Freaky Friday: Venezuela edition

All week, I've been discussing Hugo Chavez' Venezuela with a couple of readers, notably Brunowe. In my last post, I argued that we wouldn't be discussing whether Chavez was a small 'd' democrat if not for the fact that he was trying to radically restructure Venezuela's economic and social arrangements - a move that will cost the country's traditional elite power and control over the economy - and calling him "anti-democratic" was more a standard-issue strategy to discredit him than it is a charge reflective of the reality on the ground. I also suggested out that Brunowe was relying too heavily on information from Freedomworks, an organization that Mark Ames conveniently exposed on today's front page.

Brunowe turns out to be Bill Bruno, a reader from Astoria New York, and he's responded to that last post. I figured that turnabout being fair play and all, I'd give him the blog post this time, and I'd take him to task in the comments. If you're just joining in, you'll get more out of Bill's post if you read the previous one, as he responds to specifics.

So, without further ado, reader Bill Bruno on Hugo Chavez:

First, I should say that I don't consider Chavez a tyrant or a dictator. I think he is a genuine populist who, however, has an authoritarian streak, although I think my prior statement: "that he has no vision that goes beyond he himself being the leader" was excessive. I suppose I would say he is a democrat, with reservations.

Chavez's court packing is a little more wide-ranging than what FDR did. Chavez's plan allows him to remove and assign justices with a simple majority, en masse and immediately, in additional to adding 12 new justices. FDR's plan, although not the wisest thing he did, would have allowed him to add a Justice for every sitting one over the age of 70 who didn't retire. Chavez's changes are a heavier blow to the independence of the judiciary.Regarding the referendum, I think you give Chavez too much credit. The signings were witnessed by government and opposition witnesses. Chavez proceeded to denounce them as a mega-fraud at which point the electoral commission, majority-staffed by his appointees, demanded that 1 million+ signatories reconfirm the signatures in person. Given the numbers, I don't think they expected the opposition to pull that off. I suspect Chavez had no choice at that point. Of course, a true tyrant would simply have disallowed the referendum but I think that Chavez did try to do an end run.

On the media law, I agree that it's fair to note the context but I don't think that justifies as broad a law as was passed. Those media figures who were directly involved in the coup (and I assume you mean actually plotting it as opposed to cheering it on with one-sided coverage) should be prosecuted. I could even understand libel actions in the case of the clinical insanity allegations. The statute, however, uses very broad terms. The Committee to Protect Journalists highlighted two articles. One article permits radio and television broadcasters who transmit messages that "promote, defend, or incite breaches of public order" or "are contrary to the security of the Nation" to be suspended for 72 hours while another restricts broadcasts of "graphic descriptions or images of real violence" between 5 AM and 11 PM to those that are "indispensable" or the result of unforeseen events. CPJ mentioned a couple of cases where "[l]ocal TV channels refrained from airing footage of violent riots that occurred in Caracas in early December [of 2004] for fear of violating the law." Although I'd like to see the year-end reports of organizations like CPJ and Human Rights Watch to see what the impact was in 2005, this particular case was somewhat more than the media being limited to "calling him [Chavez] a communist, a traitor and a proxy for Castro".