Betrayed By Spies

Venezuela's President For Life Aug 16th 2007
From The Economist print edition

...It should come as no surprise that Hugo Chávez, who claims to be a latter-day Bolívar, is proposing to let himself be re-elected indefinitely to his country's presidency.

The plan to abolish presidential term limits is part of a bundle of constitutional changes unveiled by Mr Chávez on August 15th. These would remove the last remaining checks and balances to presidential power in Venezuela. They would strip the Central Bank of all autonomy, allowing the government to spend the country's foreign reserves. The government would be given power to expropriate private property by decree, and to promote co-operatives and state enterprise.

State governors and mayors will still be subject to term limits—otherwise they might become caudillos, Mr Chávez said recently, without irony. They will be sidelined by new communal councils, dependent on the presidency. Another proposal is to reduce the maximum working day to six hours. “Now we are headed straight towards socialism,” Mr Chávez said. But first the plans must be approved by referendum.

In office since 1999, Mr Chávez was himself the architect of the constitution he now wants to modify. Since winning re-election last December he has nationalised the telecoms and electricity industries and discontinued the terrestrial broadcasting licence of the main opposition television station.

The president remains popular, thanks to a bond with many poorer Venezuelans reinforced by quantities of oil money for social programmes. But there is much polling evidence that a large majority oppose socialism and value democracy.

His opponents say that Mr Chávez is destroying Venezuela's economy and its democracy, and needs ever more money to buy popularity. Some of his senior supporters, who have their own presidential ambitions, may also be discomfited by the burgeoning personality cult around the president.

Bolivia quickly discarded Bolívar's 19th-century constitution and sank into instability. Once the oil money runs out, that may be the fate of a socialist paradise working six hours a day.

Latin America's Middle Class Aug 16th 2007
From The Economist print edition

MUCH of the news coming out of Latin America in recent years has been of radical populists proclaiming “revolution” or, as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez would have it, “21st century socialism”. In their widely propagated caricature, a tiny white elite in Latin America oppresses an indigenous majority whose poverty has been exacerbated by the free-market reforms imposed by the IMF and the United States.

So it might be hard to believe that in many countries in the region, and especially in Brazil and Mexico, Latin America's two giants, things are in fact going better today than they have done since the mid-1970s. The region is in its fourth successive year of economic growth averaging a steady 5%. In most places inflation is in low single digits. And for the first time in memory, growth has gone hand-in-hand with a current-account surplus, holding out hope that it will not be scotched by a habitual Latin American balance-of-payments crunch.

What is more, financial stability and faster growth are starting to transform social
conditions with astonishing speed. The number of people living in poverty is
falling, not only because of growth but also thanks to the social policies of
reforming democratic governments. The incomes of the poor are rising faster than
those of the rich in Brazil (where income inequality is at its least extreme for
a generation) and in Mexico.

In both these countries a new lower-middle class is emerging from poverty. Low inflation, achieved through more disciplined public finances and trade liberalisation, has brought falling interest rates. Credit has at last returned. So these new consumers are buying cars and DVD players or taking out mortgages. No wonder Latin Americans are in an optimistic mood: earlier this year a poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found a greater increase in personal satisfaction in Brazil and Mexico over the past five years than in any of the other 45 countries it surveyed.

So if things are going so well, why have radical populists and leftists done well in
recent elections? Look closer: they have in fact failed to carry all before
them. Out of a dozen presidential elections in the region in the 13 months to
last December, the radicals won only four. Moderate governments, of centre-left
or centre-right, are in charge in most countries.

That said, politics sometimes lags economics. Even as things started to improve, many Latin Americans were in surly mood because they had suffered through five years of stagnation or worse between 1998 and 2003. Besides, the progress is not uniform.In some of the smaller and poorer countries, the populists' caricature has a grain of truth to it. That is why Mr Chávez has friends in places like Bolivia and Ecuador.

But the important point is that the course upon which most Latin American countries are set—of democracy and open-market economies—is finally bearing fruit. The new middle class in countries like Brazil and Mexico derives its income from the private sector, not from public employment. There lies the big difference with Mr Chávez's Venezuela, where falling poverty depends almost entirely on a vast increase in public spending, and is thus hostage to the oil price.

To bolster the new middle class, it is crucial to keep inflation low. So is improving the shoddy education imparted in the region's schools and universities. And businesses in the region are still held back by lack of transport infrastructure and an excess of red tape.

The commodity bonanza won't last forever, so now is the time to fix these things. Do so and Latin America's democracies could turn an important corner, in which inequality, poverty and populism give way to prosperous middle-class democracies where the majority has an interest in stability

Lee Sustar & Gonzalo Gomez
Lastly, a piece I'd missed, but which is very telling The Ethics Of A Chavista

"...Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez burst onto the scene on February 4, 1992, in a failed coup against Pérez. His plan called for seizing key government and military installations and radio transmitters, through which his group would call for a national uprising. The plan echoed the 1945 coup and AD-military junta that overthrew the military dictatorship of Isaías Medina Angarita. But unlike the AD party of that time, Chávez’s conspirators had almost no contact with social movements, organized labor, or the Left.24 The apparent hope was a repeat of the Caracazo uprising, this time with the military on the side of the people.

Betrayed by spies, the coup failed"

Lee Sustar's love letter to Chavez is tiresome, and the footnotes (Sustar,Gregory Wilpert,Chris Carlson,Daniel Hellinger,Steve Ellner,Julia Buxton,Richard Gott,Bernard Mommer,Eva Golinger,Juan Forero,Mark Weisbrot) read like a who's who of the shills the Venezuelan Embassy suggested as sources for propaganda spin regarding the sanction against RCTV.

But that little aside, that a seditious conspiracy to kill a democratically elected head of state was "betrayed by spies", tells us all we really need to know about this crowd. They're sorry that Hugo's coup, his golpe failed, that it was betrayed. Kudos for citizens loyal to the Constitutional regime? Nope, they're spies who betrayed HUGO! So, the toothgnashing from their side about the events that followed the military's refusal to act against demonstrating citizens on April 11, 2002 is, as we've always know, fraudulent. They support coups, just not any action that results in their patrons removal. Eso si los puede A Sustar.