Reuters: Venezuela's Chavez re-elected to extend socialist rule

[Thiebear]

He harasses the only other independent TV network with endless legal charges to ensure that they don't broadcast anything negative about him. He pulled the licenses of 250 radio stations for opposing him. He made it a criminal offense for the press to report on anything "harmful to the interests of the state," and for anyone at all to "defame the President" and uses those laws to arrest reporters, opposing politicians and activists. Any time a state elects an opposition governor, he cuts the federal money to that state to punish the voters.

Don't be a dupe. This guy genuinely sucks.

He's a dictator with good vote counting I guess I should have said.

[visionary]

https://twitter.com/Reuters

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez names foreign minister Nicolas Maduro as vice-president #breaking
6:16 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro

[jpyaks3]

It is pretty clear there are some problems with Chavez rule (the main one being cited as being media access for opponents) but its pretty clear that the people support him and that he has done a remarkable job reducing poverty and extreme poverty in his country. And I am not terribly sure we have much we can say, glass houses and all, the fact is that he is doing a much better job than his predecessors in working with the parts of society that are most vulnerable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/op...ted.html?_r=2&

Then there is the other side of the story: Since the Chávez government got control over the national oil industry, poverty has been cut by half, and extreme poverty by 70 percent. College enrollment has more than doubled, millions of people have access to health care for the first time and the number of people eligible for public pensions has quadrupled.

So it should not be surprising that most Venezuelans would reelect a president who has improved their living standards. That’s what has happened with all of the leftist governments that now govern most of South America. This is despite the fact that they, like Chávez, have most of their countries’ media against them, and their opposition has most of the wealth and income of their respective countries.

The list includes Rafael Correa, who was reelected president of Ecuador by a wide margin in 2009; the enormously popular Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who was reelected in 2006 and then successfully campaigned for his former chief of staff, now President Dilma Rousseff, in 2010; Evo Morales, Bolvia’s first indigenous president, who was reelected in 2009; José Mujica, who succeeded his predecessor from the same political alliance in Uruguay — the Frente Amplio — in 2009; Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who succeeded her husband, the late Néstor Kirchner, winning the 2011 Argentine presidential election by a solid margin.

These leftist presidents and their political parties won reelection because, like Chávez, they brought significant — and in some cases huge — improvements in living standards. They all originally campaigned against “neoliberalism,” a word used to describe the policies of the prior 20 years, when Latin America experienced its worst economic growth in more than a century.

Not surprisingly, the leftist leaders have seen Venezuela as part of a team that has brought more democracy, national sovereignty and economic and social progress to the region. Yes, democracy: even the much-maligned Venezuela is recognized by many scholars to be more democratic than it was in the pre-Chávez era.

Democracy was at issue when South America stood together against Washington on such issues as the 2009 military coup in Honduras. The differences were so pronounced that they led to the formation of a new hemisphere-wide organization — the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which excluded the United States and Canada — as an alternative to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States.

[Predicto]

That reduction in poverty has been happening all over Latin America under all sorts of governments - left, right and center.

It should have been even easier in Venezuela because of all the oil they have. I wouldn't give Chavez much credit. But that's just me.

[Thiebear]

Hopefully one day they get a ruler that can cut poverty with amazing oil exports.
And allow opposition to run against him

[sacase]

Venezuela is on the list of places to go....after Chavez is gone. I don't know why we don't engage South America more...That place is going to take off soon.

[jpyaks3]

That reduction in poverty has been happening all over Latin America under all sorts of governments - left, right and center.

It should have been even easier in Venezuela because of all the oil they have. I wouldn't give Chavez much credit. But that's just me.

Why exactly is his record so much better than his predecessors then? The oil has always been there.

His economic record is pretty damn sound compared to the rest of the world

http://data.worldbank.org/country/venezuela-rb

---------- Post added October-10th-2012 at 07:42 PM ----------

Hopefully one day they get a ruler that can cut poverty with amazing oil exports.
And allow opposition to run against him

I wasn't aware he ran unopposed care to cite that?

[Predicto]

Why exactly is his record so much better than his predecessors then? The oil has always been there.

His economic record is pretty damn sound compared to the rest of the world

http://data.worldbank.org/country/venezuela-rb

His record, in the midst of a multiyear oil boom, is better than the right wing elites that once ruled Venezuela before him (when there was no such oil boom). His record is not particularly impressive overall given the natural advantage he has with all that oil.

"Venezuela is the fifth largest economy in Latin America, but during the last decade, it's been the worst performer in GDP per capita growth," says Arturo Franco of the Center for International Development at Harvard University.

As Mr Franco says, it depends on how you measure Venezuela's progress.

If you compare life under Mr Chavez with the previous 20 years, under a now discredited two-party system widely blamed for rampant corruption, the Chavez era is preferable.

But if you look at the superior economic performance of neighbouring Brazil and Colombia during the same period, it suddenly doesn't look so rosy.

And given that the price of a barrel of oil is now roughly 10 times what it was when Mr Chavez was first elected, his opponents say that he could and should have done more.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19813533

[jpyaks3]

His record, in the midst of a multiyear oil boom, is better than the right wing elites that once ruled Venezuela before him (when there was no such oil boom). His record is not particularly impressive overall given the natural advantage he has with all that oil.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19813533

I think you have to look at much more than simple GDP growth which doesn't measure how that money is distributed within society, you can have great GDP growth but it doesn't mean anything when the majority of the people don't see a dime of that money. Egypt saw booming GDP growth during the Sadat and Mubarak years but the fact was that the GDP growth didn't correspond to life getting better for the vast majority of the citizens. GDP growth needs to be looked at with a bunch of other indicators such as poverty rate, illiteracy, access to health care, and other that show a more complete picture of a countries economy.

I think if you look at the alternative which is the right wing its perfectly understandable why people would vote for someone like Chavez.

[visionary]

Economic record aside, Chavez is a dictator or at least a dictator wanabee (by his actions and by saying he wants to be president for life) who's deliberately allied himself with and aided and abetted far worse regimes specifically because of his paranoia and personal hatred of America. He lets his insanity shape his foreign policy and how he treats the opposition.

[Predicto]

I think you have to look at much more than simple GDP growth which doesn't measure how that money is distributed within society, you can have great GDP growth but it doesn't mean anything when the majority of the people don't see a dime of that money. Egypt saw booming GDP growth during the Sadat and Mubarak years but the fact was that the GDP growth didn't correspond to life getting better for the vast majority of the citizens. GDP growth needs to be looked at with a bunch of other indicators such as poverty rate, illiteracy, access to health care, and other that show a more complete picture of a countries economy.

I think if you look at the alternative which is the right wing its perfectly understandable why people would vote for someone like Chavez.

The alternative isn't the far right wing anymore. Fifteen years is a long time, and things have changed all across Latin America. Other Latin American countries have improved in all of those measures without resorting to the repressive tactics that Chavez has used, and they have done so by broadening and diversifying their economies rather than just spending an enormous oil windfall that none of the rest of them had available to them.

[jpyaks3]

Economic record aside, Chavez is a dictator or at least a dictator wanabee (by his actions and by saying he wants to be president for life) who's deliberately allied himself with and aided and abetted far worse regimes specifically because of his paranoia and personal hatred of America. He lets his insanity shape his foreign policy and how he treats the opposition.

I think he has a right to be anti-American, after all we funded a coup to depose him and have consistently trying to isolate him. Now I don't agree with his support of countries like Belarus and Iran but I think his foreign policy in Latin and South America isn't exactly paranoid or insane in any way at all.

---------- Post added October-10th-2012 at 08:25 PM ----------

The alternative isn't the far right wing anymore. Fifteen years is a long time, and things have changed all across Latin America. Other Latin American countries have improved in all of those measures without resorting to the repressive tactics that Chavez has used, and they have done so by broadening and diversifying their economies rather than just spending an enormous oil windfall that none of the rest of them had available to them.

I think all you have to look at is places like Paraguay and Honduras to show that the right wing in Latin and South America hasn't changed all that much. In places like Chile right wing President Sebastián Piñera has been ridiculously awful and has one of the lowest approval ratings in the world. I would say that the economic growth in the region is a result of the Pink Tide more than a lot of other factors, Chavez is obviously not perfect, nor anywhere near it, but historically he has been a lot better than the alternatives.

[Thiebear]

Why exactly is his record so much better than his predecessors then? The oil has always been there.

His economic record is pretty damn sound compared to the rest of the world

http://data.worldbank.org/country/venezuela-rb

---------- Post added October-10th-2012 at 07:42 PM ----------



I wasn't aware he ran unopposed care to cite that?

You can read it earlier in the topic: its only page 2...

[jpyaks3]

You can read it earlier in the topic: its only page 2...

All I have seen is you making unfounded statements like dictators always win with 97% of the vote and you haven't sourced anything yet. How about you try to formulate an actual argument.

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

I think all you have to look at is places like Paraguay and Honduras to show that the right wing in Latin and South America hasn't changed all that much. In places like Chile right wing President Sebastián Piñera has been ridiculously awful and has one of the lowest approval ratings in the world. I would say that the economic growth in the region is a result of the Pink Tide more than a lot of other factors, Chavez is obviously not perfect, nor anywhere near it, but historically he has been a lot better than the alternatives.

I was going to mention Chile as well. The traditional right wing governments in South America, have not been growing as much as the left wing governments have. Those governments have politicized poverty and have made it an aim to get its people out of it. Brazil is probably the best example of it.