Grupo La Colina

EDITORIAL ALERTA VENEZUELA

Falling masks

http://english.alertavenezuela.com/editorial/detalle.php?ediid=87

[12-22-10] Venezuelans have been talking for too long about the nature and conduct of the Chavez government, which of course has not sufficed to curb the government authoritarianism and abuses. In the meantime, we also have lost precious time fighting authoritarianism and the constant violations of the Constitution, by assuming that we were facing a democratic government that behaved within passable legal parameters, even though it was clearly evident that these were being regularly and fatally undermined. But the time for semantic argumentation to describe the nature of the government is coming to an end.
The fact is that we have been living under a fiction of democracy during recent years and the rule of law has gradually disappeared. Separation of powers has been not only erased, but also scorned by the very judges that should defend it, while sacrificing the Nation on the altar of leftist ideologies and its myths. Public property has been parceled out to foreign nations and little or nothing remains from all the years of fiscal prosperity, in an economy corroded by the cancer of inflation and debt, underemployment, and persistent urban and rural marginalization, as well as human and material depletion, expressed in the massive leak of talent and capitals. Poverty remains relatively in the same stage at which modern democracy found it over half a century ago, with the aggravating circumstance that the progress and experience gained in the struggle to overcome it have been thrown overboard from a ship that seems to have no other destination than to bring life to a totalitarian caudillo, that revives the worst hindrance of our national history at the expense of people's misery itself.
From the very moment he was sworn in as president -taking a reserved oath- Chavez had the intention to wipe out the Nation’s Constitution and replace it with a custom-made one. As the new one proved to be an obstacle for his plans, he then ordered a reform referendum to change it, which he lost. Not being a democrat, he never conceded defeat and has used the National Assembly as a steamroller to approve a large array of socialist laws, basically containing the same proposals of the referendum, thus disregarding popular will and making a mockery of Venezuelan democracy.
Alas, the torrential rains of recent weeks have diluted the government chimerical policies and nonsensical projects, lying bare the crude reality of a government that only cares about maintaining power. Paradoxically, they also provided him with the opportunity to wipe out the advance achieved by the opposition. Using the high waters as a pretext, Chavez has ordered the approval of a heterogeneous package of laws, giving a final blow to the remnants of what was intended to be a democratic regime, to establish an iron grip on Venezuelans. With the approval of yet another enabling law by a dying legislature that is to be replaced on January 5, 2011, the regime has uncovered its immoral and irrational essence, as well as its shameless disregard for the popular will expressed in the constitutional referendum of 2007 and subsequent electoral processes.
Chavez intends to rule by decree with the complicity of a submissive National Assembly that simply fulfills instructions and covers them with an appearance of legality, ignoring popular will. He then expects a compliant Supreme Court, recently packed and enlarged by the same Assembly with Chavez unconditional followers, to condone such an atrocity. In the end, like in pre-war Germany, everything would have been done legally.
Gradually losing popularity, Chavez’s main concern is to avoid being defeated at any cost, even if it means making us believe he will not surrender power when he loses the presidential election in 2012. His exasperation is nothing else than the conviction of knowing that his days are numbered, that his time is inexorably elapsing. Whether or not the masks will fall is up to him.