I'm still laughing at putting Boris Johnson together with Idi Amin, Mugabe and Gadaffi. A tad unfair I think.
For me it is impossible to get a clear view of Chavez because the media reports don't give the full picture I feel.
I'm still laughing at putting Boris Johnson together with Idi Amin, Mugabe and Gadaffi. A tad unfair I think.
For me it is impossible to get a clear view of Chavez because the media reports don't give the full picture I feel.
I don't know about "extreme poverty", but regular poverty declined by the same rate nearly everywhere in Latin America...despite those countries not having the benefit of Venezuela's massive oil resources (or Chavez' Bolivarian Revolution). So it is not really clear that his policies were responsible for the decline in poverty in Venezuela...but it is clear that he was responsible for the destruction of the country's middle class and its civil institutions, such as the courts, independent media and local government--all bent to serve his will. Hopefully, Venezuela will recover from Chavez, but the next few years are not going to be easy.
I think Chavez is not so easy to pigeonhole into a "good" or "bad" guy. He ain't the international villain like Mugabe, Saddam or Kim Jong Il was. More of an annoyance or irritation to the West than a real threat. He did do things for the poor, and no matter how he manipulated the elections, people chose to vote for him out of their free will. At the same time, he centralized power into his own hands, overrode the judiciary and so certainly had an authoritarian streak to him.
In that sense, I think HK's CY is better in that he is constrained by legal rules and political convention that he can't easily ignore or break. So HK's leaders, for all their faults, is at least governed by a check and balance system.
Chavez is more of a "strong man" that espouse a theory of resisting the global trend of free market capitalism (even if he took advantage of that very capitalism in the form of high oil prices). But if we think about it, would we be debating so much about him if it weren't for his anti-americanism (or the fact that he openly called Bush the devil)? After-all, Chavez's predecessors were just as corrupt and hypocritical, only difference were that they were pro-US.
Last edited by Watercooler; 08-03-2013 at 12:01 PM.
I couldn't give a monkey's what he did to the USA. I thought calling Bush a donkey was rather funny actually. It was more the expropriations and dismantling of the judiciary and jigging of elections I object to.
Oh yes...you very much do give a monkey (kidding). We would'nt be talking about him so much if it weren't for his anti-americanism now would we? Chavez is not the first (nor likely the last) fella who squandered his oil reserve on corruption (the so-called "resource curse"), but we hardly pay attention to other corrupt rulers in oil-rich Nigeria or Saudi Arabia now do we? What makes Chavez stand out?
Last edited by Watercooler; 08-03-2013 at 12:51 PM.
Hugo Chavez had personality and charisma. He threw out the first pitch at a Yankees Baseball Game, he weilded the gavel at the New York Stock exchange and was very popular among liberals and Hollywood elites. Much of the US media was actually quite fond of him. Its not so much what he did that mattered, it is what he stood for. He came from poverty, and stood up for the poor.