[NYTr] Give Hugo Chavez a Chance (Jamaica Observer)
 
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:14:48 -0500 (CDT)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
The Jamaica Observer - Oct 17, 2007
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20071016T050000-0500_128399_OBS_GIVE_HUGO_CH_VEZ_A_CHANCE_.asp

Editorial

Give Hugo ChC!vez a chance

By Franklin W. Knight

HUGO ChC!vez, 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 ChC!vez has got the respectful
evaluation that each merits. It is time to give Hugo ChC!vez a chance.
He is not the villain he is often painted.

Hugo Rafael ChC!vez FrC-as, 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 SimC3n BolC-var University in Caracas.

The political influences on ChC!vez are numerous, but not unconventional
for his time. Obviously, the foremost influence is that of South
American liberator SimC3n BolC-var. 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 EliC)cer GaitC!n, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, as well as
the Bible.

ChC!vez 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.

ChC!vez hit the headlines from his unsuccessful attempt in 1992 to
overthrow the corrupt and unpopular Carlos AndrC)s PC)rez, 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 ChC!vez 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 ChC!vez 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.

ChC!vez, 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 ChC!vez
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.
ChC!vez has definitely altered the social basis of political power.

By asserting Venezuelan sovereignty and political independence ChC!vez,
not surprisingly, attracted relentless hostility from the United
States. President ChC!vez 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 ChC!vez 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 ChC!vez and in this regard
he seems to be doing splendidly.

                                 *
=================================================================
 NY Transfer News Collective     *    A Service of Blythe Systems
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
            Our main website:   http://www.blythe.org
   List Archives:       http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
   Subscribe:     http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
=================================================================