Veneconomy: Democracy in Venezuela?

Just over 24 hours after the elections on November 23, President Hugo Chávez threw off his democrat’s disguise and embarked on a stepped-up offensive of insults, discrediting remarks, and threats against the recently elected governors of the democratic alliance.

The first to fall prey to the President’s belligerent discourse was Governor-elect of Miranda Henrique Capriles Radonski, who beat Chávez’s appointee, Diosdado Cabello. Chávez accused Capriles Radonski falsely and for he hundredth time of being a coupster and traitor calling him by as many epithets as occurred to him, saying that he would not meet with him, so showing his contempt for the will of the 583,795 constituents (53.11%) who voted for Capriles. With this offensive he showed his yes-men the line they should adopt with the authorities of the democratic alliance.

The best demonstrations of PSUV leaders adopting this servile attitude towards Chávez were given by:

1) The new mayor of Libertador Municipality, Jorge Rodríguez, who changed his attitude overnight with regard to his relations with the mayor for Greater Caracas, Antonio Ledezma. He switched from his call for dialogue and concerted action made in the early hours of Monday, November 24, to a frontal attack and a refusal to acknowledge Ledezma’s authority;

2) Deputy Mario Isea and other government officials launched a battery of accusations against Manuel Rosales, whom Chávez threatened to put into prison. Rosales was not only accused of all kinds of corruption during his term as governor of Zulia, but he as also been cited, without any proof whatsoever, as being involved, with eight other Venezuelans, in planning the alleged assassination of Chávez; and

3) Gems in the Chavista crown, among them Iris Varela, Lina Ron, and La Piedrita, the government side’s attack force in Caracas, have stirred up hatred and incited people to violence against the new governors of Táchira and Miranda, the mayor for Greater Caracas, and the metropolitan mayors.

Apart from this abject servility, some of the outgoing government-coalition governors and mayors are giving an appalling demonstration of pillage and vandalism of State property.

The best examples of this are occurring in Miranda State Government, the Greater Caracas Mayoralty, and Sucre Mayoralty, where there are not only reports of equipment and furniture being stolen, invoices being destroyed, and even of bank accounts being cleaned out, but authority over public entities until now attached to these local governments, among them health modules and schools, has suddenly been withdrawn.

And as though that were not enough to show the true totalitarian nature of the Chávez administration, it has now trained its sights, once again, on Globovisión, the country’s only open-signal information channel that has the courage to stand up to the government’s policies. Conatel, a supposedly “autonomous” agency, has opened a second administrative procedure against this television station, following the President’s orders, which means that Globovisión is about to lose its concession.

On Sunday, November 23, Chávez asked, who can say that democracy does not exist in Venezuela and that there are no autonomous agencies? The answer is “the facts, Mr. President!”