Terror and a gag await opponents - Veneconomia.com

Terror and a gag await opponents

Veneconomia.com

July 20, 2007

It is no secret that, as far as President Hugo Chávez is concerned, socialism is the path to follow. He insisted on it yet again this week at the swearing in of the High Military Command.
All that would seem to be left to define is what brand of socialism this is to be. Yet some analysts are of the view that the style of “socialism” Chávez is thinking of imposing on Venezuelans has already been decided; and it seems to be nothing more than vulgar totalitarianism with a Castro-Marxist bent that is better suited to the 19th century than the present day.
Signs of this are there to see on the macro level: 1) a legal net around and harassment of any private economic activity, where state control and collectivism prevail; 2) the criminalization (and wherever possible the sanctioning) of any kind of dissidence, from whatever source: churches, the media, political parties, NGOs, professional bodies, trade unions and even professionals, workers and students; 3) ideological and political penetration of all institutions and organized movements on the community and regional level and all those having to do with education or the military; and 4) strict centralized control of all government agencies. And all this is accompanied by a very well orchestrated propaganda machine that operates within the country and abroad. Clear as a bell!
Signs of where this Chávez-styled “socialism” is headed are also apparent in the President’s catch phrases. One of the most recent -which might help to dispel any doubts those who are still skeptical may have- is “we are entering the Jacobin phase of the revolution.”
As the historian and university professor Miguel Hurtado Leña recalls in an analysis that did the rounds on the Internet, Jacobinism is a “political school of thought that emerged during the French Revolution, which defended revolutionary and violent radicalism.” One of the best-known figures of this school is Robespierre, the main inspiration for the drastic measures taken by the “revolutionary government” of Saint-Just, when the policy of terror was implemented on different fronts (the political, economic, religious and military), as Hurtado Leña quite rightly points out.
In this “social, communist, Marxist” Venezuela, people are already feeling the claws of terror of one kind or another. Suffice it to recall, first of all, the hundreds of political prisoners who already have the “process” to their credit; secondly, the thousands of professionals and technicians who were fired in the most incredible act of apartheid committed anywhere in the region; and thirdly, the millions of hectares of productive land that have been confiscated and hundreds of companies “intervened.”
Another recent example of the use of terror against political dissidents is the “legal” harassment to which the Executive Director of the Foro Penal Venezolano, Mónica Fernández, is being subjected. Her “sin” is that she has maintained a direct, transparent, critical position regarding the illegal measures taken by the government. To top it all, the National Assembly, at the request of parliament’s first vice-president, Desirée Santos Amaral, approved, in plenary session, a move to urge the Public Prosecutor General’s Office to “speed up” an investigation that the regime has had open since 2004 against former Justice Fernández, who is now being accused of forming part of a media conspiracy to “create a matrix of opinion against the government.” Yet further proof of the abuse of authority and how the branches of government prostrate themselves before Miraflores. Make no mistake about it!

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