Exactly. Venezuela-now compares favorably.
I really want the cites too. I follow news from Venezuela fairly closely (I get the Miami Herald here, which has pretty good coverage of Latin America) and I don’t recall any instances of massacres or car-bombs linked to Chavez adherents that were related to the recent elections. The only relevant hit on “car bomb Venezuela” I got was for a 2004 incident,the killing of a state prosecutor investigating the attempted coup against Chavez in 2002.
That’s my feeling as well. The recent voting was reasonably clean as such things go, and I believe the majority of Venezuelans still support Chavez. However, Chavez himself is not fundamentally a democrat, as witnessed by his own initial coup attempt against the government in 1992. While not usually using outright violence, he does try to silence his critics through bullying and intimidation, as well as inhibiting a free press.
So what? You’re being far too glib about this.
The point is that Chavez is neither a Stalinist dictator, nor a thug-in-possession like the PRI presidents of Mexico used to be. The present system does not quite meet First World standards of democracy-and-human-rights, but it’s still much better than that – and, better and more democratic than anything Venezuela ever had before Chavez. And better than what they’ve got now in Colombia, too, I daresay.
I question that very much.
Although he’s not, given his open admiration and praise for the Castros it’s reasonable to think he’d like to be if he could get away with it.
Fairly close, though. He’s definitely a thug by nature. If he had had a few more decades in power maybe he could have subverted the system enough to have his Bolivaran Revolution become as ingrained as the PRI.
“Quite” is very much an understatement. It doesn’t come close to first world standards.
I don’t know how you got that from what I posted.
I agree that Chavez is no Stalin. He’s not even a Castro. But he’s not a real democrat either. I’m sticking with the comparison I made above: Chavez is the equivalent of one of the old political machine bosses. He’s not killing his opponents and he has genuine support - but the bottom line is he’s not taking any chances when it comes to elections.
Really? What do you base that on? President Alvaro Uribe stepped down from office in 2010 when he completed his two terms.
As promised, here are some citations about the voting issues in Venezuela:
Voter rolls are a joke- http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-120174423.html
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,64687,00.html
Venezuela’s own Kirov: Car Bomb Kills Coup Prosecutor in Venezuela
http://www.eluniversal.com/2005/11/09/en_pol_art_09A630141.shtml
Jimmy Carter goes to Venezuela, hangs out with chavez in Caracas, watches the regime announce who has won the election, announces he has “monitored” the balloting and declares it legitimate: President Jimmy Carter: Venezuela Election Trip Report, Aug 13-18, 2004
Not to mention the bridge massacre, where 19 anti-Chavez protestors shot squarely in the head were magically transformed into Chavez supporters who were unfortunate enough to be innocent bystanders to another gunbattle (nineteen times in a row) in a series of videos by Chavez’s fawning foreign supporters. Not to mention the well-established links between Chavez and FARC. Not to mention the huge gap between exit polling and Chavez voting-machine controlled official results, that would put Bush’s Ohio shenanigans to shame. Not to mention rewriting the constitution to enable his presidency-for-life. Not to mention the fact that Venezeula was one of the most stable democracies in Latin America before Chavez came to power, and he’s got everyone buying into this narrative where he saved the country from some kind of dictatorship. Not to mention his ridiculous claims about literacy rates and crime and everything else that is just plain bullshit. This is a Peronist-style populist caudillo, he doesn’t deserve the support of anybody, and both his country and the world will be better off when he’s dead.
I don’t trust Chavez, but I trust Carter.
So what happens when he is dead? That’s the important question. The majority of the people really do want his Bolivarian Revolution, apparently, but what happens to it with no charismatic-strongman leader?
That’s the incident I mentioned above. One car bomb, 8 years ago, whose victim was a government prosecutor, not a member of the opposition. In other words, your claim of “some car bombs of dissenting figures” is not supported in any way by this cite.
Again, one incident that occurred in the midst of the anti-Chavez coup attempt 10 years ago. It hardly supports your implication that multiple massacres of opposition members were committed as part of the run-up to the most recent election.
I certainly don’t claim that the recent elections were completely clean or fair, but your suggestion that “car bombings and massacres” played a part in the recent campaign is not supported.
Good. The cite I provided was a letter written by Jimmy Carter himself and published on the Carter Center’s website, so presumably you believe it. His “monitoring of the election” involved no actual physical presence at polling stations nor any investigation of claims of fraud. He says so himself.
What is the correct number of massacres of protest marches to have before it becomes a problem, if it’s not one?
Certainly not zero, which is the number of “car bombings of dissenting figures” by Chavez supporters that you have provided any evidence for. (The one case you cited was of a government prosecutor rather than a member of the opposition). You also alleged there were at least a “couple of massacres,” but the only one you mentioned was not related to an election at all but to the anti-Chavez coup attempt.
In short, your suggestion that “car bombs and massacres” were tactics that were used by Chavez forces to influence the recent elections was simply false.
I repeat.
Maduro will be the president over the short term. If Chavez dies or is declared permanently incapacitated, he’ll win the following election due to the sympathy vote if nothing else. But I think he’ll have trouble holding Chavismo together, due to the fact that Chavez systematically weakened the economy through croneyism in the oil industry and failure to make necessary investment in it, as well as weakening confidence of investors in general. In the long run, Maduro will be unable to maintain the benefits to the lower classes that bolstered their support of Chavez. Chavez failed to institute a sustainable system.
Everyone who Chavez alleged as behind the coup ended up in jail anyway. The only side that had anything to gain from the death of the prosecutor was Chavez’s. What was she going to reveal about the scope of the coup–that maybe it didn’t involve everyone who had ever looked at a government policy cross-eyed after all? That it wasn’t a CIA-originated plot but borne of real domestic discontent with dictatorial policies? That it wasn’t substantially different from the coup Chavez himself launched in 1992?
The fact remains that what you posted about “car bombs and massacres” being a tactic used by Chavez forces in the recent elections was a load of rubbish.
And since you can’t even get Danilo Anderson’s sex right, I doubt you really know much about the facts of the case.
