OxBlog

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

# Posted 1:52 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

HAS THE WaPo GONE SOFT ON DICTATORS? No, of course not. The WaPo just happens to have a correspondent in Venezuela who seems to have forgotten in the midst of Hugo Chavez's ballot-box triumph that Mr. Chavez is hardly a model democrat.

In her opening sentence, correspondent Mary Beth Sheridan attributes to Mr. Chavez a
Highly centralized, populist style of government that has stirred fierce opposition at home and irritated the Bush administration.
"Highly centralized" is a strange way to describe a government that packs the courts, slaps around the media, and throws leading critics in jail on trumped up charges. Then again, one shouldn't expect a man who once led a failed coup attempt and remains close friends with Castro to have the greatest respect for democratic norms.

[On that note, Jimmy Carter deserves tremendous credit for monitoring the integrity of yesterday's referendum. Earlier this year, Carter fought hard to ensure that the referendum would take place, in spite of Chavez's dishonest effort to stop it.

Even though few Americans think much about Venezuela these days, Carter lent his experience and prestige to protecting its people's freedom.]

Moving on, correspondent Sheridan also ascribes unwarranted credibility to Chavez's claims that he is leading a "revolution of the poor". According to Sheridan,
Chavez has endeared himself to the country's downtrodden with his rough-hewn style and delivery of numerous social programs.
While that statement is essentially correct, it leaves the wrong impression in the absence of more detailed information about Chavez's record. Toward the end of her article, Sherdian briefly mentions Venezuela's "woeful economic performance" under Chavez. In fact, Venezuela's GDP has plunged almost 9% in each of the past two years. The reason is Chavez's incompetence.

In the absence of any sort of coherent economic policy, Chavez's much publicized spending on the poor serves as little more than a band-aid. According to Michael Shifter, a leading expert on Latin American politics,
The number of Venezuelans living in extreme poverty doubled between 1999 and 2003, Chavez's first five years as president...

Chavez's vigorous and targeted social spending right before an election smacks of the manipulative practices he accused [Venezuela's] traditional parties of [practicing] for decades.
Rather than a revolution of the poor, Chavez is demonstrating the poverty of his so-called revolution.
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