Tag Archives: housing

Jul
16
2012
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ICYMI: Wall Street Journal and New York Times document Chavez’s media manipulation

Chávez’s War on the Media
Venezuela is holding a presidential election, but the president has squelched free speech.
The Wall Street Journal
July 15, 2012
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

Argentine press freedom award goes to Hugo Chavez 300x211 ICYMI: Wall Street Journal and New York Times document Chavezs media manipulation

Courtesy of: UPI / Maryam Rahmanian

Suppose the country you live in is holding a presidential election and the incumbent is running for another term. Suppose further that the economy is in bad shape. The ranks of the unemployed and poor have swelled, the government is spendthrift, and the central bank is no longer independent.

The president takes no responsibility. He blames everything on the rich. He says they are exploiting the working classes and don’t pay their fair share in taxes. Fomenting class envy and resentment is his stock in trade. Now suppose there is no independent media.

Welcome to Venezuela. Think the country can hold a fair presidential election?

South America’s oil dictatorship kicked off the campaign season on July 1. Hugo Chávez, who has been the commander in chief of the military government since 1999, hopes to keep his job when Venezuelans go to the polls on Oct. 7. Henrique Capriles Radonski, the former governor of the state of Miranda, is out to unseat him.

Outside observers, including the international media, are treating the race like a real battle of ideas. But how can that be when there is no free speech?

Let’s put aside for a moment all the obvious problems. Forget about the lack of an independent electoral body to ensure fairness in voter registration, at polling stations, and when tallying ballots. Forget about how Mr. Chávez makes up rules as he goes along and then gets the judiciary that he controls to bless them. Forget too that the state-owned oil monopoly (known by the Spanish-language initials PdVSA) is his campaign war chest, and the central bank prints money on demand. For now, consider only the military dictatorship’s capacity to control the message…

To read the rest of this article on The Wall Street Journal, please click here.

Extreme Home Makeover: Chávez Edition
The New York Times
July 13, 2012
By William Neuman

14venezuela span articleLarge 300x186 ICYMI: Wall Street Journal and New York Times document Chavezs media manipulation

Courtesy of: Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

EJIDO, Venezuela — Every Thursday, the state-run television channel here presents a live national broadcast of what might be called “Extreme Home Makeover: Socialist Edition.” It is part reality TV, part game show and part full-throated campaign rally.

The programming features top aides to President Hugo Chávez handing over new apartments and houses to down-on-their-luck Venezuelans, who respond with telegenic tears and expressions of gratitude to Mr. Chávez, who is running for re-election.

“I want to send a message to all the people in shelters, to have faith and keep up hope,” said Ramón Rondón, 64, on a recent broadcast, standing in the kitchen of his new apartment in a government-built development called El Cobre. A white-haired pro-Chávez activist, Mr. Rondón added, “This is a victory of the revolution.”

A short time later, Mr. Rondón’s wife, María Monsalvi, 54, relaxed in a new armchair, part of the furniture, including a sofa, beds, a kitchen table and chairs, provided by the government. Above Ms. Monsalvi’s head was a photo of Mr. Chávez hung by the show’s producers. Because her apartment was featured on television, she was given a deluxe “presidential line” of furnishings. She marveled at her good fortune after losing her home in a mudslide and then spending a year in a cramped shelter. “I felt like I won the lottery,” she said.

For Americans weary of underwater mortgages and housing booms and busts, there is surely something novel in Venezuela’s approach to its own housing crisis. The government estimates that in a country of 29 million people, 2.7 million families need new homes, either because they are homeless, the homes they live in are inadequate or multiple families are crowded together under one roof.

The giveaways are a prime example of how Mr. Chávez has been able to maintain popular support for nearly 14 years, despite out-of-control crime, erratic basic services and stubborn poverty. By making a show of delivering new homes to some, he keeps alive hope among many others that they too might some day benefit from the same largess.

Recovering from cancer treatments, Mr. Chávez has been far less visible in public than at any other time of his presidency. But his housing giveaways continue, whether he is there to personally hand over the keys to the dwellings himself or not. He finances the new homes with the country’s vast oil income and promotes the giveaways through the “Housing Thursday” broadcasts and television commercials that are essentially government-paid ads for Mr. Chávez’s candidacy. He recently gave a new apartment to a woman for becoming his three millionth follower on Twitter…

To read the rest of this article on The New York Times, please click here.

 
Dec
2
2011
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ICYMI – Venezuela: Private Sector Crowded Out

The Financial Times
By Benedict Mander

Huge sums of money have been ploughed into social programmes that, by government estimates, have reached more than 20m people, and Mr Chávez has overseen a reduction in poverty by more than half.

But beyond simply crowding out private sector efforts to help the poor, some argue the government has also played an active role in ensuring there are fewer opportunities to do so.

“It’s not only that the government doesn’t like [corporate philanthropy], it’s actually doing something to put a stop to it,” says a Venezuelan who runs a private non-profit organisation involved in microfinance and who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

“The government has pulled the rug from under our feet, as it doesn’t like microfinance. It’s exactly what they don’t want because it enables people not to have to depend on them.”

He says changes to banking laws have made microfinance increasingly less viable for his foundation and many microfinance organisations have been forced to move into conventional banking to survive.

But in spite of persistent attempts to diminish the affluence and influence of the rich, who Mr Chavez considers his political opponents, as well as a generalised hostility to the private sector, corporate philanthropy is surviving. Pressing social needs mean there remains plenty of room for non-profit organisations in sectors such as healthcare, education and housing.

A proportion of the most important private sector philanthropic work is carried out by some of Mr Chávez’s most high-profile adversaries.
One of the country’s biggest charities is the Polar Foundation, the social arm of the largest privately owned company.

Mr Chávez has repeatedly threatened to expropriate Polar, the food group, and he once said, Lorenzo Mendoza, its president would go to hell for being rich.
Private philanthropy has also flourished in areas where the government struggles to deliver.

Many public hospitals are in poor condition, for example, but the Children’s Orthopaedic Hospital in Caracas, a non-profit private foundation set up in 1945 by Eugenio Mendoza, a relative of Polar’s president, is flourishing.

But for many companies, being socially responsible is a challenge, and often not a priority. “With so much regulation and low profit margins there’s not much room for manoeuvre,” says Asdrubal Oliveros, an economist at Ecoanalitica, a consultancy.

“The government wants to monopolise the social arena to generate political returns … It is part of the DNA of ’21st century socialism’ that the state just keeps growing.”

“We are very happy we have been able to survive in this environment and to do the work we do,” says the philanthropist involved in microfinance.

 
Nov
18
2011
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In Case You Missed It… Articles Roundup Week of 11/18/11

In this week’s roundup…Hugo Chávez’s own crime legacy forces him to deploy thousands of troops into the streets of Caracas; MLB player rescued after being kidnapped from his mother’s house in Venezuela; Opposition candidates hold their first TV debate; Gunmen attack opposition candidate’s campaign bus; Los Roques is no longer a tourist attraction after Chávez takeover; One may own property in Venezuela, but it is Chávez who calls the shots.

 

Hugo Chavez deploys thousands to troops to help police curb widespread crime in Venezuela, The Associated Press via the Washington Post

President Hugo Chavez ordered thousands of National Guard soldiers into the streets of Venezuela’s capital and surrounding states Thursday, urging them to help outgunned police curb widespread violent crime.

Not-so-sweet home, The Economist

On November 9th a small group of armed men drove up to Mr Ramos’s modest family home in Valencia, arguably Venezuela’s baseball capital, which sits 150km west of Caracas.

Time for Washington to take the Venezuelan opposition seriously, Foreign Policy

Monday night in Caracas, opposition candidates to President Hugo Chávez held their first debate to decide who will challenge him in the scheduled October 2012 Venezuelan presidential election. In a sign of their continuing political maturation, the candidates rightly addressed bread-and-butter issues that matter to the vast majority of Venezuelans, such as the country’s skyrocketing crime rate and Chávez’s poor management of the Venezuelan economy.

Shots fired at Venezuelan candidate’s bus, CNN International

A couple on a motorcycle fired shots into a bus carrying Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Maria Corina Machado and her supporters Saturday, a campaign spokesman told CNN en Español.

Lights Out in Los Roques: Venezuela Beach Paradise Now Under Military Control Faces Hardships, Latin American Herald Tribune

Los Roques, a series of Caribbean island beach paradises recently put by Venezuela President Hugo Chavez under military control, is facing a series of new hardships, including a blackout that has lasted since Sunday, local press reported.

Venezuela Forces Sale of Rental Properties, The Wall Street Journal

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez signed a new rental law into effect over the weekend that obliges landlords to sell their property to tenants of more than 20 years at state-mandated discounts based on how long the space has been rented. Mr. Chávez hailed the law as a way of opening housing to the country’s poor and extending tenants’ rights, but critics see the law as a political ploy to compensate for a struggling state home-building initiative.