Chavez a threat to democracy, US intelligence chief says

In 1974, Congress gave President Carlos Andres Perez the right to "rule by decree" on a number of economic matters, which he used to pass a slew of new regulations-instituting a minimum wage increase, freezing the market price of "necessary" goods, instating tax relief on agricultural activities, increasing government pensions, and even establishing new state institutions, including the National Institute of Housing and an Industrial Development Fund.

But Perez was a close ally of the US government, so there was little controversy from Washington.

Ten years later, in May 1984, Congress again gave authority to the President, this time Jaime Lusinchi, to deal with the country's financial crisis by decree. He enacted a complicated exchange scheme, which was different for various sectors. For example, he extended a fixed exchange rate (4.3 bolivars to the dollar) for the payment of foreign debt and for Venezuelan students studying abroad; a second rate (6 bolivars to the dollar) for trade in the oil and iron industries; and a third (7.5 to 1) for the commercial and financial sectors. A fourth, "fluctuating dollar," constantly changing by market forces, was in use for everything else.

Nobody balked at all this, certainly not on the international scene. Lusinchi is remembered for hosting the first-ever visit of a Pope to Venezuela, and left office a few years later with what at the time was the highest approval ratings of an outgoing Venezuelan president.

In 1993, interim President Ramon Jose Velasquez used these special "decree" powers to retool the country's debt and reform the financial system. Once again, nobody-well, nobody remembers much about Velasquez at all. He was sort of a historical footnote, serving only 8 months in office.

So why all the finger-wagging, hand-wringing and label-slinging this time around? In short: because it's Chavez. The Bush administration has long been on a campaign to brand him a despot. His influence throughout Latin America is seen as a threat to U.S. power in the region, and after failed attempts to overthrow him by force, sabotage the nation's economy, and finance opposition parties, the label game is the last arrow they have in their increasingly feeble anti-Chavez quiver.
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Former Salvadoran Foes Share Doubts on War
Fifteen Years Later, Problems of Poverty Remain at Forefront

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 29, 2007; Page A01

SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador -- José Wilfredo Salgado says he collected baby skulls as trophies in the 1980s, when he fought as a government soldier in El Salvador's civil war. They worked well as candleholders, he recalls, and better as good-luck charms.

In the most barbaric chapters of a conflict that cost more than 75,000 lives, he enthusiastically embraced the scorched-earth tactics of his army bosses, even massacres of children, the elderly, the sick -- entire villages.

It was all in the name of beating back communism, Salgado, now the mayor of San Miguel, said he remembers being told.

But as El Salvador commemorates the 15th anniversary of the war's end this month, Salgado is haunted by doubts about what he saw, what he did and even why he fought. A 12-year U.S.-backed war that was defined at the time as a battle over communism is now seen by former government soldiers such as Salgado, and by former guerrillas, as less a conflict about ideology and more a battle over poverty and basic human rights.

"We soldiers were tricked -- they told us the threat was communism," Salgado said as bodyguards with pistols tucked into their waistbands hovered nearby at his home, ringed by barbed wire. "But I look back and realize those weren't communists out there that we were fighting -- we were just poor country people killing poor country people."
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We gave our blood, we killed our friends and, in the end, things are still bad," said Salgado, who has served three terms as mayor of El Salvador's second-largest city. "Look at all this poverty, and look how the wealth is concentrated in just a few hands."
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Tall, patrician and with an English wife from a landed family, the 65- year-old “diplomat’s diplomat” confounds most stereotypes of American envoys. Fluent in five languages, including Vietnamese, he has adopted five Honduran children.
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(PATRICIAN? :eyes: )

Negroponte is married to Diana, an academic and former society hostess whose father was Sir Charles Villiers, chairman of British Steel. But Negroponte’s Anglophilia has its limits, Greenstock implied: “He has no hang-ups about the Anglo connection, as some Americans do. But I’ve learnt never to count on sentiment for England when dealing with senior Americans. You have to earn your access and responses on merit.”

The Negropontes had been married for five years and were based in Honduras when they decided to adopt. Children, the ambassador said in a rare interview, “kept me young”. He also explained why the couple opted to adopt all five from the same country: “These children were all orphans. Life was going to be complicated enough without having siblings from all over the world. Adopting them from the same country ensured they would have a natural bond to each other.”
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