HUGO
CHAVEZ, THE Venezuelan president is dead, thanks mainly to a “CIA induced
cancer”. He reigned for 12 years and throughout his reign he helped squander
the one natural resource that his country had - oil. He was a demagogue who did
very little for his nation’s economy, relying on populist handouts to the
country’s poor. He subsidised Cuba’s oil imports, which had (remember), stopped
with the end of the Soviet Union; and he worshipped Fidel Castro above even himself.
He held the poor in the permanent
embrace of the state. As the Daily Mail
put it; “Chavez used his country's vast
oil wealth to launch social programs that include state-run food markets, new public
housing, free health clinics and education”. But he did very little to invest in his country’s
future. Populist handouts will always guarantee a politician his continued grip
on power. But these are short term solutions: where is the infrastructure investment
that would entice investment from abroad and at home? Investment that would
eventually provide Venezuelans with jobs. If Venezuela continues on this socialist
path now Chavez is dead, as now seems likely; then sooner or later the oil
reserves will be swallowed up, partly through populist handouts, and partly
through keeping, in a suicidal gesture, an extended life to Castro’s pitiful
regime in Cuba.
South America has always had a soft
spot for a strong leader who speaks for the ordinary citizen. Eva Peron was
venerated by the people of Argentina; as was Salvador Allende in Chile; Daniel
Ortega in Nicaragua and Emiliano Zapata in Mexico. South America has been the
romantic hotspot for European leftists since the 1960s, when Che Guevara turned
his back on the Cuban revolution and returned to South America; only to be hunted
down and killed in Bolivia - but what an iconic image he left to posterity.
There was not a single student lodging in the UK during the 1960s-70s that did
not have that classic poster image decorating their bedrooms.
Now we have Hugo Chavez, the latest idealistic
figure to entangle the European Left. Old Hugo got around a bit and met the
likes of Pope Benedict XVI, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran, Queen Elizabeth and even
the blessed Tony Blair. But none of these leaders could hold a candle to Ken
Livingston in their praise, who once met with his idol; and after Chavez’s
death tweeted the following; “Hugo Chavez showed there is an alternative to neo-liberalism and colonialism
in Venezuela and worldwide,” so wrote our once socialist mayor of London, who reminded us that, he
was a friend and comrade. “The best
tribute for Hugo Chavez is to redouble our efforts for a world free of exploitation
and colonialism #RIP”.
This one time overseer of 8,173,194 people[1]
was thankfully replaced by a Tory of sorts. It is frightening to think that
such an individual was ever left in control of a city whose financial sector he
ideologically opposed, yet which brought over £20 billion in taxes to the
exchequer every year, and if he and his socialist friends feel they could have
done without such a bounty on ideological grounds, then think of the further
support to the NHS and the schools, that would suffer without such a prize – and
Boris Johnson understands this.
Chavez, like Livingstone, or for that matter
any socialist, desires only to spend other people’s money. They would not treat
their own bank accounts as risibly as they do the state’s taxes. Socialism
means state provision; and the only way such a provision can be harvested is
through taxation. To socialists taxation is mother’s milk. They feel free to
dispense with such billions of pounds as if they were their own.
HUGO CHAVEZ IS now to be embalmed and put on display in the
mawkish way so beloved of the old Soviet Union, who displayed, wax-like, their
leaders. Lenin and Stalin became a tourist attraction in Red Square where long
queues of Soviet citizens and tourists from other socialist countries came
daily to gawp at the two mass murderers.
The Venezuelan
generalissimo is believed to have salted away $2billion for the day when his
people said enough was enough, and he retired to Cuba. He, despite his ideals,
appreciated wealth just like the rest of us; yet his Left-wing followers in
this country take a far more sterner view of such affluence when it comes to
banker’s bonuses. Still the likes of Ken Livingstone and George Galloway will
no doubt refuse to believe their champion’s acquisitiveness; blaming Daily Mail Right-wing propaganda for
printing such a suggestion .
But both
Ken and George have, in comparison to the people they say they represent,
healthy bank balances; indeed Ken has been accused (not by myself of course) of
tax avoidance… not illegal, but frowned upon by the Left.
I DO NOT KNOW WETHER Ken and George will attend the
funeral, but the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will certainly be there,
as will Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother. It should be quite a gathering; one which
George Galloway cannot afford not to attend. With a box of Quality Street at
the ready, he could network the world’s anti-Western dictators.
Whatever
good Chavez felt he did his people, it will turn out to be a pyrrhic ‘victory’
over their poverty. For as long as the oil flows; and for as long as those who
succeed Chavez continue to adopt his wasteful use of the nation’s finite
resources; then the Venezuelan people that matter, will readily elect a
Chimpanzee with a Chavez rosette pinned to its breast, in order to continue with
the handouts.
Idealism,
and I do not know why, is said to be much tolerated in our youth by older
generations, who treat them with what is considered by them as a necessary condescension,
in the hope that their brains develop at a quicker speed than the rest of their
anatomy (wishful thinking indeed) .
Youthful idealism can grip only the undressed
essentials of impracticality; the only litmus required of such youth, is that
once they embrace the rhetoric of a particular leader such as Hugo Chavez; they
give heart and soul to the cause, irrespective of his human fallibility. This has
been what the idealism of personality has amounted to ever since the life and crucifixion
of Christ.
Chavez misled his people when alive and will
surely mislead them after his death. He will become a socialist saint worshiped
by Venezuelan’s poor. But will suffer
ignominy when his life is put under the microscope, as all politician’s lives
are. His reputation will not survive the biographer’s pen. But even then, in
Venezuela, a biographer that details his infallibility as a human being, had
better stay clear of South American continent.
Hugo Chavez is dead. Let him die as millions
of people die every year. He deserves no more than anyone else. To encase his
hollow bodily countenance in a glass
coffin for posterity’s sake, is a perversion. He was a human being and should
be treated as such ... let him recline in peace.
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