In a case of birds of a feather flocking together, the Bush administration has applauded the coup of Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. As Steve from Ethel the Blog points out, Chavez’s real sins are what led the US to support the coup:
Chavez won Presidential elections in 1998 and again in 2000 by the largest majority in four decades. He has been governing Venezuela following the principles of a new social movement called the Bolivarianism, named after the South American independence hero, Simón Bolívar. Nearly all Venezuelans were eager for drastic change. They wanted a new government that would eradicate corruption and graft, and redirect the money from the vast oil fields away from the multinationals towards the 80% of the Venezuelans living in poverty.
Using his enormous popularity, Chavez has managed to implement an unprecedented amount of reforms. To highlight just a few, Chavez has ratified a new Constitution that now provides guarantees for indigenous rights and women’s rights, free health care and education up to the university level. To reduce corruption Chavez has restructured the judicial and legislative branches. The government serves breakfast and lunch to schoolchildren year round and enrollment has increased by over a million students. In a change that affected the world economy, Chavez reinvigorated OPEC, raising oil prices from $8 a barrel to $27 – currently the price is $18 a barrel.
So, he’s popular and he works to help the poor majority of his nation. That’s the whole problem. We can’t have someone providing a bad example like that. The current thief in the Whitehouse, Senor Bush, got up on his high horse and intoned, “This man was elected by the people. We respect democracy in our country, and we hope he respects the democratic institutions within his country.” Okay, what does that have to do with him being overthrown by the military? His deposal was not the product of democracy! Bush, obviously, is unclear on the subject.
Despite what has been reported by most of the media, Chavez never resigned. He is at this moment, in prison by the hands of the military junta which the US has expressly and loudly supported. Venezuela is now being ruled by a prominent businessman and by the leaders of the coup.
The exact circumstances of how Mr. Chávez left office remained unclear today, but the former president’s strident supporters as well as some political experts were concerned that he did not resign, violating the Constitution. The interim government caused further concern as it began wiping away vestiges of Mr. Chávez’s rule, dissolving the National Assembly, which Mr. Chávez controlled, firing the Supreme Court members and repealing a series of “revolutionary” laws approved in December.
“This is a classic coup,” said Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the Caracas newspaper Tal Cual and a strident critic of Mr. Chávez who nonetheless is concerned about the changeover in power. “There no letter of resignation for Chávez. We do not see it anywhere.”
The Bush administration has as little respect for the Venezuelan constitution as it has for our own Constitution.