Chavez now a dictator

I'm not suggesting that my recent trip to South America qualifies me as an expert in these issues, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. But I think we all have to regard this as a Very Bad Thing.

As Reuters (and surely every other news outlet) is reporting, the Venezuelan Congress has given El Presidente Hugo Chavez the authority to rule by decree. The opposition parties boycotted the last election, so his supporters won virtually all of the seats, and this is the natural outgrowth of that.

There was a mighty suspicious and short-lived coup against Chavez in 2002, which was strangely announced to Congress before it actually happened. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that some U.S. officials gave "green light" signals to the coup-plotters. There's a pretty good Wikipedia entry on that event. Interestingly, Chavez himself spent time in prison for his part in a Feb. 1992 coup attempt against the Perez government (more Wikipedia).

I've been entertained by Chavez over the years, and even snickered aloud when Pat Robertson issued a fatwa against him. But I had higher hopes for him than this. The neocons in this country attacked him as a dictator long before he actually was one, and my feeling was that we should support the right of Venezuelans to choose their leaders, and try not to meddle too much. So I was somewhat sympathetic to his desire to frustrate the American politicans and corporate big-wigs who have been trying to push Latin America around for decades. I still think we'll do best by just keeping our powder dry, but who knows what happens next?

There have to be spooks in various U.S. agencies champing at the bit to go slip some radioactive powder in his tea, or to launch a full-scale assault.

Chavez has certainly gone down the dictator's path now, but I think we should let the Venezuelans take care of their own democracy.

PHOTO CAPTION: Venezuelan congressmen vote during an open-air National Assembly session in Caracas January 31, 2007. REUTERS/Jorge Silva