Tag Archives: dictatorship

Oct
1
2012
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Panel: Superior Capriles Campaign negates Unlevel Playing Field

South Americas October Surpise Panel: Superior Capriles Campaign negates Unlevel Playing Field

Screen Capture: Bipartisan Policy Center - South Americas October Surpise

Venezuela under Chávez does not meet the standards for a real democracy, according to statements made by former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. The former leader told an audience at Washington’s Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) that Chávez has failed to protect the security and freedoms of Venezuelan citizens during his rule and has not allowed their active participation in government.

Uribe participated in a BPC panel last week focusing on recent developments in Venezuela and Colombia, which include Venezuela’s tight presidential election, entitled “South America’s October Surprise?” The former Colombian president was joined by Dan Fisk of the International Republican Institute and Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue.

The panel discussed whether Venezuela’s upcoming elections can be considered fair as well as the likelihood that opposition candidate Henrique Capriles will defeat Chávez. Participants also tried to predict how the president will respond if he loses.

“There was a hemispheric consensus that elections [are] how you judge a democracy,” Fisk said of Venezuela’s upcoming vote. But he added that Chávez has manipulated the system to provide the appearance of a democracy while suppressing citizens’ democratic rights. “A lot of people have given [Chávez] credit that you can take away people’s freedom through a series of democratic processes.”

Uribe, though, had much stronger words. “I am against the Chávez dictatorship with or without elections,” he said. He further criticized the Chávez administration for failing to pursue the narco-terrorist organization FARC in Venezuelan territory. That failure has bled across Venezuela’s borders, undermining the stability of Colombia that the government of president Uribe worked hard to attain.

Fisk said that while the technical voting process in Venezuela appears to be fair, the real disparity – and the threat to democracy – lies in the campaign itself.

“The problem is not the machinery, it is the campaign process,” Fisk said. Venezuelan law allows the president to call mandatory national broadcasts, known as cadenas, at any time, and Chávez has abused this power to saturate Venezuela with campaign propaganda. Meanwhile, Capriles must pay for airtime, and lacks the resources to match the reach of the state media.

Chávez has also used the resources of the government, supplied by the country’s vast oil reserves, to finance his campaign. “In many ways PDVSA is the lubricant of the Chávez campaign,” Fisk said. Chávez has increased social spending, and then trumpeted that increased spending in his campaign rhetoric, giving Venezuelans the impression that it is he, not the government, who is giving them these benefits.

Despite all of this, Fisk says that this is the most competitive race that Chávez has ever faced. It remains to be seen if all of the electoral advantages Chávez enjoys can blunt the impact of his economic mismanagement, which has led to severe shortages and skyrocketing inflation, or make Venezuelans forget the recent refinery fires and one of the world’s highest crime rates.

Shifter added that the opposition has run an excellent campaign, and Capriles has refused to fall for tactics and provocations of Chávez. The opposition has stumbled in the past and has its best chance yet, in part because it has unified itself into one group. In addition, he did join the concerns of the other panelists, adding that “there is not a level playing field.”

In an encouraging bit of consensus, the panelists for the most part dismissed worries that Chávez would reject the results if the opposition wins. “It would be very hard in terms of politics in Venezuela and international pressure to deny [an opposition victory],” Shifter said. He warned, however, that the process may not be smooth. “We should be prepared for some amount of violence and instability. We have seen that in campaign stops in the past couple of days,” alluding to recent Chavista-incited violence at Capriles rallies.

Fisk added that the United States should be prepared to accept the results if the election appears credible, and that he believes that Venezuelans will peacefully accept the results as well.

 
May
15
2012
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Capriles tells Uribe to not get involved in Venezuela’s elections

Colombia Reports
Adriaan Alsema
May 15, 2012

henrique capriles encuestas 300x217 Capriles tells Uribe to not get involved in Venezuelas elections

Courtesy of: Star Media

Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles told Colombian ex-President Alvaro Uribe Monday to not interfere in the country’s election race.

Uribe has been meeting with Venezuelan opposition leaders since last year and has increasingly opened the attack on sitting President Hugo Chavez with whom the Colombian former head of state had frequent clashes while still in power.

“I am telling ex-President Uribe, like President Santos, like any other head of state or former president, do not interfere with Venezuela’s electoral process, because we Venezuelans will solve our own problems and do not want the interference of any country,” Capriles said at a rally Monday.

The call came hours after Uribe dedicated most his Twitter account to verbal attacks against Venezuela’s socialist president, who he accused of being a dictator and covering up soaring homicide rates.

Uribe responded to Capriles’ statement tweeting ”as long as there is dictatorship and the protection of terrorists we will express our opinion on Venezuela every day.”

The Venezuelan opposition candidate has been running behind Chavez in the polls and according to some pollsters has lost ground to the socialist leader over the past few months.

Venezuela will take to the polls on October 7.

To read the original article from Colombia Reports, please click here.

 
Dec
21
2010
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Showing His True Colours

The Economist

Dec 21st 2010

WHEN the opposition to Hugo Chávez’s radical leftist government won a majority of votes in a legislative election this September, its leaders hoped the result would slow Venezuela’s slide towards dictatorship. But the message Mr Chávez seems to have received is that he will have to become even more authoritarian to hold power. In recent days, the president’s allies in the outgoing congress have rushed to approve a package of laws that virtually eliminate the country’s last vestiges of checks and balances and protection for civil liberties.

Shortly after Mr Chávez took office in 1999, he won approval of a new constitution with a strict division of powers and many progressive human-rights provisions. It did not take long for him to tire of such safeguards. In 2007 he proposed a “socialist” reform that would have turned Venezuela into a near-dictatorship. Voters turned it down in a referendum. But he has since managed to implement much of what was rejected, including incorporating his political militia into the military; eliminating the autonomy of the central bank; and winning a subsequent referendum to abolish term limits.

The most recent victims of Mr Chávez’s onslaught are the national parliament and local governments. Ever since his rivals unwisely boycotted a legislative election in 2005, Mr Chávez has enjoyed a rubber-stamp congress. He is taking no chances with the new parliament, which will take office on January 5th and includes a significant opposition presence. On December 17th, his allies passed an “enabling law” that will let him rule by decree on almost all significant issues for the next 18 months—rendering the new legislature a virtually irrelevant talking-shop before the new members even have a chance to warm their seats.

The president is also sidelining local governments. He has already diverted funds from state and municipal authorities for years. Now, he has undermined them entirely via five “popular power” laws establishing the socialist “commune”—a new administrative body, run by the executive, which ignores existing local boundaries—as the basic unit of government.

Mr Chávez is cracking down on civil rights as well. Finishing off their productive lame-duck session, his congressional allies will soon approve a series of bills dubbed the “Cuban package” by opponents. It includes drastic restrictions on freedom of speech, including control of the internet; an end to university autonomy; a virtual ban on the foreign funding of NGOs; and dismissal for members of the legislature wishing to switch sides. The president’s tolerance for dissent was made clear when unidentified thugs attacked students and activists who were protesting outside the parliament building against the new laws, using sticks, stones, bottles and even plastic traffic cones. None of them has been brought to justice.

Outsiders have taken note. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission said it deplored a “serious setback for freedom of expression”. The government, as is its wont, dismissed such criticism as a foreign-funded destabilisation plot. Mr Chávez has said the enabling law is necessary to respond to recent floods that have left tens of thousands homeless. It remains unclear exactly how his new special powers involving national defence or telecommunications, for example, will help re-house them.

Mr Chávez’s heavy-handed reaction to a fairly modest setback—his party will keep its legislative majority despite losing the popular vote—bodes poorly for how he might handle a loss in the 2012 presidential election. The military, he said recently, might well not tolerate an opposition government, and Venezuela’s senior general added that the armed forces were “wedded” to the chavista project.

If the president’s slow-motion coup is not enough to keep him in power, might he resort to the more traditional kind? History gives reason to worry. Mr Chávez first made his name as the leader of a failed coup in 1992. He celebrates its anniversary every year.