Chávez has a good reason to strike back

by Eric Jackson

Suppose a new management that doesn't much like George W. Bush took control of CBS. Further suppose that CBS urged a mob to descend on the White House and overthrow the government, and that some army officers joined the movement, took Bush prisoner for a couple of days and ordered their subordinates to shoot those who protested against their coup. If the revolt failed, don't you think that CBS would lose its broadcasting licenses? Don't you think the media execs and military brass behind the coup attempt would face charges that could put them on Death Row?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was elected by a majority of his fellow citizens. However, TV magnate Gustavo Cisneros, who golfs and fishes with former US President George H. W. Bush, thinks he has the right to reverse that verdict by using his TV network to incite coups, riots and political strikes.

Because Cisneros runs the Miami-based Univision network and has friends among Panama's elite, we get to see his propaganda on TV in this country. It's crude and scurrilous. It plays to social and racial prejudices. It relies on guilt by association. It makes allegations without seriously trying to support them. It writes off most Venezuelans as of no consequence.

A dozen light-skinned Venezuelan citizens resident in Panama, half of them too young to vote and one of them with his face painted in the colors of the Venezuelan flag, ham it up for the video cameras and this is represented to us as the local Venezuelan community's demand for Chávez's ouster. We are told again and again that Hugo Chávez has adopted Fidel Castro's policies, even though Venezuela has multiple political parties and an economy mostly in private hands. Chávez is accused of taking an illegal campaign contribution from a foreign bank, but the evidence presented is that he accepted a donation from Venezuelans who work at that bank, and meanwhile the people making the argument are subsidized by the US government. On the TV we see expensively dressed white women slapping dark-skinned soldiers in hope of provoking a reaction that would be trumped up as an act of savagery.

Ronald Reagan fired air traffic controllers who went on strike for more tolerable working conditions and that's considered acceptable, but when Chávez fires oil executives who locked out the state-owned petroleum industry in a bid to overthrow the government, Chávez is some sort of totalitarian? The United States government has for some 30 years incarcerated dozens of former Black Panthers, but the Venezuelan government has no right to make those who took up arms against it answer for their actions in a court of law?

Yes, Chávez often comes across as a Saturday morning cartoon villain. No, he's not a viable candidate for sainthood. Surely Venezuela could find a more capable leader.

So why did the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement come out of nowhere, with such an imperfect man at its head, and so thoroughly rout the wealthy elite and their Siamese twin COPEI and Accion Democratica parties?

It ought to be easy for Panamanians to understand. Venezuela's former rulers were incompetent. They skimmed the nation's oil wealth for themselves and left the majority living in poverty. They built fortunes on cooked financial records and ran the banking system into the ground. They corrupted all branches of government. In many ways both crass and subtle, they told most Venezuelans that they don't count.

People got sick of these insulting elitists and voted in their millions for the little brown guy with the odd gestures and the red beret instead.

Something like that could happen in Panama, too, which is why our media barons have jumped onto the anti-Chávez bandwagon.

But the Venezuelan people have a right to elect whom they choose, and their president has a duty to defend his country's democracy against would-be usurpers. The stakes are high. If Chávez is overthrown by the likes of Gustavo Cisneros, it would be a huge setback for democracy throughout the region.