Monthly Archives: September 2010

Sep
15
2010
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VenEconomy: He Sowed Winds and Is Reaping Disasters

This article was originally posted by Latin American Herald Tribune

Since 1999, when Hugo Chávez came to power, there has been a systematic policy of waging war and destruction against the regime’s adversaries and of dividing the country into two large sectors and pitching them one against the other.

This policy of waging war has led to the practice of getting rid of people with the skills and experience for occupying posts that are crucial for Venezuela’s development, for merely political reasons. What is even worse, these people, also for absurd political reasons, have been replaced almost entirely by individuals who have scant knowledge of the area for which they are responsible and are expected to act in accordance with guidelines where revolutionary interests prevail over the proper functioning of the country.

Today, sad to say, Venezuelans are reaping the disasters and the loss of lives and property that those winds of war have sown.

One of the victims of the lack of investment, disregard for maintenance, incompetence, negligence, corruption, and other numerous ills of this revolutionary government is the country’s road system, which is in frank decline to the point of collapse, full of potholes and without street lighting, signposts, or road barriers. In the past week, this situation claimed the life of the Governor of Guárico Willian Lara and left 17 people injured in a pileup on the Caracas-Guarenas freeway, where accidents occur practically every day with injuries and loss of life.

Another victim is the public transportation system, which consists of a collection of units fit for the junk yard, and the Caracas Metro, which is operating in excess of capacity, with rundown facilities and teeming with criminals.

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Sep
15
2010
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Venezuelan opposition must stand up

by Alvaro Vargas Llosa

In any dictatorship that holds an election, opposition movements face a dilemma — to participate or not to participate. If they do, they could legitimize an electoral charade. If they don’t, they will cede all the institutional space to the dictator.

Five years ago, the Venezuelan opposition boycotted National Assembly elections. Their case was morally sound: Everything pointed to a rigged vote and any collaboration with Hugo Chavez’s farce would openly help him. But the result was a legislature that has overwhelmingly acted as Chavez’s mouthpiece. When those elections took place, Chavez was well beyond the point at which public opinion mattered.

Which is why Venezuela’s opposition Coalition for Democratic Unity has made the right decision by participating in the Sept. 26 elections to renew the National Assembly. Faced with the prospect of a totalitarian state, abstention is not an option. Winning the moral argument — the basic goal of abstaining — is futile when the theater of political war is no longer that of right and wrong but simply that of dying republican institutions versus a tyrannical juggernaut. In this scenario, the urgent need is the preservation of whatever political capital those fighting for the survival of the Venezuelan republic still have; the larger one is to reverse the trend in their favor. By partaking in the vote, the opposition is doing the former and at least keeping alive the chance of the latter.

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Sep
14
2010
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The Cost of Chavez

This article was originally posted by Front Page Magazine

Since coming to power in 1998, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez has presided over radical changes inside the country. Promising to create “21st century socialism,” he has reformed the constitution, giving government-funded health care to all. He has nationalized key industries in repeated attempts to address what he perceives as an imbalance between Venezuela’s business elites and its masses of poor, including a “re-nationalization” of the oil sector. He’s worked within OPEC to keep the price of oil high and contain America’s power (while also blaming it for his economic woes).

Most alarmingly, he has turned into the bully of Latin America, purchasing large quantities of Russian weapons, threatening his neighbors with war and constantly yammering on about American assassination plots and military threats whenever he needs a boost to his domestic approval ratings. He has supported the FARC terrorists in their insurgency campaign against US-ally Colombia. Clearly, the man has been busy. So busy, in fact, that it was to be expected that he would drop at least one of the balls he was juggling. Too bad for the people of Venezuela that the ball in question was the one concerned with keeping crime low and the streets safe: Under his leadership, Venezuela has become a disaster.

The statistics are sobering, and astonishing. On the whole, the country, with 26 million people, saw a whopping 19,000 murders in 2009. To put that into perspective, the state of Texas, with a comparable population of roughly 24.5 million, experienced 1,374 murders in 2008, considerably less than a tenth of Venezuela’s total. Indeed, the United States as a whole, with roughly 12 times the population of Venezuela, recorded nearly 3,000 fewer murders in 2008 than did Venezuela in 2009. (Please note the differing years reflect the most recent available data for both nations.)

Put another way, it is safer to live in Iraq than it is in Venezuela.