"Flee the Country Where a Lone Man Holds All Power: It is a Nation of Slaves"

As I've mentioned before, that quote from Simon Bolivar seems to have eluded Hugo Chavez. Today is the day in which a referendum to change 69 items in Venezuela's constitution, including the following:

• Lengthening presidential terms from six to seven years. Eliminating terms limits to allow the president to run for re-election indefinitely.
• Redrawing the country's political map and allowing the president to handpick provincial and municipal leaders.
• Allowing the president to declare a state of emergency for an unlimited period, as long as "the causes that motivated it remain."
• Prohibiting foreign funding for "associations with political aims." Critics warn this could be used to strangle human rights groups.
• Granting the president control over the Central Bank, which previously had autonomy.

While there are some good ideas, including setting up community councils to decide how government funds are spent and providing for social security for those on the informal end of the economy such as street vendors, the above changes would clearly concentrate power in Chavez's hands and lead to a nation where "a lone man [effectively] holds all power."

Which leads to the two question that Chavez's most fervent supporters still seem unable to answer: if it is necessary for Chavez to be in power to effect a fair and just society in Venezuela, what will happen when Chavez dies? If Chavez is building institutions to truly change Venezuela in the way he wishes to change his country, why is it necessary for him to be in charge?

Apparently some of his supporters aren't convinced

“We see Venezuela on the other side of the road,” said Mercedes de Freitas, executive director of Transparency International here. The group, which tries to combat corruption worldwide, ranks Venezuela as the least transparent country in Latin America and 162 out of 179 nations globally. And that could soon fall even lower.

Count on that to happen. Accountability is the foundation of transparency and vesting the power in one man cannot help but hurt accountability. Given that at 5:47 p.m. EST the government is claiming victory, it appears that transparency is already suffering.

Yesterday I watched a Chavez press conference on CNN en Español. At one point he held forth for nearly half an hour, alternately being coherent and being incoherent. It was truly a Captain Queeg moment. Expect more of this.

Comments

[Tambopaxi]

... Luckily, a bare majority of voting Venezuelans retained enough reason to realize that they were commending their futures to a guy who's interested in control but not much in accountability, who's not much of a manager either. Still, in what I must say was a brief and reasonably coherent (for him) concession speech, Chavez made it clear that he'll be around for sometime to come and that he hasn't given up on his Bolivarian socialism idea. We'll see what he comes up with next in his unending quest for power....