Posted on 01/08/2007 4:27:29 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
One short phrase has been uttered like a mantra by some of the 12 new cabinet appointees whom President Hugo Chávez on Monday swore in to office: “21st century socialism”.
Such ideological rigidity looks set to be the hallmark both of Mr Chávez’s third term, which begins on Wednesday, and of the future course of Venezuela’s so-called “Bolivarian Revolution”.
Mr Chávez, who was re-elected in a landslide last month, has pledged to radicalise his administration during his new six-year term, which runs until 2013, and fully convert Venezuela into a socialist state.
Exactly what such a transformation will mean for both business and the people may still be a matter of guesswork, even for the new ministers, but Mr Chávez has already laid down some guidelines.
“Regulation of earnings will be a priority for us,” said Rodrigo Cabezas, the incoming finance minister. “We ask for understanding from financial and economic sectors, but if there’s no understanding . . . we’ll make the necessary reforms.”
Stiffer regulation of the weak private sector would be grafted on to a range of existing government controls over the economy, such as those in the area of foreign exchange, price controls and interest rates.
However, in practice there is little room for far-reaching changes in the key sectors of the Venezuelan economy – energy and mining – which have been in the hands of the state since the 1970s. In reality, analysts say, what beckons is a further concentration of power in the hands of the 52-year-old former army officer.
Mr Chávez, who once said “I am the state”, is preparing to fuse the chaotic coalition of parties who support him into a single party called the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, or the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.
Already floated is the possibility of a constitutional amendment that would allow Mr Chávez to be re-elected indefinitely.
The most important cabinet change sees the departure of Vice-president José Vicente Rangel, a veteran politician, and his replacement by Jorge Rodríguez, an ardent leftist who was formerly head of the electoral agency.
Mr Rangel, a master in some of the darker arts of politics, had acted not only as a shrewd adviser to Mr Chávez, but also as a bridge with opposition groups. Mr Rodríguez is a radical with little appetite for dissenters.
Carlos Raúl Hernández, a political analyst, maintains that Mr Chávez’s third term will see a drift further towards autocracy.
“The government has announced a radicalisation of the revolution but the only element that one can clearly understand from that is an almost totalitarian hunger for power,” Mr Hernández said. “That greater control over the country will mean closing off available spaces for civil society, such as the media.”
Those moves have already begun. During a speech to military officers last month, Mr Chávez said the government would not renew the broadcast licence of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), the country’s most widely-viewed terrestrial channel.
Mr Chávez, who has railed against privately-owned media before, accused RCTV of having backed the fumbled military-civilian coup that briefly deposed him in April 2002.
However, RCTV, whose news commentary is often highly critical of the Chávez government, claims that its concession will be valid until 2019.
The prospect of a high- profile battle with elements of the domestic media has already attracted attention abroad, including at the Organisation of American States.
On Friday, José Miguel Insulza, the OAS’s secretary-general, said that the challenge against RCTV was tantamount to “censorship” to a degree not seen in Latin America since military dictatorships were prevalent in the 1970s.
“The closing of a mass communications outlet is a rare step in the history of our hemisphere and has no precedent in the recent decades of democracy,” Mr Insulza said.
Yet, as with other occasions during Mr Chávez’s first eight years in power, the government appears on a collision course with international organisations and ready to rebuff criticism that it is not a democracy.
“The secretary-general [Insulza] is merely serving the interests of domestic and international groups who have repeatedly attempted to discredit a government that has respected human rights and democratic freedoms like none other in the country’s history,” the Venezuelan foreign ministry said at the weekend in response to Mr Insulza.
Just what the heck is wrong with Venezuela?
Amnesty will bring all the Chavistas out of the closet into the democratic party.
Venezuela is not an island.
Therefore, this will not work. Everyone will leave.
Exactly. That's the punch-line to the joke. Venezuela has always had a centrally-controlled economy, in which the major industries were in government hands. The "neo-liberal" free market economy that Chavez rails against has never existed in Venezuela. There is nothing new about Chavez' economics; it is more of the same. The only thing new about Chavez is that he is a dictator, and even that is not new. He is a throwback, not to the moderate dictatorships of living memory but to the virulent dictatorships of another era, that everyone thought was gone for good.
He is a living lesson in a key fact about dictatorships. We assume that dictators rule against the wishes of the people. In fact no dictator can rule without the active support of a dedicated core and the acquiescence of the rest. The violence of most violent dictators is directed at the outliers; most people do not have to be forced to obey, the desire to conform and the need to get on with life are sufficient to the task.
Time to sell short. The voters cast their ballots; they made their decisions. Now the consequences come home to roost. Too bad the ability to effect change in the future will not be existent. They were wonderful people, but one cannot say, like with Cuba, that they didn't have a say.
I wonder why this Marxist POS is still alive, ranting and raving. Doesn't the CIA give heart attacks anymore?
The violence of most violent dictators is directed at the outliers; most people do not have to be forced to obey, the desire to conform and the need to get on with life are sufficient to the task.
Pol Pot - not the model .
"They were wonderful people, but one cannot say, like with Cuba, that they didn't have a say."
they did have a say in 1998 when they first elected him. I seriously question whether they have had a say in 2004 or 2006. his insistence in getting electronic voting machines installed, getting a large interest in one of the companies that writes software for them, etc., is highly suspicious.
At this point he is in for life. Once he survived the april 2002 coup his odds of surviving went up hugely.
What a thug.
And this, dear friends, is what the Marxists of the U.S. media don't seem to grasp. The climax community of their global collectivist dreams will have no room for most of THEM!
Viewed another way, as Chavez becomes more of an autocrat, the more paranoid he gets. All of his "buddies" are just like him, professional under-miners, and none are to be trusted. There is no room to share at the top; and power and authority are confiscated like oil companies and private property.
So, the number of "news" and entertainment outlets shrinks to more easily controlled numbers. And, "enlightened" fellow-traveling news peeps, expecting a high position in the Utopian shangri la, now find them selves working in the fields (or buried within them).
He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount. Dictators do everything they can to insulate themselves from (real or imaginary) threats, including dis-empowering as many would be true believers as they possibly can.
.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.