Few things political have given me more perverse pleasure in recent years than commenting on the way Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez kept thumbing his nose at U.S. President George W. Bush.
Remember how he began his address before the UN General Assembly in 2006?
The Devil came here yesterday. [He crosses himself, then clasps his hands in mock prayer.] Right here! Right here! And it smells of sulfur still today. This table that I’m standing in front of, yesterday ladies and gentleman, from this rostrum the president of the United States – the gentleman I refer to as the Devil – came here talking as if he owns the world. I think we should call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States….
(CBS News, September 22, 2006)
Hell, not even his mentor, former Cuban President Fidel Castro, spoke publicly with such unbridled contempt for a U.S. president.
More to the point, though, like Castro, Chávez routinely complained about CIA efforts to kill him. Yet Chávez seemed destined to emulate Castro by surviving not just the Bush presidency, but that of Obama and at least another eight U.S. presidents. (Castro survived nine of them before retiring in 2008.)
Those who were dancing just over a year ago are probably in mourning today. Because, in a wholly predictable redo of his earlier defeat, Chávez won a resounding victory on Sunday on a referendum that will allow him to serve now as president for life…
The Bolivarian Revolution is a process whereby Chávez seizes control of the country’s oil revenues and confiscates private homes and businesses to put them all ‘at the service of Venezuela’. Concomitant with this, he institutes political and economic reforms to create his version of a socialist paradise … which he hopes to replicate throughout the America.
Now it seems only death by natural causes will prevent Chávez from emulating Castro; i.e., by using Venezuela as a laboratory for quixotic socialist policies for more than 50 years … come what may.
(Viva Chávez, The iPINIONS Journal, February 17, 2009)
Well, apropos of death by natural causes, it now seems that Chávez’s nine lives might be cut in half not by the CIA, but by cancer. Because earlier this year, after the few opposition leaders he did not already silence or run into exile began spinning unfavorable stories about his mysterious disappearances, he announced that he was receiving treatment in Cuba for an unspecified form of cancer. Reports are that Cuban doctors removed a tumor from his pelvic region in June.
I suspect, however, that if his chemotherapy were not causing him to lose his hair he would have been quite happy to disguise his visits for cancer treatment as just visits to spend as much time as possible with his 85-year-old mentor. After all, Fidel had one foot in the grave even before he retired three years ago.
All the same, Chávez appears undaunted, insisting last month that his final round of chemo was a resounding success.
I feel like I’ve been born again….
(Chávez, BBC, September 23, 2011)
Of course I am mindful that most dictators are too vain (and insecure) to admit any weakness, let alone a terminal illness. This is why so many of them waste their dying breath huffing and puffing about how healthy and strong they are.
Accordingly, Chávez announced just days ago that in October 2012 he will orchestrate his reelection to another term, emulating the periodic elections Fidel orchestrated throughout his 49-year reign.
But just in case, he’s already hedging his bets by promising increased spending on health, education and other welfare benefits for the poor who constitute not just his very loyal base, but well over one-third of Venezuela’s population.
Chávez’s policy of nationalising strategic private businesses has taken a new twist with his announcement that his government will expropriate hotels and holiday homes at an upmarket Caribbean resort.
The president plans to turn Los Roques, an idyllic archipelago of deserted beaches of perfect white sand with swaying palms and dazzling coral reefs, into a state-run getaway for his country’s urban poor.
(The Independent, London, October 8, 2011)
Clearly when it comes to pandering, Chávez is a political Sugar Daddy in a class all by himself.
Meanwhile, I suspect nobody was more concerned about his brush with death than Russian PM Vladimir Putin. Because, if Chávez had died, his de facto dictatorship would very likely have been replaced by a pro-Western government.
And Putin surely knows that this new government would not have been as foolish as Chávez has been by spending so much of Venezuela’s oil revenues on Russian military hardware that is doing nothing but collecting moss in the Amazonian forest. I duly ridiculed this folly in an April 10, 2010 commentary entitled Russians treat Chávez like a rich fool.
Viva Chávez indeed.
NOTE: Am I the only one who thinks Putin looks even more like Gollum from Lord of the Rings after his recent face-lift surgery…?
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