Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

Comments on Chavez

I was over at the BBC online and read this comment which I believe is a running joke around the world:

Reminds me of the old joke: "Why are there no coup d'etat in the US?" "Because there are no American Embassies in Washington!"

On the real though, On one hand I agree with the commentators that say that Chavez must work to unite the country. Though he won, he still had 42-48 percent of the country that voted against him. I seriously doubt that 40 percent of the population are elites. Therefore much like in the US, a significant portion of the population voted against thier interests. Chavez must organize his party to address these people. We know that the elites are simply greedy, butt kissers, who are shills for a flawed US foreign policy in the region. One commentator said that Chavez has polarised the nation. I disagree, I believe the opposition is in fact the polarisers. It was they that tried to remove Chavez by means of coup. They clearly are not for "rule of law." Even now they refuse to accept that the voting was fair. Indeed thier actions now are indicative of thier true motives. But they will not go away because the current [and most likely next]administration would like nothing more than to continue to fund and support the "opposition." I hope that Chavez's party is training its new leadership. the next election is in 2007 and will no doubt be a very nasty election.This is but a battle won, La luta continua!

The last thing is how the press uses the "deep" divisions in the election to point out how divided the country is and how "volatile" the situation is. However, a large number of people in the US do not approve of Bush. There is great division in the US but no one is acting like the sky will fall any minute. In fact it would appear that Venezuela has shown itself to be more democratic than the US. At least if we were running their system, we could have recalled Bush before the 2004 election.