarian leadership who could be a politician on a par with Hugo Chavez to become his worthy successor. No one around him has any claims for this role. The reason is evident: the historical cycle of Hugo Chavez the reformer is far from being over.
The huge scope of the tasks of reforms is impressive indeed, and the process of peaceful transformations in Venezuela still follows the upward trend, but the first positive results of Hugo Chavez’s activities have already been seen in improved living standards of 60% of the country’s less provided-for population. Regardless of the ongoing attacks of the opposition, Hugo Chavez is still a phenomenon of a politician whose very existence helps consolidate the Venezuelan society neutralising both leftist and rightist extremists.
There is no such a leader in the opposition ranks capable of consolidating both all of its trends, groups, mini-parties and despicable skeletons of once powerful parties “Accion Democratica” or COPEI, as well as the new arrivals “Primero Justicia” or “Nuevo Tiempo” and the segment of the “neutral” electorate (about 30%) referred to as “ni-ni”. Quote a few candidates were tested by the opposition (and North-American puppeteers) to be promoted for the role of the leader of the protest anti-Chavez camp, but all the attempts were busted.
The vote on February 15th became a second try to amend one of the articles of the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution dealing with the right of the president (and other elected government officials) to be re-elected for these posts without limitations. The attempt to amend the full text of the Constitution (December 2007) was Chavez’s defeat. According to the National Election Committee he lost on a minor margin. The president faced the defeat with dignity and even admitted it refusing to wait for the final results of the vote in Venezuela’s remote areas that could have outweighed the results in his favour with a margin of 5,000 to 6,000 votes. “I did not need such an unconvincing victory,” – Chavez explained. “It would have been challenged by many. At present the opposition enjoys its minimal winning margin and I hope they would take advantage of the victory I call “pyrrhic” reasonably.”
To Chavez, “to take advantage reasonably” meant that the opposition leaders would re-consider their strategies and tactics, giving up de-stabilising methods of their fight against the government, starting to devise a “competitive” programme that could compete with the Bolivarian blueprint. But it was exactly the drawn-out dissent in the ranks of opposition controlled by the US that prevented it from engaging in a consistent constructive work. The only consolidating factor for the opposition is its war-cry “Down with Chavez!” The opposition pushes aside all other things for some time later, when the hated “tyrant” goes, and when they would allegedly be able to re-shape Venezuela based on ideally formulated democratic foundations. That would be the time they would come up with their programme.
Chavez’s victory at the referendum on February 15th with a “yes” to the amendment by 54% and “no” by 46% votes was expected. Thousands of his followers and supporters gathered before the “People’s Balcony” of the Miraflores Palace, where Chavez speaks on most important events. They all came to share their triumph. Let me just remind you that no other present-day politician has run as many election campaigns as Hugo Chavez. In this sense he is a record-breaker democrat and the winner of democratic election procedures! Opposition had to admit its defeat. No matter how big margins in Chavez’s victories had been in the past, the opposition media always doubted them. “It is a fraud!” The recent defeat of the opposition was especially bitter, as it faced the dilemma: who could really challenge Chavez at the elections at the end of 2012? Any top-level official of the Bolivarian leadership would do except for Chavez himself. The opposition has no political “super heavy-weights“ to counter Chavez.
Russian liberal press met Chavez’s overwhelming victory with an almost unanimous negative response. The media was featuring such typical headlines as “Title for Lifetime Presidency”, “Chavez: Endless Election”, “No- Terms Chavez”. Their comments seemed to be copies of just one author: will this “tyrant, populist, dictator, usurper and terrorist” rule Venezuela as long as he wishes?
By the token of their subject matter attacks by the partisan media against the “Bolivarian regime” are a repetition of theses distributed all over the world by US-based special bodies engaged in waging psychological and information warfare. USA disapproves Chavez and the policies he pursues irrespective of the political shades of the administration at the helm and its proclaimed foreign policy guidelines.
Russian liberals’ bias against Chavez in essence is the reflection of their prohibitive and totalitarian approach to “dissent.” Everything Chavez does (as well as what Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and other Latin America’s leftists do) is inadmissible to them! It is regress! The ominous shadow of Marxism-Leninism! Combat alert! The Reds are coming! No matter what is the degree of one’s personal liberalism, be it even a five-star liberal, they need to realise that there exists a different point of view, a different approach to life. And do not frown so when someone says: “a different world is possible.”
Petrodollars help build a fairer world and Chavez is not stingy about that. He hates cleptocrats, the builders of personal “nests in paradise”, “Bolivarian bourgeoisie” skimming the fruit of complexities of transformations in his country. He has a dream he can describe in just three words:”Venezuela for all.”. This “all” also includes his political opponents.
Chavez is transforming the country taking into account the interests of all walks of life, giving preference to those who previously were a marginal mass that had no influence of political decision-making and devoid of any chance of expressing their will at elections. Chavez has seen through a crash course of illiteracy liquidation (he cannot make things go at a slower rate); residents at the poorest outskirts can now count on full-fledged medical aid, housing construction is going on, regular target campaigns aimed at supplying low-income and even middle-class groups of population with foods at low prices are going on, too.
“Chavez does not make head or tail in economics. He would bring about a catastrophe!” How many times did I hear these arrogant outshoots against the Venezuelan president. It was not Chavez who brought the crisis to the world, putting it on the brink of a possible catastrophe if not a general collapse. Multitudes of “experts”, “forecasters”, “economic-financial-theoreticians” “Chicago boys” as well as bankers, tycoons and oligarchs are repenting in public now. Comandante Chavez appears to be more attractive and more perspicacious than them. Even US experts are now speaking about the course towards Socialism as a remedy to correct capitalism!
Does that mean that Chavez is right? Presumably, yes.
Chavez is in no mind to provoke the influential middle class by forceful introduction of “Castro-Communism.” He would never copy the Cuban experience for the simple reason that no other than Fidel Castro warned him against doing that. Chavez is getting more and more inclined to try very moderate social experiments, and his yearning to build Socialism with the “Venezuelan face” will certainly not be accompanied by any “bans on capitalist relations” in his country, state control over the banks, confiscation of personal property, ideologization of the educational sphere and bans on private-owned media. About 90% of TV and radio broadcasters and the printed media in Venezuela are owned by the private sector that daily brainwashes ordinary Venezuelans with their negative propaganda. But Chavez has no intention of taking any repressive action on this kind of “freedom of speech.”
As for the use of the national hard-currency reserves, Chavez is liberal about investing them into the industrial modernisation, development of the agro-industrial sector, erection of modern bridges, laying down railroads and underground lines, comfortable highways and pipelines to bring water to the country’s dry lands. To be objective, in real Chavez took up these transformations only in 2004-2005. The aborted coup in April 2002, the “general strike” in late 2002 and early 2003, and the long-drawn sabotage by oil companies were all an attempt to both removing Chavez and undermine ambitious economic plans of the Bolivarian government. Hence accusations of “the regime’s incapacity“, rampage of corruption and waste of resources.
However, Chavez succeeded in doing much over these four years. The author of this article who has criss-crossed Venezuela is willingly attesting to the fact that the country is now a colossal construction site. Venezuela is on the rise, and the consistent course towards integration within the frameworks of MERCOSUR and ALBA – the Bolivarian initiative for Latin America plays a great role in this.
We can all congratulate Chavez on his victory. Venezuela is in reliable hands. If its president is confident that his historical mission will succeed and proves it to the nation by his daily deeds, proving he is the right man in the right place, should his activities be edged into the artificial frameworks of the Western democratic dogma?