His victory was determined by electronic voting machines that are indirectly under his control, he’s consolidating the Media and the now virtually one-party state under his command, and he’s planning to assume special legislative powers – powers previously outside the domain of the executive branch. For those of us who’ve criticized the GOP’s determination to govern without Democratic input the past five+ years and their tendency to ignore or support the President’s legally-dubious domestic spying, it’s tempting to say he’s George Bush’s Liberal mirror image. But here’s one major distinction (among several): Bush and his party never tried to eliminate Presidential term limits. I think it’s necessary to say now that what we have in Venezuela is an incipient dictator.From Yahoo News:
A leading anti-U.S. voice in the world and in the vanguard of a shift to the left in Latin America, Chavez now wants to scrap presidential term limits and lead the OPEC nation for decades.
Many of us agree with most of Chavez’s stated goals; chief among them the novel idea that Venezuelans should benefit more than foreign investors do from their own natural resources, and that the United States’ Monroe Doctrine (used by Presidents to justify numerous invasions and subversions of Latin American governments) is an anachronism. We agree with Chavez that the nations of Latin America have a right to self determination, they have a right to deny foreign exploitation of their own resources and to insist that the United States stay out of their political affairs. But we cannot turn a blind eye to the very real prospect that an even more fundamental right – the right of people to govern themselves – looks like it may be endangered in Venezuela.If Hugo Chavez grows a long beard, we’ll know it’s game over in Caracas.***EDIT: As a reader points out in the comments to this thread, the leaders of Chile and Brazil – whose acceptance has been credited in no small part to the popularit of Hugo Chavez – have so far demonstrated that socialist values are not incompatible with Democracy. Perhaps the teacher should start taking notes.
