Zimbabwe with oil

David Aaronovitch in the Times (£):

Bit by bit Venezuela has become Zimbabwe with oil: 90 per cent of the co-operatives have failed. Inflation is high, there has just been another devaluation, bureaucracy hampers enterprise and there are food shortages and power cuts. Every time his often badly thought-out and impulsive reforms created opposition, Chávez used anti-Americanism to squelch opponents. They were “agents” of the imperialist enemy. Dissenting judges could be imprisoned, newspapers fined and journalists incarcerated for works of satire. Human rights bodies were prevented from receiving money or help from abroad.

Chávez reverted to the old populist autocrat’s trick of using plebiscites to remove constitutional checks on his power. He abolished term limits, though, ironically, the fates set his greater term limit at almost exactly the same place as the old constitution had.

Round the world, if he discovered a dictator or a pariah calling itself socialist or anti-imperialist, Chávez embraced it. One of the funniest yet most disgraceful interviews given in the wake of his death was by Ken Livingstone on BBC radio yesterday. What, Ken was asked, about Chávez’s predilection for anti-democrats such as Mugabe, Gaddafi, Assad and Lukashenko, of Belarus.

Well, said the former mayor, as if teaching a class in Statesmanship 101 to idiots, “the simple fact is that if you’re a government in power you have to deal with regimes that are pretty unpleasant ... if presidents are only going to meet nice people they’re not going to have a very busy calendar”.

Actually Chávez, having described successive US presidents as “a donkey” and “a clown”, discovered in Assad “one of the liberators of the new world”. In Gaddafi he perceived a Libyan Bolívar, in Mugabe “a true freedom fighter” and Lukashenko’s repressive Belarus was “a model social state like the one we are beginning to create”. Not just filling his calendar, Ken, as you know perfectly well.

For the most complete take-down of el comandante, though, and his fan-club of Western leftists, read Terry Glavin.

Comments

[Bob-B]

Livingstone is disgusting.

[Dom]

What I always remember about Chavez is that he tried to embarrass Bush and Obama by sending cheap oil to the States, to help America's poor. I can't estimate how much this little show must have cost Venezuela, but I'm sure it was too much. One of the dopier Kennedy boys was in league with him.