Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez lurches leftwards, again

The second coming

Jan 10th 2007 | CARACAS
From Economist.com

THE story of Hugo Chávez’s eight-year presidency in Venezuela is one of reinvention. This week, as he embarked on another six-year term, the left-leaning former army officer appeared to cast aside what remained of his “democratic socialist” clothing, to reveal a radical political, economic and social programme which is now avowedly communist in inspiration.

Mr Chávez seems determined, through his rhetoric and policies, to provoke angry reactions from opponents at home and abroad. Ahead of his reinauguration on Wednesday January 10th, he announced that elements of the economy deemed strategic—telecommunications, electricity, and the heavy-oil upgrading facilities which process production from the vast Orinoco belt—are to be nationalised or renationalised. Shares in several affected companies plunged on January 9th. The central bank will also lose its constitutional autonomy—something of a fiction in any case—letting the government print money at will to finance social programmes.

More rhetoric and revelations are likely in his inaugural speech, but some aspects of what Mr Chávez calls a “new era” are already clear enough. The constitution is to be reformed to allow socialist measures to be implemented. A fresh enabling law will let the executive issue decrees billed as even more explosive than a similar package in 2001 which sparked a three-year-long political crisis.

This week he scornfully advised church leaders who are confused about his plans to see Christ as an “authentic communist, anti-imperialist and enemy of the oligarchy”. He no longer talks of working to “improve capitalism”, but of the true path of “21st-century socialism”. Behind him as he spoke was a ten-metre-high close-up of his own face and hands, reminiscent of a bishop blessing his flock. The image reflected another salient feature of the Venezuelan regime: a growing cult of personality surrounding a leader who talks of resurrection and socialism in the same breath.

Private enterprise, already hedged in with price and exchange controls and subject to unfair competition from a state that is encroaching on everything from agriculture to banking, will be further restricted. The process of political decentralisation begun in the late 1980s will be reversed, and the restriction on consecutive presidential re-election will be removed, allowing Mr Chávez to remain in power indefinitely.

Channels for dissent look set to dwindle. A law now being considered in parliament will severely limit the flow of foreign money to non-governmental organisations. An independent television channel, RCTV, one of two which openly oppose the government, is to be shut down by the simple expedient of not renewing its licence, up for review in May. “There will be no new concession for that coup-mongering channel called Radio Caracas Television,” the president told the armed forces in late December, after winning the presidential election by a large margin. RCTV's boss Marcel Granier is an outspoken critic and was once seen as a possible opposition candidate.

Mr Chávez has also drawn international criticism. The secretary-general of the Organisation of American States, José Miguel Insulza, said the move to close the television station appeared to be a form of censorship and “a warning to others”. Mr Chávez, evidently relishing the scrap, responded with insults and by calling on Mr Insulza to resign, accusing him of acting like a “viceroy of the empire” (meaning the United States). As he has done consistently in relation to America in recent years, the Venezuelan president now appears to be consciously provoking a reaction from the rest of the continent. Despite significant differences in political and economic conditions, at home and abroad, the eerie echoes of Fidel Castro’s Cuba in the early 1960s are hard to ignore.