Ask the Expert: Chávez and Venezuela

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Depending on who you ask some describe Mr Chávez as a liberator and an individual that has helped redistribute wealth, increase social services including greater investment in education and health care. Others say that he has hurt his people by mutilating the state companies that used to run the country’s natural resources, as well as investing heavily abroad, neglecting some serious problems at home, and evident cronyism.

It seems like it is a continual publicity battle on both sides to alienate the other. Were do you think the reality of this matter stands? How beneficial has Mr. Chávez’s policies been to Venezuela as a whole in the short and long run?

Arash Nazhad, Austin Texas

...Mark Weisbrot: It must always be kept in mind that you are getting a very one-sided story on Venezuela from the major international media – it is like listening to a prosecutor and his witnesses and evidence in a criminal trial, and not getting to hear the defence unless you actively look for it outside the courtroom. Most reporting (there are some exceptions) and almost all editorial opinion resembles the news we got in the U.S. prior to the Iraq war, when the majority of Americans were convinced not only that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and an active nuclear program, but also that he was directly involved in the 9/11 massacre. Expert sources cited are overwhelmingly of the same anti-government view, and sometimes as reliable as Ahmed Chalabi and friends in the run-up to the Iraq war.

That said there is some truth on both sides. Critics are correct to point out that crime and murder rates have increased considerably under the Chávez administration, the rule of law remains weak, there is plenty of corruption, and the country has not made significant progress diversifying away from its dependence on oil or coming up with an economic development strategy. But in most of these respects Venezuela does not differ from its neighbours.

On the positive side, the official poverty rate, which measures only cash income, shows a 21 per cent decline from 42.8 per cent of households when Chávez took office at the beginning of 1999 to 33.9 per cent for the first half of 2006. Furthermore, incomes would be considerably higher and poverty lower in Venezuela today if not for the enormous economic losses inflicted by the opposition oil strike of 2002-2003, the explicit goal of which was to overthrow the elected constitutional government; as well as other economic instability and damage attributable to other extra-legal opposition efforts such as the April 2002 military coup.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1947