Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

It was only a matter of time now the man shows what he is really about.

[Gopher]

No, it is not surprising. Chavez is a caudillo, part of an older pattern of personalist, dictatorial politics in Latin American and Caribbean affairs.

[Manner of Speaking]

Whoops...

Needing to be president for 25 years is a sign of bad management, politically or governmentally. There's no reason why Chavez can't be president for the next 25 years...all he has to do is do a good job and get himself re-elected repeatedly. There's no reason why Venezuela can't keep the Prez and liberal democracy at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Theoretically.

[Gopher]

Venezuela is not a liberal democracy.

[Nowhere Man]

[Gardimus]

Perhpas the US should have a referendum on trying to overthrow him again.

[Gopher]

[deleted]

[gypsyfish]

Any day now, I expect to hear that he will make all citizens change their underwear every half-hour and make them wear it on the outside so he can check.









(Thank you, Woody Allen.)

[On the other hand]

[gypsyfish]

[Gopher]

[deleted]

[Manner of Speaking]

Poor are fed by Chavez's vanity
Clinics, cheap food boost support, but poverty remains high in Venezuela

May 8, 2006. 01:00 AM

TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU


LAS MAYAS, Venezuela�From here, high atop Caracas, as the dust kicks up from the packed van hurtling down the clay roads offering the only means of temporary escape from this poverty, it is hard to see Hugo Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution."

What you can see are sheets of scrap metal cobbled together to form a shantytown that provides shelter for 25,000 in what used to be a forest.

You can see the sign advertising a clinic, until you realize it, too, is scrap, used to keep out the elements, not advertise a needed service.

You've already seen the piles of garbage in the streets of the barrios down below, the pharmacy behind bars to deter thieves, the piles of sewage pipes on the street representing a construction project stalled by bureaucratic wrangling, the "chop shop" street where stolen cars are stripped for parts.

In the kitchen inside a hovel, volunteers are stirring an eight-kilogram pot of lentils, enough to feed 150 at lunch with government-supplied food. There's chicken, but the women running the kitchen say they haven't seen meat for some time.

Poverty remains stubbornly high here, and has risen to more than 50 per cent during Chavez's reign, even as the economy recovers from a debilitating national strike in 2002-'03 � and is growing.

But if Chavez is to be returned to power in elections next December and beyond � how many years is a favourite parlour game in Venezuela � he will draw his strength from the squatters in the forest and the neighbourhoods below.

It won't come from his decisions to rewrite the constitution, or rename the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, or rename his congress the National Assembly.

It won't be because he added an eighth star to the flag, in a nod to the Simon Bolivar proposal of the 19th century, or because he changed the horse in the country's coat of arms so it gallops to the left, not the right.

These are the vanity decisions of a leader often consumed by hubris.

He will do it by importing some 17,000 Cuban doctors and Cuban medical supplies to provide much-needed health care to the masses.

He will do it by feeding the poorest of the poor in subsidized supermarkets where cheap lentils and pasta are packaged in plastic advertising articles of the Venezuelan constitution, and by launching ambitious literary programs.

He will do it by providing free tuition to his Bolivar University and bringing food and health care each day to Parque Carabobo for the homeless of Caracas.

He does not have universal support in the poor barrios outside Caracas, but people will tell you things are improving.

"No government is perfect," says Fernando Aranguren, a fast-talking aspiring politician who glad-hands everyone in his barrio as he acts as the Toronto Star's guide and bodyguard, though he appears to tilt only slightly on the plus side of 100 pounds.

"The revolution will never be perfect because it is run by men, not by machines," he says. "There is corruption, there are defects.

"But day-to-day, for the first time, a government has appealed to the masses because he has taken notice of the masses.

"Yes, we have garbage on the streets. But there is garbage on the streets of Brooklyn, too."

Alejandro Herrero, a 73-year-old whose family has run a store in this neighbourhood since the 1940s, says he sees the good in Chavez, but is not shy about "constructively criticizing him."

"In some ways, things have improved," he says. "People are receiving more now and they are sharing in the petrol wealth inside the country.

"But he is also sharing a lot of it outside."

Herrero has hit on one of the common criticisms of Chavez, who is accused of spending too much money earned by Venezuela's natural riches on trying to build alliances outside the country to further his own personal ambitions.

The right-wing opposition Primero Justicia tells voters Chavez has pledged $4 billion (U.S.) in new social programs this year, while he is spending $16 billion (U.S.) in an effort to win support for his particular brand of socialism outside the country.

The centrepieces of Chavez's social revolution are the clinics in the barrios, clean two-storey brick structures with second-floor apartments for the Cuban doctors.

In the waiting area are posters backing Chavez and pictures of Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro embracing. The doctors' program will now be expanded to Bolivia. New President Evo Morales agreed to sign on when he met Chavez and Castro in Havana late last month.

Nurse Carmen Hernandez says the doctors can treat up to 40 patients a day, and will attend emergencies day or night.

"Before the doctors came," she says, "people had to go to hospital. Very often they died in the hospital.

"They were poorly served."

At Chavez's chain of Mercal subsidized supermarkets, staples such as chicken, rice, pasta, milk and cooking oil can be purchased at substantial discounts.

"It is working," one diplomat said. "He is getting food to the poorest of the poor."

The supermarkets look like campaign headquarters with grocery shelves.

One Chavez poster exhorts voters to choose him for "Seven More Years � For Now."

Another celebrates "The Motherland, Free and Glorious."

Even the packaging touts Chavez programs.

Damelis Castro grabs a bag of lentils in a wrapper printed with Article 322 of the Venezuelan constitution, avowing the country's right to security and defence.

Mixing self-defence and cheap food is a blessing for Castro, who says it's a way for the people to understand what their government is doing. Shopping in a state-run supermarket with low prices can save 40 per cent, sometimes 50 per cent, on her weekly grocery bill, she says.

And who does she have to thank for that?

Her face brightens. "Hugo Chavez," says Castro, standing beneath a poster extolling the Venezuelan leader's virtues.

Chavez says Mercal is serving an average of 15.6 million people a month, and provided 1.5 million tonnes of foodstuffs to Venezuelans last year.

A couple of blocks away, a line of the homeless has formed in front of the Mision Negra Hipolita, where they'll receive a basic meal and glass of orange juice.

Workers will offer "rehabilitation" if they need it, and ask them to counsel others on the street in return.

But worker Elba Vasquez concedes the program has not made much of a dent in the homeless problem in Caracas.

"What can we do?" she asks. "If they choose to live on the streets, they will do so because we can't force anyone into rehabilitation."