Fondly Remembered
"He leaves the country in a shambles. Never has a Latin American leader wasted so much money, misspent so many resources and misused such power. Chavez could have transformed the country, but instead used those resources to build a personality cult, push a failed ideology and decimate the country's economy."They loved him and they detested him; the former category describes the passionately admiring esteem in which Hugo Chavez was held by the indigent poor of Venezuela - his tribe as it were - and the latter the disdain and disgust felt by the country's middle- and upper-class Venezuelans whom he despised himself, naming them "the squalid ones".
Moises Naim, senior associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington
The "squalid ones" will shortly have an opportunity to overturn, if they can possibly, the immediate legacy of Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution by electing Henrique Capriles Radonski, former governor of the state of Miranda who in the election just past that re-elected the morbidly ailing Chavez, garnered 44% of the votes, not enough at that time to put him over the top.
"[Mr. Chavez] will be remembered for his bold assertion of autonomy and independence for Latin American governments."
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter
The poor of Venezuela have tragically lost their messiah. In whose view he could do nothing wrong, aiding them to overcome the privileges of the prosperous middle and upper-class, leaving them with dregs. The remedy to which Mr. Chavez applied himself was the appropriation of farms and businesses, and the transformation of the state's oil company into a human resources facility.
Venezuela was gifted with high inflation, just like Zimbabwe, as Chavez borrowed $80-billion from China, despite high oil prices that could have been re-invested in the state, but was used in magnanimously providing free energy to Cuba, and fire-sale-priced oil to other Latin-American countries since, after all, Venezuela's natural oil resources represented the largest in the world.
He developed his renascent Bolivarian ideology of liberation from the malign influence of Western powers led by the United States, to form a claque with Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. While forging a deeply appreciative relationship with Iran, Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe, Russia and China. Russia held in deep esteem the sales of military hardware Chavez deemed a requirement for his country.
"[His death is] a tragedy. He was a great politician for his country, Latin America and the world."
Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin
Hugo Chavez took control of his country's court system, electoral authorities and its congress, as befitted the megalomaniacal despot that he was. The media in Venezuela was muzzled and tamed, the wild beast that threatened to lay bare the nudity of the emperor chained and made complicit with the glorification of the emperor divinely suited to lead his country forevermore.
"At this key juncture, I hope the people of Venezuela can now build for themselves a better, brighter future based on the principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights."
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Mr. Chavez took a page out of his very good friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Islamic Republic of Iran's penchant for appointing elite members of the Republican Guard to head up and benefit from the civil administration of state-run operations and ministries to appoint army officers in Venezuela to do the very same thing.
Venezuela's well-being was always uppermost in mind for Hugo Chavez, and he took great care to ensure that if, heaven forbid, some force greater than his own egotistic personality caused him to depart the throne he so comfortably occupied, a replacement would be there, prepared and well primed to carry on his socialist revolution.
So there is former bus driver transformed into autocratic-rule material, bewailing the loss to the country of its modern-day saviour, pledging to commit himself wholly to carrying on the task of bleeding the country of its potential, digging it ever deeper in debt, silencing the news media, corrupting the judiciary, instilling terror in the middle class, and throwing tidbits to the poor.
Nicolas Maduro, vice-president under Mr. Chavez and his preferred successor to continue the dynastic movement the dearly departed initiated, will serve in his stead for the next little while, until an election, as required by the constitution, is called. When he will be prepared to carry on Mr. Chavez's proud tradition of autocratic rule, befriending the rogues of the world and so hugely benefiting his country, upon his landslide election.
The king is dead, long live the dauphin.
Labels: Democracy, Human Fallibility, Hypocrisy, In Memoriam, Politics of Convenience, Venezuela
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 07, 2013
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