Police used a variety of weapons, from water cannons to plastic bullets, last week to disperse hundreds of student protesters who refuse to knuckle under to an increasingly desperate and unpopular president determined to remain in power at all costs.
While the president and his followers were celebrating the anniversary of the failed 1992 coup that first brought him to national attention, the students were protesting the deterioration of their country. It wasn’t the first time that Chavez has resorted to force to quell peaceful political opponents, but the frustration level inside the country is rising as Venezuela’s political and economic situation goes from bad to worse.
Rolling blackouts, currency devaluation and price inflation (the worst in Latin America), water shortages and scarce commodities — this is what 11 years of a Chavez presidency have produced.
As if to underline the utter befuddlement of Chavez’s inept government, an advisory team from Cuba, of all places, was brought in to improve the dismal energy program. Cuba? That’s like asking Scott Rothstein for advice on legal ethics.
The problem with PDVSA, the oil company, as Venezuelans well know, is that Chavez turned it into a sinecure for political cronies, destroying its once admirable efficiency and productive value. Only by putting the experts back in charge can it hope to recover, but President Chavez is not about to hand authority over to anyone who is not a known loyalist.
The problems at PDVSA are emblematic of what’s wrong with Venezuela and why his Bolivarian revolution is in trouble. Chavez has run the economy, and the country, into the ground, but that hasn’t stopped him from making trouble wherever he can.
As the streets of Caracas were in turmoil, the U.S. director of national intelligence, former Adm. Dennis Blair, was giving Congress an unvarnished assessment of Chavez’s presidency that underlines the danger he represents to the entire region.
He has cultivated friendships in all the wrong places, beginning with Iran, spent $6 billion to buy weapons from Russia, and provided covert support to the terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
All of this spells disaster for the people of Venezuela — and the hemisphere. It can be avoided only by the concerted effort of other countries in the region to pressure Chavez to moderate his behavior and adhere to the rules of democracy.
Isn’t that what the Organization of American States is for? Chavez has undermined, if not destroyed Venezuela’s once vibrant, if imperfect, democracy. He has bullied his neighbors, fueled a regional arms race and brought political tensions inside the country to a boiling point. The region’s leaders shouldn’t wait for domestic bloodshed or a cross-border conflict to move them to act.
