U.S. Looks Away as Chavez Tightens His Grip
After Sunday's Venezuelan parliamentary elections, Hugo Chavez's grip on the country is as strong as ever. My latest column for CNN.com argues that America's strategy to wait for Venezuelans to remove him from power has failed.
Give him enough rope and he'll hang himself: That old adage has described U.S. policy toward Venezuela's thuggish president, Hugo Chavez.
The United States has stood by as Chavez degraded democracy in Venezuela, abused human rights and supported terrorism against neighboring Colombia. The U.S. has hoped that Venezuelans themselves would act against the economically incompetent leader who has transformed his nation's oil wealth into worsening poverty for most Venezuelans.
Sunday's round of voting in Venezuela has exposed the limits of the U.S. strategy -- and reminded the world again of the brute realities of Chavez's rule.
The Sunday vote elects Venezuela's increasingly powerless legislative body, not the president.
Venezuela used to have a bicameral legislature. In 1999, Chavez won a constitutional amendment eliminating the upper house.
The unicameral legislature used to be elected by proportional representation. In 2009, Chavez changed that rule, gerrymandering the legislature to favor regions where he is more popular. Outside experts estimate that it's possible for the pro-Chavez party to win two-thirds of the seats with barely half the votes. ...
Voters who make the wrong choice face economic retaliation. We can measure the severity of the retaliation thanks to the diligent work of four researchers, based at U.S. universities and the United Nations.
Between 2002 and 2004, opponents of Chavez organized a petition drive to force a recall vote. Some 4.7 million Venezuelans signed one or more of these petitions. Their names and addresses were distributed by the Chavez government throughout the government bureaucracy. Signers lost jobs, were subjected to tax audits and were refused government benefits.
A household survey by the U.S.-U.N. academic team measured the effect: an average 5 percent drop in income and a 1.3 percent drop in employment rates for petition signers.
Click here to read the rest.