VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: Ancient mariners and their cartographers were masters at the descriptive when they labeled anything and everything off the edge of their decidedly limited knowledge of the world as "There be dragons!" ... presumably as a warning to those that followed on their heels that indescribable dangers lay ahead!It can certainly empathize with matelots of yore when it comes to how most of the Murdoch-owned media in the USA, Europe and elsewhere approaches coverage of what is happening in Venezuela with its usual bent.
- "There be Dragons" would certainly seem to keynote the mainstreams' approach to the results of Venezuela's November 23 local and regional elections with lack of understanding clouded, of course, by the euphoria (or otherwise) of the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency and the imminent removal of George W. Bush from control over the Armagheddon button.
In February 1999, at the start of his presidency, Chavez admitted that he was NOT "Mandrake the Magician" and, rightly, said that the real power in Venezuela was in the hands of the people, the grassroots people of Venezuela who should properly decide their own destinies. At the time he was NOT to know that 1) a floods tragedy which coincided with a national referendum in December 1999 to decide a re-formulated Constitution, and 2) an unsuccessful attempt at coup d'etat in April 2002 would give impetus to the vigor of those grassroots Venezuelans to effect necessary changes in governmental structure to allow democracy to flourish as never before in Venezuela's 200 years of independent history.
While Murdoch-inspired headlines have claimed that Chavez' latest move is to impose a dictatorship or to enhance an assumption of his own importance on the world's political stage, many foreign observers (and many in Venezuela's somewhat splintered opposition that seek now to form a Democratic Opposition) fail to realize is a two-edged sword which will ultimately be decided by the Venezuelan electorate and NOT by the imposition of either pro-government activists or their counterparts in the political opposition (coalition or otherwise).
- Perhaps with indecent haste, Chavez supporters and Chavez himself, are insisting on getting the mechanics of a Constitutional reform out of the way before February 2009 is out.
With Semana Santa (Holy Week) kicking off mid-March as well ... and anyone who knows Venezuelans will be aware that public holidays such as Carnaval and Semana Santa are most definitely NOT for anything else other than carefree vacationing.
But why all the fuss? Surely it is down to the democratic will of the people if Chavez' plan for indefinite re-election is to be realized or not? And ... doesn't it equally apply to any successive presidential incumbent who may follow Chavez when, ultimately, he must step down by virtue of age, election failure or (disastrously) by assassin's bullet or bomb!
Would PSUV activists be so keen to press for indefinite re-election if they realized that their next president could be from the much-despised opposition and that, by their own democratic decision, they might allow for him/her to rule for ever and a day?
Of course, there are arguments which say that a Constitutional change in Chavez' favor will remove any uncertainly as to his presidential future post-2012! But in the hyper-uncertainty of Venezuela's reality, does it matter much other than to project his presidency past a roadblock currently imposed four years hence?
Would it rather not ensure, considering the fact that Chavez sees his destiny as being in control of Venezuela's political destiny for as long as it takes for the Bolivarian Revoluition to be accomplished, that he will be all the more careful in his conduct of presidential power to ensure that he can avoid a succession of possible half-way recall referendae that his detractors would be most keen to launch, given even a fraction of an opening opportunity.
- But basically, it's all down to the democratic will of the Venezuelan people to decide ... and now that they have successively realized that they have electoral power at their political disposal, they're not backward about using the franchise. Which should spell GOOD in any would-be democrat's handbook.
Yes, you either love the man or hate him -- there's no in-between it seems -- but while, yes, he's Head of State, is he really to blame for the minutia where individual responsibilities are more accurately placed upon the shoulders of incompetency and outright bloody-mindednesses which have calcified vital sectors of key ministries and departments?
Given a new lease on presidential life, it is to be expected that President Chavez Frias will have the capacity to deal forcibly with impending issues and to get the wonderful nation of Venezuela truly back on the rails again!
- Extending presidential re-electability is itself conditioned on presidential performance, and Venezuela does indeed have the Constitutional key of half-term recall referendae to avoid the transmogrification of Hugo Chavez into a clone of USA dictator George W. Bush.
Roy S. Carson
vheadline@gmail.com
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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.
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I would not believe anything political spread by the murdoch press - we have the awful thing here too. There is a fundamental difference by political agendas paid for by owners of the foreign press, and a truly democratically elected government.
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ReplyDeleteBoy! What a lot of stuff. Sometimes I feel you have to cut through the stuff (it's too much for readers who love headlines) and look at just what politics is all about. "Who does what in whose interests."
ReplyDeleteHas this changed? You can talk about "true democracy etc. etc. until the cows come home but in the end it boils down to ideology which springs from power and self interest.
The interests of "state" are usually synonymous with "party policy" or any adaptation of same as the world changes around.
Everyone who has been part of a party (and I have) gets disillusioned and sometimes quite disgusted by what is coming out of the once beloved party. When this happens you can speak out, and you should, but in the end you have either to leave or to shut up.
Sometimes it becomes a lesser of two evils when you are convinced that the poor, the really poor as opposed to the "relative" poor of Australia, need support and advocats. Isn't that what Chavez was and still is?
I would keep the wordy stuff to a minimum and look at what's been achieved and is likely to be in the future. There is no perfect world.
Regards
Ruth Pihl