Hugo Chávez, Desperate and Dangerous

For The Americano, by Ambassador Roger Noriega.

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez’s decision Tuesday to invite one of Fidel Castro’s principal henchman, Ramiro Valdes, to Caracas to help salvage his regime is an act of utter desperation.  One hopes that the world is paying attention, because there are few things more dangerous than a desperate dictator.

Chávez’s cover story is that Valdes will help the Venezuelan government address the ongoing electricity shortage.  That is a bit like inviting Jack “Dr. Death” Kevorkian to manage a hospice.  Chávez must know that he’s insulting Venezuelans’ intelligence and nationalism with the flimsy excuse that the notorious foreigner has been invited to tinker with a power shortage that will take decades to fix. However, he has little choice but to turn to a world-class thug (the Cubans would say “esbirro”) like Valdes to run roughshod over the Venezuelan military at a time when Chávez is in very serious trouble.

The stakes are high.  That was made clear two weeks ago when Chávez revealed Valdes’ imminent arrival in a closed-door meeting of his closest security aides.  Upon hearing Chávez’s plans to give these foreigners formal command of the state’s internal security apparatus, Vice President and Minister of Defense Ramón Carrizalez resigned his post. Carrizalez was a Chávez confidante, a hard-line loyalist, and one of the government’s most capable managers.  That Chávez would press forward with Valdes’ apparent rescue mission shows that he does not trust his closest advisors in the face of mounting public dissatisfaction with his regime.

The presence of Cubans in Chávez’s government is nothing new.  Tens of thousands of Castro’s finest form a shadow government in Venezuela today.  Venezuelan government ministers are second-guessed by their Cuban minders; even some of the most mundane commercial transactions are subject to Havana’s approval.  Not only does Castro’s bankrupt state depend on Venezuelan charity, the Cuban mentors are amassing small personal fortunes as they skim their share of Chavista corruption.

What’s different today is that Chávez is finally facing the consequences of wrecking Venezuela’s democracy and economy. His clear intention since taking power 11 years ago was to lay waste to a proud nation – leaving his opposition without the means to resist.  His predicament today is that he has put the country in such a steep dive that he does not have the time or talent to prevent the country from crashing.  Despite high energy prices, the state oil company cannot pay its bills and is falling well short of its OPEC production quota.  While Chávez has doled out billions to client states, Venezuela’s power plants, water supply, bridges, highways, etc. are crumbling.  Electricity blackouts – planned and otherwise – have crippled the country’s production.  Chávez sowed arbitrariness in order to disadvantage his political foes and bully the private sector; but by undermining the rule of law, a responsible police force, and impartial courts he has made Caracas one of the deadliest patches of ground on earth.  And, early this year, he responded to an economic crisis by adopting an ill-conceived devaluation that doctors the government’s books but sows chaos in the market place, drives up already rampant inflation, and suffocates production.

Not content with control over 94 percent of the nation’s media, last month Chávez decided to silence the independent Radio Caracas TV International (RCTV) for refusing to carry government programming, featuring long-winded speeches by the leader that run as long as seven hours. For weeks, thousands of students have taken to the streets of the country’s major cities to decry this latest attack on freedom and to protest rampant crime, food shortages, and power failures.  Chávez has ominously warned that he would answer these demonstrations with “radical measures.”  “What are they looking for? Death?” he said.  Indeed, at least two students have died from injuries sustained in confrontations with riot police, and an untold number have been detained.  The students’ plans to march on the National Assembly were cut short yesterday when local authorities refused to grant a permit for the demonstration and police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd.  Young leaders have pledged to continue their protests.

Recent opinion polls – including those conducted for use by Chávez and his inner circle – paint a very bleak picture for the regime, which faces National Assembly elections later this year.  In one nationwide poll conducted in late January by the Venezuelan firm Hinterlaces, 61 percent of the respondents say the country was on the “wrong track.”  Nearly 80 percent oppose the stifling of RCTV.  Three-fourths reject the rationing of electricity.  By a two-to-one margin, respondents said they will vote for non-Chavista legislative candidates.   And, about two-thirds of the respondents favor Chávez leaving power when his current term expires in 2012. In a private poll commissioned for Chávez’s personal use last month, he enjoys a lowly 36 percent approval rating, and only 23 percent of those responding said they would vote for his legislative slate.

Even past true believers have turned on the regime.  Early this week, several of Chávez’s army mates and senior ministers called for his resignation, stating that he did not have “the moral or material authority to govern because he has failed to heed the demands of the people.” They branded Chávez “illegitimate,” citing a litany of economic and social woes as well as the most “obscene levels of corruption” that the country has ever seen.

Chávez turned to Havana not to help fix the problems but to survive the coming showdown.  He has met past crises by renting mobs, suborning security forces, and co-opting willing plutocrats, but he knows that the chaos headed his way today will require more “radical” measures. Valdes’ sinister task is to help Chávez beat back any challenges to his authority from inside his regime as he tries to crush resistance from the streets.

Chávez is risking a nationalist backlash by handing so much formal power to the Cubans.  How will the Venezuelan people react to their soldiers taking orders from foreign usurpers?  Will Venezuelan soldiers follow such orders to use violence against their compatriots claiming their essential rights?  Venezuelan hero and South American “Liberator,” Simón Bolívar, said, “Damned is the soldier who uses his weapon against his own people.”  At long last, Chávez may learn that lesson the hard way.

Roger F. Noriega, a senior State Department official from 2001 to 2005, is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute <http://www.aei.org/>  and managing director of Vision Americas LLC, which helped organize a visit of Honduran leaders to Washington in July.

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