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Is Hugo Chavez a dictator?
Results so far:
| Yes | 65% | 478 votes | Total: 733 votes | |
| No | 35% | 255 votes |
Yes
by Jason Daniel Baker
Created on: December 03, 2007 Last Updated: March 23, 2010
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela: A "People's" Dictatorship?
Other than an Eddie Fisher look-a-like contest (Sorry Eddie) I don't see what kind of truly Democratic race Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez might win. But this has not stopped him from staging a referendum to allow his supporters to endow him with broad and sweeping new legislative powers over the pretty understandable objections of his opponents.
Cooler heads prevailed and he lost but for how long? This individual might be refered to as an extrovert by some but as a madman by most others given his embrace of the respective regimes in Cuba and Iran.
Those who already refer to Chavez as a left-wing extremist will not have a full understanding of the term unless Chavez eventually gets the broad mandate he failed to win this time and has had a chance to use it. Venezuela has vast oil reserves and can make a huge impact upon the world price of oil.
If the people vote to give Chavez new powers then why are so many concerned about it becoming a dictatorship? It is probably because they know from historical precedent that it is very often how dictatorships start even as the ones who start them use rhetoric claiming they want to increase voter participation and return government to the people..
Salazar asked for special powers in Portugal in the early 1930s. Flash forward almost 40 years and he was still in power.
How about Adolf Hitler? A bit of legislation called "The Enabling Act" in response to a fire set at the Reichstag supposedly by Marxist agitators was passed to help him curb their excesses. The vast majority of historians suggest the event was staged though German Marxists (who understandably fought and then perplexingly collaborated with Nazis for years) are amongst the most violent of all of them. I actually think both explanations are plausible and that neither really matter. Hitler used it to try to legitimize what was essentially a military junta with corporate backing.
You can go all the way back to ancient Rome and Caesar Augustus to see one of the most definitive examples of power grabs. Augustus made a symbolic show of handing power over to the senate. In return the senate made a more substantial move in handing power back to him. To some it looked as though the opposite had happened.
In each of these cases one guy made the decisions where at one point many had. They grabbed more power by pretending to ask for it and then there was no way anyone could question them.
Hugo Chavez is merely re-inventing the wheel in Venezuela and blaming foreign pressures (correctly but conveniently). Chavez has said that U.S. President George W.Bush is Satan, a comparison, which I happen to think flatters just the first two of them. But at least Bush has had congress to impede his more sinister efforts somewhat.
Will Chavez have that? No, because dictators don't.
Do we really need to see Chavez exterminating and jailing politics before we call him a dictator or can we go by the fact that he is making decisions for people without fair, periodic consultations?
We did not wait for Joerg Haider to implement his agenda in Austria before we spoke up. Though admittedly you would be hard-pressed to find evidence of Chavez celebrating Hitler's birthday.
But Chavez rings alarmbells for many because he was a military officer who first attempted to gain power via coup (In 1992) and served two years in prison because of it. He was pardoned in 1994 and consolidated leftist support behind his leadership to win the 1998 presidential election handily (56% of the popular vote) but quickly started to make libertarians nervous in changing the consititiution which gave him a six-year presidential term with a two-term limit.
Theoretically he should be stepping aside next year paving the way for a new president. Perhaps it will be one of his comrades from the coup attempt in 1992 or one of those who helped him regain power after he was briefly ousted in 2002. In any case it will be the result of the Venezuelan people choosing a successor. But I'll believe that when I see it after all the other things I have seen this guy do including cozying up to Iran which I defy anyone to justify in any way.
There are those Marxists who have invested a great deal of time and energy championing the Chavez regime. Chavez is doing things that rich oil companies don't like and to them that justifies any and all adulation of him. Any who disagree with this view even if they have read all the propaganda trumpeting Chavez and still come out with questions are dismissed as stupid by leftist intelligentsia or worse, racist simply because Chavez happens to be indigenous.
If he helps poor people then that is a good thing particularly when they happen to be the poorest of the poor. But when he insists that he has to be the one running things that is when eyebrows and questions are raised. How many times is this guy going to try to move the goalposts to stay in power? When he does things like that it looks as though one elite has been traded for another.
Lets say he doesn't leave in 2011. What then are the excuses he offers? He was ousted briefly in 2002. Does that then mean that he should be given a fresh mandate? Does American interference with his agenda mean that he deserves a longer stretch in the presidency to finish what he started?
We'll see and if I'm wrong I'll admit it.
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No
by Zach Bigalke
Created on: November 30, 2007
Americans are quick to jump at any opportunity to label foreign leaders whose policies do nothing to help the United States as dictators. These blessed individuals, living in a land where citizens seemingly have to do nothing to keep their government afloat, are of the misguided belief that any yahoo who shows strong leadership and overwhelming popular support must be coercing his citizenry into such blind fealty. With overbearing apathy and abject skepticism sweeping through the American populace as it pertains to politics, it seems absurd to these teeming masses that any political leader could be anything but a crook and a dictator.
Merriam-Web ster intones that a dictator is "one holding complete autocratic control" over his charges. In a dictatorial society, there is no room for the voice of anyone other than the totalitarian leader. Any society where rulers and referenda are placed before the citizenry for a popular vote, by definition, does not place complete autocratic control in the hands of one man, woman or ruling class. Despite the obvious, Americans are quick to deride rulers whose rule they perceive as dictatorial... often as American rulers themselves become more autocratic.
In Venezuela, there is one particular leader who has scared the bejeezus out of Americans - Hugo Chavez. Chavez started on the road toward the presidency as a soldier in the Venezuelan military. In 1992, a planned coup attempt on Caracas failed, sending Chavez to prison for the next two years. After his 1994 pardon, Chavez turned toward political action as a more effective means of spreading his message to the populace than proved his coup plans. His personal policy renovations paid off handsomely on 06 December 1998 when he was elected the new president of Venezuela with 56 percent of the 6.5 million votes cast.
His policies since entering the presidential office have been geared toward putting power back in the hands of individual citizens, scaling back the overbearing powers and privileges granted to corporate interests by previous administrations. He implemented policies which placed control of oil and other money-generating sectors back into the hands of the federal government, scaling back privatization set into action by the previous president. He worked to improve literacy rates and education among high-school dropouts and never-educated adults. Yet, at the same time, he certainly did attempt to consolidate power into the executive branch of the government. But the difference between a dictator and where Chavez stands is that there are still checks and balances preventing Hugo from ruling as a hegemon.
Chavez faced and won reelection in 2000, victorious by twenty-two percentage points over his only challenger. The Enabling Act of 2001 allowed Chavez greater autonomy over decisions affecting Venezuela. While critics contend that this is autocratic control, the reality is that the majority of Venezuelans voted Chavez into power because he was looking out for their interests. It is not the average citizen who hates the rule of Chavez - corporations and the wealthy elite hate Chavez. He has instituted land-sharing programs to help distribute wealth more evenly; universal health care programs with the aim of improving health and reducing mortality rates; and education programs geared toward making education free for all citizens up to the university level. Venezuela's inflation rate has decreased modestly to its lowest point in twenty years, and the economy is steadily growing at a four-percent rate.
And the system proves both that Chavez is a respected and popular leader and that he is indeed not dictatorial. His aims, while revolutionary, are driven by utilitarian ideals - improve the lives and the quality of life for as many Venezuelans as possible. The country has since held a third election concerning its president. This time, a provision in the new constitution - lobbied for and approved by Chavez himself back in 1999 - allowed for a recall election to determine if Venezuela still desired to see Chavez in power. He remained in power in a 2004 recall election, with 59 percent voting against the recall. The majority of his subjects approve of his rule...
So, in essence, Chavez is only a dictator in the eyes of the multinational corporate interests who are not allowed to come into the oil-rich nation and rape the natives of their natural wealth. He is a dictator to the doctors who do not get to charge exorbitant rates for simple health care. He is a dictator to the governments of the world who seemingly place more power in the hands of a representative elite who drive up profits for their cronies while neglecting the needs of the many. But for the majority of the Venezuelan people, Chavez is a savior who has only their interests in mind... American illusions of governmental superiority be damned.
Learn more about this author, Zach Bigalke.
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