World

Venezuelans Have Had it with Hugo

by BigT | August 7, 2008 at 09:54 am

231 views | 2 Recommendations | 4 comments

Even though you control the media, have a strangelhold on the political system, and have more power than anyone else in the country doesn't necessarily mean the people like you.

Riot police used tear gas Wednesday to block hundreds of Venezuelans protesting the latest moves by President Hugo Chavez to concentrate his power. The demonstrators said a blacklist of opposition candidates and a series of socialist decrees are destroying what's left of their democracy.

Though the protest of about 1,000 people chanting "freedom!" was small compared to past marches, there is a growing public outcry over the sidelining of key government opponents ahead of state and local elections in November.

Chavez opponents also are outraged by 26 laws the president just decreed, some of them mirroring the socialist measures voters rejected in a December referendum.

"We said in the referendum that we didn't want that, and now he's put it in the decrees," said protester Josefina Bravo, a 59-year-old who wore a sticker reading "No means no" on her baseball cap. "That's the problem we have: All the powers are concentrated in the president."

This is what I don't get about socialism - actually, this is what I don't get about people's support of socialism. If it is "all for the people" why don't socialist regimes let the people vote? Why does there need to be a vanguard of socialists leading the way?

The way I see it is that socialism, communism, fascism, totalitarianism, statism, and the hundred other parsings of meaning of too much government power is that all this is is a throwback to the days of feudalism. With these countries run by the government you have those in power telling everyone what they need to be doing. Hell, even what they should eat, where they can go for health care, what jobs they can have.

And the people of Venezuela are getting sick and tired of this authoritarian thug.

Will it matter? Probably not. But this is a start. Hopefully it will lead to something but I doubt it will lead to much.

They just don't have any power since it was all taken away from them. Chavez controls nearly everything in his country. How are the citizens of Venezuela supposed to defy him? Even when they did last year, voting in a referendum against Chavez's slate of laws, he's just decreed that they are laws now. Ipso facto, the people don't matter. They never do in socialist countries.

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cassy82

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 09:58 on August 7th, 2008

BigT, I like this story. It's good stuff.

BigT

at 12:14 on August 7th, 2008

Thank you Cassy.

rahul

at 10:36 on August 7th, 2008

For another point of view on the corrupt opposition leaders trying to run for local elections, readers may peep at Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal backs disqualification of corrupt candidates (Updated II) and Corruption and Venezuelan opposition: a dangerous liaison. Readers should be aware that yesterday demonstration was a minor one.Only a 1,000 people attended. It reflects growing discontent over the candidature of corrupt opposition candidates.

Though Wednesday's protest of about 1,000 people chanting "freedom!" was small compared to past marches, there is an outcry over the sidelining of prominent government opponents in the run-up to state and local elections in November.