Venezuela loses

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Scott Johnson in Hugo Chavez, South America

Mark Falcoff: Venezuela loses

Occasional contributor Mark Falcoff is resident scholar emeritus at AEI.
He is the the author, among other books, of Modern Chile, 1970-1989: A
Critical History and Cuba the Morning After: Confronting Castro's
Legacy. Mr. Falcoff comments on yesterday's elections in Venezuela:

The results are in. Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president-dictator (and
would be president-for-life) has scored another knockout victory at the
ballot box. While there may have been a slight fudging with the numbers,
and the government was able to monopolize media time and draw on huge
resources to get supporters to the ballot box, the outcome cannot be
much of a surprise. Any government that spends over a decade doling out
goodies to the needy, in a country where most people are poor or
near-poor, cannot lose an election.

The big surprise is not that Chavez won, but how well the opposition
candidate Henrique Capriles did (46 percent), taking into account the
non-level playing field not to mention nasty references to his Jewish
ancestry (he is actually a practicing Catholic). As he reminded Chavez
last night in his message of concession, almost half the country opposes
continuation of the so-called Bolivarian project. Venezuela remains more
deeply polarized than ever, its politics a zero-sum game which can be
sustained only by continuously high oil prices and the cavalier use of
the exchequer to buy votes and love.

This is so in spite of a grotesque neglect of the country's basic
infrastructure while vast sums have been siphoned off by friends and
associates, not to mention sweetheart deals with foreign (non-US and
largely non-Western) companies, voluminous arms purchases from Russia,
gifts of oil (to the tune of 100,000 barrels a day) to prop up the
Castro dictatorship in Cuba, and transfers of resources to friendly or
subservient governments in the Caribbean and Central America, not to
mention a plague of street violence and crime which makes Caracas the
most violent city in the Western hemisphere.

Quite apart from the troubled course of the world economy (which could
end the current spike in energy prices at almost any time), there is
another imponderable Chavez is facing down the road–the unspoken issue
of his health. The Venezuelan strongman, who has been operated on for
cancer three times in Cuba in the past year and a half, claims that he
is "cured." Perhaps indeed he is, but photographs and videos reveal a
face bloated with medications, presumably steroids. If he is deceiving
the Venezuelan public (and perhaps even himself) there is no conceivable
successor. He will have frittered away roughly a trillion dollars (no
misprint) with no lasting impact on the welfare or the development of
his people. Instead, he will have bequeathed them a deep social
antagonism which under the right (that is, the wrong) circumstances,
lead to a civil war.

Given the margin of this victory, it is not likely that Chavez will
moderate his rhetoric or his actions. Quite the contrary. He is bound to
press his momentary advantage. One can only hold one's breath while
watching for the next act to unfold.

Mark Falcoff contributes to various Web sites from Munich. Among his
previous contributions to Power Line are "Venezuela the morning after"
and "Mark Falcoff's guide to the guidebooks."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/10/mark-falcoff-venezuela-loses.php