Chavez Remains Far from a Dictator

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Chavez Remains Far from a Dictator
by Bart Jones


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When the protest ended in violence and military rebels overthrew the president, RCTV along with other networks imposed a news blackout banning all coverage of pro-Chavez demonstrators in the streets demanding his return. Andres Izarra, a news director at RCTV, was given the order by superiors: no Chavistas on the screen. He quit in disgust and later joined the Chavez government.

On April 13, 2002, after the coup-installed president Pedro Carmona eliminated the Supreme Court and the National Assembly and nullified the constitution, media barons, including RCTV’s main owner, Marcel Granier, met with Carmona in the presidential palace and, according to reports, pledged their support to his regime. While the streets of Caracas literally burned with rage over Chavez’s ouster, the television networks ran Hollywood movies like Pretty Woman.

Venezuela’s media, owned largely by the country’s wealthy elites, is arguably the most rabidly anti-government media in the world. In the past, opposition figures have appeared on television openly calling for a coup against Chavez, who says he is leading a revolution on behalf of Venezuela’s majority poor. Chavez’s decision not to renew RCTV’s license is not exactly akin to George W. Bush shutting down CBS or NBC because they ran a few stories critical of him. If RCTV were operating in the United States, it’s doubtful that its actions would last more than a few minutes with the FCC.

Likewise, Chavez is not creating a single-party state as widely reported but is melding together an amorphous array of parties that support him. He is not outlawing opposition parties. He has no need to, as he showed when he glided to a record landslide victory in the Dec. 5 presidential vote by a 63-37 percent margin in a free and fair election. Chavez also is not nationalizing the entire economy without compensation to companies, as Castro did in the early days of the Cuban Revolution, but rather is buying back a few key strategic utilities such as the CANTV telecommunications company or taking a majority government share in four oil projects.

While the government has generally compensated owners at fair market value when it has taken over properties or businesses in the past, Chavez said that with CANTV it would deduct debts to workers, pensions and other obligations, including a “technological debt” to the state. Of course, the jury also is out over whether Venezuela’s government can run the nationalized companies better than the private sector did. Chavez also has taken other steps that are cause for concern. His decision to seek the power to rule by decree on certain matters for the next 18 months raises a red flag, along with his expressed desire to eliminate term limits. The world should remain vigilant to ensure that a free press, a free political system and a mixed economy where property rights are respected remain in place in Venezuela.

If Chavez infringes on any of these rights, it should be vigorously protested and condemned. But so far it hasn’t happened.

Read more at CommonDreams


Comment: The part that is bolded is a concern of mine. As an anarchist and a socialist, I want to make sure that there is no abuse of power or rule by one party. While I applaud many of Chavez's programs to eliminate the gap between the poor and the wealthy, we need to be ensure that this revolution doesn't go the way of the Bolshevik revolution in the former USSR, in which the party was the vanguard and the poor were still, well, poor under an oppressive, fascist and totaliltarian government.