Lat/Am Daily » Chávez

Astroturf image of the week

Peter Krupa — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:28:27 +0000

In his latest bid to sow conflict in order to direct attention away from the country’s real problems while eroding other non-Chávez power bases, Chávez is going after the Catholic Church. Allegedly, El Pueblo is behind him:

Far be it from me to stick up for the Catholic Church for any reason, but if those signs were really drawn by the people holding them, then I’m a child-diddling archbishop.

Check out the script on that “es.” Elegant!

Of course, civil society organizations staging demonstrations hand out pre-drawn placards all the time. I believe such a practice is less common among sitting governments, with the possible historical exception of the PRI, which is maybe not the first thing an aspiring democrat would want to be compared to.

The most disappointing part is that, were those signs actually drawn up by El Pueblo, they would be way more entertaining.

Crackdown

Peter Krupa — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:10:39 +0000

A few months out from legislative elections, the Chávez administration today intensified its crackdown on opposition media by arresting Guillermo Zuloaga, the owner of Venezuela’s only remaining opposition television station, Globovisión.

He was arrested by military intelligence police. Supposedly he is being investigated for criticizing the Chávez administration’s record of attacks on freedom of speech. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Ironic. The AP is also reporting that opposition politician Wilmer Azuaje was also arrested for comments he made linking Chávez’ family to corruption. The charges against Azuaje have not been specified.

In the last 12 months, the Venezuelan government has shut down 34 radio stations, removed RCTV from the airwaves a second time, threatened to hold Web portals responsible for their commenters, and arrested politician Oswaldo Álvarez Paz for statements he made about Chávez and drug traffickers.

Amazingly, freshly-re-elected OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza has immediately come out requesting the release of Zuloaga. Frankly, as if Venezuela’s recent track record of violations and oppression weren’t enough, these recent arrests are a flagrant violation of the OAS Democratic Charter.

If the OAS wants to maintain any kind of moral relevancy in the region, it’s time to either sanction Venezuela and order it to pay reparations, or kick it out of the democracy club.

Welcome Home, Hugo Chávez

Peter Krupa — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:35:12 +0000

Thank the Blogger Gods, Hugo Chávez is going to launch his very own blog. This is the perfect medium for the long-winded and famously workaholic president, and frankly, I can’t wait to see what he writes about.

My only piece of advice is: Do not enable comments. Anti-Chávez commenters are about as insightful and polite as a bag of flaming dog crap.

It’s the body count, stupid

Peter Krupa — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:07:12 +0000

The best reason to dislike Hugo Chávez is not that he’s a Marxist or a tyrant or anti-American or any other such silliness of the likes you find in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. The best reason to dislike Hugo Chávez is that after 11 years, it’s safe to say he’s failed as a president.

A recent illustration of this is a report from an NGO indicating that murders have almost tripled in Venezuela since Chávez took office in 1998. That year, there were 4,550 murders; in 2009, there were 16,047, or about 53 for every 100,000 people, putting Venezuela in the top three most murder-prone countries in the world.

Crime is a complicated issue, and people are right to point out that crime and police corruption were a problem before Chávez came to power. But he had 11 years, the most amazing pile of cash in the history of the country, and total control of the legislature. A skilled leader and manager with those kinds of resources could have at least kept a lid on things.

Instead, according to the same report, the Chávez government has launched a total of 15 half-cocked anti-crime initiatives, none of which has accomplished anything. As a gruesome illustration of their failure, in only the last 15 days, 230 people were murdered in Caracas.

Other examples of Chávez’ mismanagement of the country and the enormous oil bonanza he was handed last decade abound: power outages, surging inflation, capital flight, poor access to water, a brain-drain, etc. All of these are debatable to some extent.

But you can’t argue away bodies, and they’re really piling up.

The chilling effect

Peter Krupa — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:51:47 +0000

It started with a rumor posted on popular anti-Chávez site NoticieroDigital.com that several government ministers had been murdered. Now there is talk in Venezuela of “regulating the internet,” whatever that might mean. I’ll believe it when I see it (and when I do see it, I’m going into the web proxy business).

Frankly, the rumors that started the uproar deserve to be investigated. Veiled threats of violence against government officials (and actually, threats of violence against anyone) are not protected speech anywhere in the world. But the proper response in that case is to send some detectives to knock on doors. Instead, Chávez goes on a general televised rant against the media:

Around 3:45 he states, in reference to an analyst who spoke to television channel Globovisión:

Whoever makes a statement must present proof for what they’re saying, both the one who says it, and the one who lets it be said and spread. They know they’re committing a crime that is punished with prison anywhere in the world.

When journalists and editors are required to bear the burden of proof on pain of imprisonment, it silences speech. This is the reasoning behind New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Everyone has different libel laws and different standards for acceptable speech, but I would never practice journalism or publish information in a country where I could go to jail for making a mistake.

Neither would anyone else, and that’s just the point. Whether or not anyone ever actually goes to jail is irrelevant. Speech is silenced. The chilling effect is in, and not coincidentally, on another Venezuelan news site – Noticias24.com – comments have been turned off. Just in case.

Half-spring forward

Peter Krupa — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:44:30 +0000

The last time I was in Venezuela, I never quite figured out what time it was. My laptop clock was always off by a half hour, in one direction or the other. When I got home, I remembered that Chávez had ordered the clocks moved back by half an hour to give kids more time to get to school.

In the realm of wacky, dictator-like decisions, putting your country one half hour off the entire rest of the world is pretty competitive. (Though it’s not nearly as awesome as building a gold statue of yourself that rotates to face the Sun. Get on it.) These days, however, Venezuela’s business folk are saying that putting the time back the way it was will save electricity.

Maybe they’ll compromise and move it back 15 minutes.

Anyway, this is as good an excuse as I’ll ever get to post this “who’s-on-first/what’s-on-second” exchange between Chávez and his education minister when the time change was implemented back in 2007. Right, OK, adelante. Wait.

Less money, mo’ problems

Peter Krupa — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:37:19 +0000

Price of oil over the last 18 months.

Chávez’ innovative experiments in centrally-planned capito-socialist economy are looking pretty shaky these days. For one thing, the Venezuelan economy shrank 3.3% last year, which isn’t surprising except for the fact that the slump worsened in the 4th quarter – to 5.8% – just as the rest of Latin America is beginning to recover. The oil sector alone contracted 10%.

(Also, it’s a neat trick to have your economy shrink even while inflation is at 26%.)

It may get worse. Economists say a drop in demand due to the currency devaluation at the beginning of the year will depress GDP growth again in 2010, possibly keeping the economy in recession. Constant power outages are sure to be a drag on production as well.

Meanwhile, the government’s attempts to prop up the bolivar by auctioning massive amounts of dollar-denominated bonds have been an utter failure, as the parallel-market bolivar is at its lowest point in six months. The dollar auctions have stopped.

And to top it all off, the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce says the government still owes US$12 billion for property it has expropriated (including private petroleum services contractors who were bought out last year) and US$7 billion in forex promised to exporters who need dollars to keep goods flowing to a country that no longer produces anything but oil domestically.

Which, speaking of, happens to be Chávez’ only way of financing his capito-socialist experiment. But because global crude consumption fell last year, there’s a glut on the market, meaning prices will have a hard time going up and might actually go down.

Did I mention Venezuela has legislative elections in September?

Time to get some new lawyers

Peter Krupa — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:08:31 +0000

As predicted, Chávez is lashing out furiously at the harsh report on Venezuela and human rights issued by the OAS’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), calling it “pure garbage.” But although he’s angry, he doesn’t seem to have a clear idea what’s actually happening:

Chávez said his administration is preparing to “denounce the agreement through which Venezuela joined, what’s it called, that dreadful Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and get out of there. Because, why? It’s not worth it. That thing is a mafia.”

The thing is, you can’t just leave the IACHR. It’s part of the OAS, created in Article 106 of the Charter of the Organization of American States. All members of the OAS are also members of the IACHR, including the United States, which is why the IACHR and its various rapporteurships regularly criticize the U.S. To leave the IACHR, you have to leave the OAS.

The only other government that tried to exempt itself from its human rights obligations as an OAS member was Peru under Fujimori, which tells you something.

Peter Krupa — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:58:55 +0000

Chávez and Uribe started “yelling and called each other names, using obscene language” during a private dinner at the “Unity Summit” taking place in Mexico. The 31 Latin American countries in attendance are supposedly in the process of forming a regional political group that excludes the U.S. and Canada.

And now, for their next trick…

Why is Chávez picking a fight with Polar?

Peter Krupa — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:38:13 +0000

First, last week, Chávez ordered food company Polar – which most famously produces beer and arepa flour – to move its brewery in Barquisimeto, as the government is going to use the land for a public housing project. Polar protested, and now Chávez has issued a threat: “If you keep on like this, I can make a decision that you will not like with respect to all of Polar.”

What’s he up to?