Latest update June 17th, 2026 12:40 AM
Chavez tries again
Back in December 2007, President Hugo Chavez, fresh from a resounding victory at the polls just a year earlier, which installed him as President of Venezuela until 2013, held a referendum. Venezuelans were asked for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on constitutional changes concentrating almost all power in the executive; instituting obligatory “socialism” and, not so incidentally, removing the two-term limitations on the Presidency.
But, by a tiny majority of around 1.4 per cent, according to the official figures, Venezuelans said “no”.
After his surprising defeat, Mr Chavez invoked the phrase he used after leading a failed military coup in 1992 “por ahora”: he was accepting the circumstances “for now”. Maybe the country was not yet “ripe” for socialism, but “there will be no step back”, he said.
“You should know that I am not withdrawing a single comma of this proposal.” He promised to reintroduce the “reform” by other means. He had kept his promise made back in the nineties – he was returned as President in 1999, and it is evident that he is just as determined to keep his latest promise once again. Venezuela is scheduled to return another constitutional referendum, on February 15, to remove term limits on the Presidency.
As we have pointed out in this space on several occasions, the machinations of Mr Chavez should be of grave concern to all Guyanese, not just because he has always proclaimed his “Bolivarian Revolution” to be continent-wide, but more specifically of his country’s constitutionally enshrined claim to two-thirds of our land.
What has earned Mr Chavez some support (including here) is the fact that he is unquestionably the result of 40 years of rape, pillaging and plundering of his country’s coffers by the Venezuelan upper middle and upper socio-economic classes.
He is a reaction; but, unfortunately, as with most reactions, he appears trapped in the conditions of his origins. His Bolivarian Revolution is based on a self-proclaimed Chaveznomics that seems help bent on repeating the disastrous experiences of many Latin American countries during the 1970s and 1980s.
Chavez is nothing but a classic Latin American megalomaniac ‘Caudillo’, and his ‘Revolutionary Socialism’ is nothing but a misguided, massively expensive adventure, motivated in large part by his own personal psychological demons and shortcomings; made possible only by oil revenues, his ‘Revolutionary Socialism’ is destined to fail.
Even at US$150 a barrel ($700 billion in ten years), the oil revenues could not paper over the contradictions of the populist policies in Chaveznomics, which spilled over into the real economy. At US$50 dollars a barrel, it is crisis time.
Populist macroeconomics is invariably characterized by the use of expansionary fiscal and economic policies and an overvalued currency, with the intention of accelerating growth and redistribution. These policies are commonly implemented in the context of a disregard for fiscal and foreign exchange constraints, and are accompanied by attempts to control inflationary pressures through price and exchange controls.
The result is by now well known to Latin American economists: the emergence of production bottlenecks, the accumulation of severe fiscal and balance-of-payments problems, galloping inflation, and plummeting real wages. For the poor, who were promised much, their dreams have been shattered.
As usual with such populists, Chavez is attempting corrective action when it is almost too late. Last month, the self-proclaimed “21st-century socialist” and “Bolivarian revolutionary,” who has spent years nationalising his country’s oil fields, turned to some of those same foreign companies — including Chevron and Royal Dutch/Shell – for help. Chavez had grossly mismanaged his domestic energy industry, and the steep drop in oil prices has exacerbated the troubles facing Venezuela’s national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
If, as we suspect, Mr Chavez utilizes “electoral innovations” to have his way this time around, at a time of severe economic pain, it could trigger large-scale political turmoil and violent unrest. The potential for serious bloodshed is very real, especially when you consider that Caracas has already become the murder capital of Latin America, if not the world. We should be vigilant: in such situations scapegoats are always found.
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