Gott on Hugo Chavez: Revolutionary leadership

[Say_What]

Excellent analysis!!

<clips>

To the surprise of his enemies, Hugo Chávez has become ever more popular since first elected eight years ago.

Hugo Chávez will be inaugurated in Caracas tomorrow, to a fresh six year term as president of Venezuela, and he has already signalled the important changes that lie ahead on the road to what he describes as "socialism for the 21st century".

Chávez has now moved into a new gear, and, after a year of extensive activity on the foreign front, he is concentrating on four areas of politics nearer home. He is to incorporate the squabbling groups that support his government into a single, unified, political party. He has reshuffled his cabinet to bring long-awaited change to the existing useless bureaucracies, peopled with leftovers from the old era. He has announced plans to renationalise electrical and telecommunications companies, and to reverse the privatisation of firms processing the heavy oil of the Orinoco. And he is preparing to enforce the existing media legislation that will curb or crush the power of ultra-rightist and anti-democratic press barons.

To the surprise of his enemies, Chávez has become ever more popular since first elected eight years ago. In the recent December elections, he secured 7.3 million votes against 4.2 million for the opposition. In 1998, the comparable figure was 3.6 million for Chávez and 2.8 million for the opposition. During the intervening years, Venezuela has been in the throes of a revolution the like of which has not been seen in Latin America since the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Although the changes have been taking place in slow motion, they are substantial, wide-ranging and almost certainly irreversible. After this week's announcements, the revolutionary process looks set to accelerate.

Although Chávez is an essential part of the political earthquake that has been shaking Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution is not entirely of his creation. The dramatic collapse of traditional politics had long been in the pipeline, and Venezuelans were fortunate that their future fell into the hands of this charismatic and intelligent colonel, a man with outstanding leadership talents and political intuition. "It might have been General Pinochet," as the outgoing Vice-President, José Vicente Rangel, once commented to me caustically. Most Venezuelans, the majority whom voted for Chávez, understand that there are new rules of the game, and Chávez's more difficult task is to persuade the minority that there can be no going back to the past. The revolution is here to stay, and will continue the task of rooting out the neoliberal reforms introduced in the 1990s.

Because of his close friendship with Fidel Castro, Chávez has often been criticised for taking the Cuban road. There is little evidence of this, yet because Cuba was the most recent significant revolution in Latin America and shares some of the historical and geographical characteristics of Venezuela, obvious parallels can be drawn between Venezuela today and the early years of the Cuban Revolution. Cuba, after several years of experimentation, eventually organised a single party to preside over the country's fortunes. Cuba also went through a period of what the Trotskyists used to call "dual power". The old ministries survived while government was carried on in parallel institutions that derived their legitimacy from the revolution, and eventually, after a merging process, the latter had to prevail.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_gott/2007/01/post_888.html

[mike_c]

1. viva Chavez!

:applause:

[jwirr]

2. He is popular around here. He is supplying fuel oil to many of our

neighbors through Citco. We would all like to say thank you.