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Give Hugo Chávez a chance
Franklin W Knight
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
HUGO Chávez, the peripatetic, highly-extroverted president of Venezuela, has been in Cuba recently, visiting his good friend Fidel Castro. Both leaders have a lot in common politically, especially in their vigorous opposition to the hegemonial tendencies of the United States of America.
Since the United States has such a dominant influence over the international media, neither Castro nor Chávez has got the respectful evaluation that each merits. It is time to give Hugo Chávez a chance. He is not the villain he is often painted.
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, the 61st president of Venezuela, was born on July 28, 1954 in the small town of Sabaneta in the Maracaibo coastal province of Barinas. His parents were teachers, which means that they were poor but decent folks. He spent his high school years in the relatively large city of Barinas and later graduated from the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in 1975. Like Castro, he is inordinately fond of baseball and once harboured the ambition to be a major league pitcher in the United States. By 1992 when he catapulted to fame, he was a career military officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and had a keen interest in politics fostered by a short stint studying political science at the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas.
The political influences on Chávez are numerous, but not unconventional for his time. Obviously, the foremost influence is that of South American liberator Simón Bolívar. In 1983 while a lecturer at the Military Academy, he founded the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement, and after his first election to the presidency in 1998 he renamed the country after him. His writings and speeches reflect thinking from several streams of Latin American leftist thought, such as Democratic Socialism, Marxism, and individual writers such as Federico Brito Figueroa, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, as well as the Bible.
Chávez is not only widely read but also an author who has written decent poems, short stories and plays. He currently offers both an unscripted radio and television programme. To call him simply a woolly-headed leftist populist reflects a myopic political bias that denigrates many outstanding qualities in the man.
Chávez hit the headlines from his unsuccessful attempt in 1992 to overthrow the corrupt and unpopular Carlos Andrés Pérez, for which he served two years in prison. Pardoned by President Rafael Caldera, he began a relentless campaign for the presidency that gave him 56 per cent of the votes in the 1998 election and the platform from which to fundamentally alter politics, society and culture in Venezuela. His winning percentage in 2006 was nearly 70 per cent.
Much of internal opposition to Chávez comes from his flamboyant personal style and his unswerving determination to create a new Venezuela. He has thoroughly revised the old political system and severely unbalanced the old political factions. Through a series of constitutionally based measures he has profoundly changed Venezuela. His 1999 constitution - supported by 72 per cent of the voters, although the abstention rate was 56 per cent - gave Chávez virtually unlimited power. He changed the presidential term limits and created a structure that permits indefinite auto-succession. He reduced the National Assembly to one chamber and concentrated political patronage into the executive branch of the government.
The Bolivarian Revolution, despite some failures, has made a significant impact on reducing poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality. Datos Information Resources, the premier research service in Venezuela, reports that family income among the poorest sector of the Venezuelan population increased by more than 150 per cent between 2003 and 2006. Infant mortality declined by more than 18 per cent between 1998 and 2006. This year the government earmarked more than 44 per cent of its budget - an impressive 12 per cent of its GDP - on social spending, including food and housing subsidies, education, and the construction of free medical clinics.
Even the United Nations states that poverty has fallen 10 per cent in the past decade.
Venezuelan largesse has not been restricted to its own people. The government made generous trade agreements with a number of countries, including Jamaica, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, and Cuba and generously offered heating oil at reduced prices to a number of cities in the United States as well as to London.
Chávez, however, has had a stormy time as president. He survived a coup staged by a faction of the armed forces in early 2002. In late 2002 into early 2003, several unions shut down the oil industry, exacerbating an already severe economic situation. A referendum to recall the present in 2004 failed miserably. So why does Hugo Chávez appear so unpopular at home and in selected foreign locations?
At home, the Bolivarian revolution has reversed the privatisation schemes that were notoriously plagued with corruption. He nationalised, or re-nationalised the major industries, including the press, and inserted the government more directly in grass-roots community development. He provided thousands of families with titles to land and empowered indigenous communities who now have far greater local self-government as well as a quota of seats in the National Assembly. Chávez has definitely altered the social basis of political power.
By asserting Venezuelan sovereignty and political independence Chávez, not surprisingly, attracted relentless hostility from the United States. President Chávez has strenuously but selectively resisted the free trade policies that were popular during the past 10 years. He ended the arms monopoly of the United States by expanding arms procurement to China, Brazil, Russia and Spain. He paid off the national debts to the IMF and the World Bank and announced a new venture, a regional bank called the Bank of the South to promote economic development throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. All this has not resonated well in Washington.
President Chávez acts constitutionally and respects all international conventions. He is not a tyrant. His might not be a perfect model for the modern democratic state, but nowadays such models are scarce. It is for Venezuelans, not outsiders, to judge Hugo Chávez and in this regard he seems to be doing splendidly.
Franklin W Knight
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
HUGO Chávez, the peripatetic, highly-extroverted president of Venezuela, has been in Cuba recently, visiting his good friend Fidel Castro. Both leaders have a lot in common politically, especially in their vigorous opposition to the hegemonial tendencies of the United States of America.
Since the United States has such a dominant influence over the international media, neither Castro nor Chávez has got the respectful evaluation that each merits. It is time to give Hugo Chávez a chance. He is not the villain he is often painted.
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, the 61st president of Venezuela, was born on July 28, 1954 in the small town of Sabaneta in the Maracaibo coastal province of Barinas. His parents were teachers, which means that they were poor but decent folks. He spent his high school years in the relatively large city of Barinas and later graduated from the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in 1975. Like Castro, he is inordinately fond of baseball and once harboured the ambition to be a major league pitcher in the United States. By 1992 when he catapulted to fame, he was a career military officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and had a keen interest in politics fostered by a short stint studying political science at the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas.
The political influences on Chávez are numerous, but not unconventional for his time. Obviously, the foremost influence is that of South American liberator Simón Bolívar. In 1983 while a lecturer at the Military Academy, he founded the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement, and after his first election to the presidency in 1998 he renamed the country after him. His writings and speeches reflect thinking from several streams of Latin American leftist thought, such as Democratic Socialism, Marxism, and individual writers such as Federico Brito Figueroa, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, as well as the Bible.
Chávez is not only widely read but also an author who has written decent poems, short stories and plays. He currently offers both an unscripted radio and television programme. To call him simply a woolly-headed leftist populist reflects a myopic political bias that denigrates many outstanding qualities in the man.
Chávez hit the headlines from his unsuccessful attempt in 1992 to overthrow the corrupt and unpopular Carlos Andrés Pérez, for which he served two years in prison. Pardoned by President Rafael Caldera, he began a relentless campaign for the presidency that gave him 56 per cent of the votes in the 1998 election and the platform from which to fundamentally alter politics, society and culture in Venezuela. His winning percentage in 2006 was nearly 70 per cent.
Much of internal opposition to Chávez comes from his flamboyant personal style and his unswerving determination to create a new Venezuela. He has thoroughly revised the old political system and severely unbalanced the old political factions. Through a series of constitutionally based measures he has profoundly changed Venezuela. His 1999 constitution - supported by 72 per cent of the voters, although the abstention rate was 56 per cent - gave Chávez virtually unlimited power. He changed the presidential term limits and created a structure that permits indefinite auto-succession. He reduced the National Assembly to one chamber and concentrated political patronage into the executive branch of the government.
The Bolivarian Revolution, despite some failures, has made a significant impact on reducing poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality. Datos Information Resources, the premier research service in Venezuela, reports that family income among the poorest sector of the Venezuelan population increased by more than 150 per cent between 2003 and 2006. Infant mortality declined by more than 18 per cent between 1998 and 2006. This year the government earmarked more than 44 per cent of its budget - an impressive 12 per cent of its GDP - on social spending, including food and housing subsidies, education, and the construction of free medical clinics.
Even the United Nations states that poverty has fallen 10 per cent in the past decade.
Venezuelan largesse has not been restricted to its own people. The government made generous trade agreements with a number of countries, including Jamaica, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, and Cuba and generously offered heating oil at reduced prices to a number of cities in the United States as well as to London.
Chávez, however, has had a stormy time as president. He survived a coup staged by a faction of the armed forces in early 2002. In late 2002 into early 2003, several unions shut down the oil industry, exacerbating an already severe economic situation. A referendum to recall the present in 2004 failed miserably. So why does Hugo Chávez appear so unpopular at home and in selected foreign locations?
At home, the Bolivarian revolution has reversed the privatisation schemes that were notoriously plagued with corruption. He nationalised, or re-nationalised the major industries, including the press, and inserted the government more directly in grass-roots community development. He provided thousands of families with titles to land and empowered indigenous communities who now have far greater local self-government as well as a quota of seats in the National Assembly. Chávez has definitely altered the social basis of political power.
By asserting Venezuelan sovereignty and political independence Chávez, not surprisingly, attracted relentless hostility from the United States. President Chávez has strenuously but selectively resisted the free trade policies that were popular during the past 10 years. He ended the arms monopoly of the United States by expanding arms procurement to China, Brazil, Russia and Spain. He paid off the national debts to the IMF and the World Bank and announced a new venture, a regional bank called the Bank of the South to promote economic development throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. All this has not resonated well in Washington.
President Chávez acts constitutionally and respects all international conventions. He is not a tyrant. His might not be a perfect model for the modern democratic state, but nowadays such models are scarce. It is for Venezuelans, not outsiders, to judge Hugo Chávez and in this regard he seems to be doing splendidly.
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