Oppressive, odious oaf...

It seems my original opinion of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez was the correct one; having been convinced, like many, by evidence of infrastructural improvements to the country and witnessed abundant testimony of the good things he was doing I am now fully back where I started...360º...or a double U turn! The title of the post tells you all you need to know.

Today the Spanish and Spanish speaking press are abuzz and agog with Chavez's latest ridiculous outburst of serious insults:

El ex presidente español "es un fascista que además apoyó el golpe, es de la calaña de Adolfo Hitler, un tipo que da es asco y da lástima, un verdadero lacayo de George Bush".

Roughly translated to English: "The Spanish Ex-president is a fascist who in addition supported the coup [April 2002], he is of the same nature [class/species] as Adolf Hitler, a 'bloke' who is revolting and pityful, a genuine servant [slave/lapdog] of GWB". The irony, of course, if such crude and wholly inappropriate things have to be said, is that Chavez himself is far more akin to Hitler. What he said isn't new to him, it's similar to what he said last year about Bush himself: [Link] Chavez told thousands of supporters at a rally that he thought:

"Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George Bush".

Unbelievable. OK, thats the odious bit; the oppressive bit is more worrying. Last week the Daily Telegraph reported that "On Mr Chávez's order, 17,000 communal councils have now been set up across the country, and an estimated £1 billion earmarked to fund them. As the official slogan, "Build power from below", proclaims, their stated purpose is to promote grass-roots democracy and hand power directly to the people - in particular the urban poor who make up the bulk of his most fervent supporters." I posted on the BBC about this almost 2 years ago...but anyway, not too bad you say?...

….members of these voluntary groups will constitute a nationwide militia, schooled in Cuban-style tactics for both guerrilla warfare and counter-insurgency.

...ah, that makes it of more concern...an armed (tame) militia.

Also The International Federation of Journalists [IFJ Link] ...said "President Hugo Chavez’s decision to close a television station (RCTV) that has been critical of his government and his recent remarks calling into question the future of free trade unionism signal a worrying development for media pluralism and union rights in Venezuela"... ..."At the same time, Chavez has been calling into question the future of free trade unions."

Chávez's intolerance of dissent is so high that he has even ordered the nation's Communist Party to disband itself, in order to become a member of the government's "Unified Socialist Party." that from Francisco Rodriguez in The Guardian (Comment is free) "Should egalitarians support Chávez?" On top of all this the crime rate, and especially the murder rate, is going through the roof, Theresa Bradley (Bloomberg News) reported yesterday that nearly 90% percent of people polled last month said they were unsatisfied with their personal safety, while almost 50% cited crime as the nation's worst problem.

More on May 1st...when the oil is nationalised; only last week Venezuela explicitly said (threatened?) for the first time, companies may not be compensated for losing investments in the Oil takeovers.

S.O.