Reply #11: This will not make me popular but..

[nick303]

The "democratic-ness" of Venezuela's most recent election was highly suspect.

Unfortunately the remainder of this article requires a subscription. From the december 8th issue of the economist:

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=S%27%28H%24%2BRA%2F%2B%20%20%20Q%0A&tranMode=none

EVER since he was first elected in 1998, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's leftist president, has preached the virtues of “participatory” over merely representative democracy. “All power to the people” has become a favourite government slogan. But in an election for the National Assembly on December 4th, the masses chose not to participate. And because of a last-minute boycott of the election by most opposition parties, in protest at the government's control of the National Electoral Council (CNE), many Venezuelans will not be represented.

...“Broad sectors of Venezuelan society have no confidence in the electoral process, nor in the independence of the electoral authority,” said election observers from the European Union. They called on the assembly to appoint a new CNE “composed of professionals with prestige and independence”.

..."But the essence of democracy, as Joseph Schumpeter wrote more than 60 years ago, is an “institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote.” Unless Mr Chávez accepts that next year's contest must be impartially conducted, outsiders may conclude that Venezuela is no longer a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word."