Hugo Chavez Scares Me
January 31, 2007
If you think that President George W. Bush’s signing statements, eavesdropping programs and other expansions of presidential power are disturbing, wait until you read about Hugo Chavez’s expansion of powers in Venezuela. The Venezuelan legislature has basically rolled over and given Chavez 18 months of radically expanded powers to enact sweeping government reforms by decree.
That’s putting a lot of power in the hands of one egomaniacal man. Anyone who has the unmitigated gall to get up and call a fellow world leader, “the Devil” from the podium of the United Nations should be treated with skepticism in his home country, not given broad powers to take the country back to the darkest days of communism.
I hope that the Venezuelan people’s idealism is less misplaced than I fear it is…
don’t buy your gas from citgo! it goes straight to chavez!!!
Have you been to Venezuela? Do you know how much of the oil money has been pocketed by the wealthy elite while the huge lower class was left to languish? Chavez came from the latter and has an agenda against the former.
Personally I think he’s going about it the wrong way. He was way wrong the first time too. I’m actually much more concerned about the massive arms build up he is concentrating in the country and the region than the power he’s assuming and being granted. That political power can be taken away, or he can be overthrown. (He ought to know - that’s what he did the first time.) But the guns and gunships are there for a very long time and are deeply destabilizing, especially since he plans to put them in the hands of “people’s militias”.
I don’t mind him calling some other leader a devil. That’s part of how SA politics happens, and it was actually blown way out of proportion by norteamericano journalists. (Check the speech for yourself and you’ll see what I mean.)
We’ll just have to see how it plays out. I’m afraid it will get worse. But at least he’s not a right wing strongman who will kill tens of thousands of his own people.
that’s right, he’s just a batty lefty who will kill millions of his own people after coming to power by ostensibly working on their behalf like mao, amin, pol pot, kim ilsung, lenin, kim jongil and stalin et al did. a dictator is a dictator is a dictator. no “good communist/marxist” ever gave back to his people once he was in power, and their countries were never more oppressed. all of venezuela’s resources are inevitably his, so long as he alone can control the government. you don’t have to travel to venezuela to recognize history repeating itself, and you’d be a fool to believe that he’s robin hood. plus, everyone ‘loves’ him because they’d be killed if they said anything to the contrary.
I tend to agree with Deb in this situation. It doesn’t matter if you’re a loony lefty or a right wing strongman - absolute power corrupts absolutely and Hugo Chavez ain’t no saint.
Dano, I think it sucks that he’s building up arms. That’s the underreported story behind all of this that is a real catastrophe for Venezuela and the region. Let’s just hope GW doesn’t decide to add him to the ‘axis of evil’ and try to disarm him the way we tried to disarm Saddam. I’m not sure we can handle opening up another front right now.
We already opening another front. In Somalia. Which is worse than Iraq or Venezuala. Fortunately Somalia has been so fucked up for so long no one is going to blame us for leaving a mess like they will in Iraq.