Heightening the tension is the fact that other privileged sections of the Venezuelan society have aligned themselves with the old Oligarchy. For example, Mr. Chavez faces intense criticism and opposition from the religious community, especially the Catholic Church that has been highly critical of his reforms calling them immoral. This is designed to sway the predominately Roman Catholic populace into rejecting Mr. Chavez’s reforms without giving any reasons for a “no vote” except that these reforms are “immoral.”
Other sections of the ruling classes have been branding Mr. Chavez as “a communist” aimed at whipping up a “red scare” in the country using local media to get this message out. Through it all Mr. Chavez has stuck to his guns defending the reforms and calling them necessary to build “21st Century socialism.” Let me be clear: absolutely nothing in Mr. Chavez’s reforms plans is about socialism or builds socialism. The claim is bogus, misleading and utterly without foundation or merit. It is patently dishonest.
First and foremost one cannot build socialism on paper or by creating a new set of legal constructs that claim on the surface to protect workers from abuse and oppression. Only by empowering the people can any system – socialism included – be built and defended. So that reform promises to implement a six-hour work day and writing it into the constitution does not guarantee that it will happen because there many variables to consider.
And most of the proposed changes have very little to do with empowering the people or changing the present capitalist system – an essential and indispensable requirement if, as Mr. Chavez says, he wants to implement “21st century socialism.” In fact, most of the reforms have to do with the widening and amassing of more presidential powers that will make Mr. Chavez another of South America’s strutting generalissimos.
Should these reforms be enacted what Venezuela would have done is replace one ruling class with another – an old, moribund oligarchy with a new, modern business savvy bourgeois regime that only differs in the way that it exploits the poor and working classes and appropriates the profits of the state for its personal use.
By approving an amendment to the constitution to extend presidential terms in office from six to seven years and allow for unlimited “elections for life” these reforms are designed to keep Mr. Chavez in power and ensure that if and when he decides to demit office he will hand-pick a successor thus guaranteeing that he will never be held accountable for excesses committed while in office. It also means that personal wealth amassed while in office would not be questioned or queried.
Then there is the reform proposal to give the president more authority and control over the military. Mr. Chavez wants to be able to promote, if he feels like it, all the members of the officer corps. Needless to say such a move would subject the military to a new round of cronyism, nepotism and patronage that can and will corrupt the officer corps and undermine morale and discipline. It also says that Mr. Chavez does not trust his military and wants to put in place only his loyalists – something that could result in a counter-productive purge and create the conditions for a military coup.
Finally, and most alarming Mr. Chavez want the power to create by decree and legal gerrymandering any local, state or federal province that he alone sees fit without the bothersome technique of a local referendum. Mr. Chavez’s socialism, it seems, is a personal thing that now makes him all-powerful. Such disdain and top-down behavior rejects the notion of a creative masses and their ability to enact progressive change – another bedrock principle of socialism.
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