Still More About Venezuela’s Budding Dictator
The Washington Post has an article about (T)Hugo Chavez's announcement that he would be nationalizing telecommunications and electricity in Venezuela. There is even more to it than the AP reported yesterday. Chavez has also purged loyalists from his administration. The people he has removed from power are ones that had actual name recognition with within Venezuela and internationally. He is really going after the Cuban personality cult model. In addition, Chavez has his eye on the remaining oil fields in Venezuela that had not already been nationalized (and are rapidly falling apart under his "reforms").
In his bid to accelerate economic reforms, Chávez said he would seek to have the National Assembly give him special powers that would permit him to approve economic laws by decree. The plan would have little or no opposition in the 167-member body, which has not had an opposition politician in its ranks since the president's foes boycotted elections in 2005.
"I move forward with my request for a revolutionary enabling law," he said. "We already have the document prepared. We are making the final revisions, and we solicit special powers."
The president also spoke about the need for Venezuela's most important oil fields, those in the Orinoco belt in the northeast, to be brought under state control. The projects in that region, which the government says contains more oil than any other patch in the world, were developed in the late 1990s by foreign multinational firms such as Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron and Total of France…..
….Last week, the government replaced one of Chávez's most loyal aides, José Vicente Rangel, the vice president. In an ambitious cabinet shake-up, Chávez also replaced the heads of such key ministries as interior, justice, finance and education. He appointed his brother, Adan, to run education.
"He's gotten rid of a couple of people who have their own separate identity, particularly Rangel, who has contacts in Venezuelan society and internationally," said Mark L. Schneider, a senior vice president of the International Crisis Group in Washington, a policy group that regularly compiles reports on Venezuela's political situation. "Rangel is not a yes man, I suspect, and my guess is that he may not be in tune with the way Chávez likes to run things."
It is going to be a grim time for Venezuela. Chavez needs to seize the remaining oil assets in order to make up for the declining output of his mismanaged oil sector. As the oil infrastructure deteriorates, so will revenues.
UPDATE: Publius Pundit has more.
UPDATE: Others: Venezuela Crisis, Club for Growth, QandO, Fausta,
World news | Gaius Tuesday, 9 January , 2007
By Robert, Tuesday, 9 January , 2007 @ 2:20 pm
And meanwhile the price of oil itself is also starting to wipe out. Maybe a crash development program of the U.S. oil shale can give the oil wipe out an extra push and accelerate the inevitable failure of Chavez (and other villains whose money comes from oil)?