Dear Cochi:On a previous entry titled “No yet” you criticize the fact that I’m not calling Chavez a dictator and asked me to stop giving excuses and to stop trying to be politically correct. Like I promised, I’m replying to your comment in a post. It wasn’t an easy task and I hope you have the patience to read the whole long and boring argument. First of all I must say that this is not just about giving excuses or being politically correct. No one knows better than me that in order to criticize this regime and to show it to the world in its true colours, one must flirt over and over and over with the politically incorrect world. With that being said, I repeat here that Chavez is not a dictator and I doubt he ever will. I have four reasons in particular to support my stance, without giving excuses or trying to be “politically correct”:
1. We are living in times where to even conceive a dictatorship and a dictator like we once conceived it (I’m talking about Mussolini, Hitler, even Pinochet, Pérez Jiménez, Gómez, Pol- Pot, Lenin etc etc etc) is harder every day.
This is because, on one side, to look good in front of the international community has never been so important. We have seen for the first time, previous dictators being prosecuted for their atrocities; we have seen the pressure human rights groups can makes and the consequences that a government must face if they ignore that pressure (I’m thinking about the recent Guantánamo scandal, to put an example). Is not that human rights are no longer disrespected, is just that every day is getting harder and harder for states to pursue high scale human rights abuses without suffering the consequences (even for the president of Sudán).
On the other side, Internet has allowed infinite ways to be informed and to express dissent. Even in Cuba and China where Internet is banned, people always find new ways to escape from censorship. So I have a blog and I can say whatever I want about the president and the Revolution. Sure I could go to jail and all that, but they are a million bloggers like me, all over the work who can say whatever they want about the president and the Revolution. And I can write to someone, make connections and write a post from jail if I want to. The point is that there’s nothing a government can do to stop the Internet and its possibilities. Except to disconnect us all and the government needs to be online. So it’s a vicious circle were the democracy always win and the wannabe dictators always lose.
2. So we have to stop looking at the world with a democracy against dictatorship way of reasoning. And start caring about other things because we have passed the basic requirement for a democratic system which is a society were dissent truly exist (even if the government wishes to make it dissapear at any price, we know they can't totally make it). As for the human rights, the work will never stop, and we are always going to see violations but it is important that those violations have now consequences they didn’t had before. So this works the same as some diseases that disappear from the world and are never going to appear in the exact same way, we generally don’t worry about the animals we are going to hunt for dinner tonight or about the long horse ride and the three weeks ship that is going to take us from one place to another.
We have other concerns and the same should work with the political system. We can always conceive a system as democratic but knowing its imperfections and concerning about them not because democracy is going to be over for good, but rather because not all the things that happen under a democracy are respectful of the citizen’s requests and rights. A democracy is not an endless guarantee of that, as we wish for. And I’m glad we can have more sophisticated concerns than just thinking if this is a democracy or not.
For example one concern should be about Elections. We all know that in democracy, an election should be clean, universal, secret and fair. And it’s quite possible than in the strict sense of the word, elections in Venezuela are all that. But we have to go beyond the basics: what happens before the Election Day and after is also important to define if the elections have been as democratic as they should. I’m thinking on unfair government advantage, irregularities in the electoral lists, threats and even, the reasons and the circumstances under a certain election was called. It is also important to establish a difference between elections and referendum. And to look at the consequences that an electoral process might have for the citizens.
In a dictatorship no one from the opposition party can aspire to any political charge. In Venezuela you still can aspire to a political charge if you belong to the opposition. But the limits and obstacles for doing that are huge.
Another concern (although this one is not new) should be about the majority will. I think this concern can’t be explained under the democracy versus dictatorship model. We can have a perfect autocratic model, but if it’s what the majority wished for and voted for in perfect democratic elections, Can we speak about dictatorship? You know, Chavez is not just some bad guy alone doing non- democratic things. There’s also a society that for the better or the worse allows him to do it and you can’t leave this out of the analysis. I don’t want to be confused with the argument that everyone has the ruler it deserves, but rather that the society for reasons we can’t always understand builds its own ruler and in another direction, a ruler takes advantage of the society he commands. It’s some sort of an awful symbiosis.
3. In the same order of ideas I’m convinced by the experience of living under this system that we must stop just looking at the actions and caring more about the intentions. It doesn’t matter if, for a fact, Chavez is not yet a dictator. What matters is that for a fact, Chavez holds those intentions.
I’m not concerning about it because his intentions might come into reality. I have said earlier that they never will. Lets say we have not seen a case of a disease called “dictatorasis” since (put here the year you like, this gives room for a lot of discussion); and there's a guy who’s speaking about going to the graveyard to extract the body of the last person who died from that disease, and look for a component present in the DNA of his bones that can make the disease appear again. Even if we have loads of experts telling us that this guy is crazy and that doing that is impossible, it doesn’t mean we are going to like the guy. His intentions are more disrespectful with our achievements on our work of make the disease disappear than actually dangerous. But that doesn't mean we are just going to leave the guy alone.
And Chavez intentions might not end up in a dictatorship but they are ending into a democracy filled with vices and limits and lack of political culture. Not exactly the kind of system I want to live under.
4. Last but not least I must say that there are political systems, democratic systems, which are built under speeches that concern us in terms of losing individual rights but that doesn’t mean they are not any less democratic.
There are many examples, but right now I can only remember two speeches in particular: the security speech and the hunger speech. Those speeches work as politically correct excuses to make actions that neither provide more security nor mitigate hunger but give excuses, plus democratic support, to all kinds of arbitrary actions. Chavez uses both, but the hunger speech has provided him more legitimacy, especially over seas. So we must concern about such speeches, we must show to others that they are not cute caring words from our president and we must raise our voices against it. Not because the democracy is in danger, but because we are in a democracy expressing dissent and because we don’t want to fall in a democracy filled with arbitrary actions. We are not doing it because Chavez is a dictator but because his arbitrary actions reduce the guarantees we need to pursue a normal personal life and fair and normal aspirations. And the good part is, like I said on point 1, that we have indefinite channels to raise our voices against him.
So I think we can speak now about new ways under democracy is presented to us. They have some authoritarian basis and some dictatorship parallels. But just because they are not a dictatorship in the Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Castro, Pol- Pot, Pérez Jiménez kind of way, just because they are not dictatorships we shouldn’t be any less concerned. I think we have reached a time where our request is not about being in a democracy instead of a dictatorship. But to be in a better, more fair and respectful democracy instead of one that continuously make us doubt of the term.
Well Cochi, that’s all I can say. I’ll be looking forward for your reply. And even better, I’ll be also waiting for the reply of other readers, if they wish to join the discussion.
1. We are living in times where to even conceive a dictatorship and a dictator like we once conceived it (I’m talking about Mussolini, Hitler, even Pinochet, Pérez Jiménez, Gómez, Pol- Pot, Lenin etc etc etc) is harder every day.
This is because, on one side, to look good in front of the international community has never been so important. We have seen for the first time, previous dictators being prosecuted for their atrocities; we have seen the pressure human rights groups can makes and the consequences that a government must face if they ignore that pressure (I’m thinking about the recent Guantánamo scandal, to put an example). Is not that human rights are no longer disrespected, is just that every day is getting harder and harder for states to pursue high scale human rights abuses without suffering the consequences (even for the president of Sudán).
On the other side, Internet has allowed infinite ways to be informed and to express dissent. Even in Cuba and China where Internet is banned, people always find new ways to escape from censorship. So I have a blog and I can say whatever I want about the president and the Revolution. Sure I could go to jail and all that, but they are a million bloggers like me, all over the work who can say whatever they want about the president and the Revolution. And I can write to someone, make connections and write a post from jail if I want to. The point is that there’s nothing a government can do to stop the Internet and its possibilities. Except to disconnect us all and the government needs to be online. So it’s a vicious circle were the democracy always win and the wannabe dictators always lose.
2. So we have to stop looking at the world with a democracy against dictatorship way of reasoning. And start caring about other things because we have passed the basic requirement for a democratic system which is a society were dissent truly exist (even if the government wishes to make it dissapear at any price, we know they can't totally make it). As for the human rights, the work will never stop, and we are always going to see violations but it is important that those violations have now consequences they didn’t had before. So this works the same as some diseases that disappear from the world and are never going to appear in the exact same way, we generally don’t worry about the animals we are going to hunt for dinner tonight or about the long horse ride and the three weeks ship that is going to take us from one place to another.
We have other concerns and the same should work with the political system. We can always conceive a system as democratic but knowing its imperfections and concerning about them not because democracy is going to be over for good, but rather because not all the things that happen under a democracy are respectful of the citizen’s requests and rights. A democracy is not an endless guarantee of that, as we wish for. And I’m glad we can have more sophisticated concerns than just thinking if this is a democracy or not.
For example one concern should be about Elections. We all know that in democracy, an election should be clean, universal, secret and fair. And it’s quite possible than in the strict sense of the word, elections in Venezuela are all that. But we have to go beyond the basics: what happens before the Election Day and after is also important to define if the elections have been as democratic as they should. I’m thinking on unfair government advantage, irregularities in the electoral lists, threats and even, the reasons and the circumstances under a certain election was called. It is also important to establish a difference between elections and referendum. And to look at the consequences that an electoral process might have for the citizens.
In a dictatorship no one from the opposition party can aspire to any political charge. In Venezuela you still can aspire to a political charge if you belong to the opposition. But the limits and obstacles for doing that are huge.
Another concern (although this one is not new) should be about the majority will. I think this concern can’t be explained under the democracy versus dictatorship model. We can have a perfect autocratic model, but if it’s what the majority wished for and voted for in perfect democratic elections, Can we speak about dictatorship? You know, Chavez is not just some bad guy alone doing non- democratic things. There’s also a society that for the better or the worse allows him to do it and you can’t leave this out of the analysis. I don’t want to be confused with the argument that everyone has the ruler it deserves, but rather that the society for reasons we can’t always understand builds its own ruler and in another direction, a ruler takes advantage of the society he commands. It’s some sort of an awful symbiosis.
3. In the same order of ideas I’m convinced by the experience of living under this system that we must stop just looking at the actions and caring more about the intentions. It doesn’t matter if, for a fact, Chavez is not yet a dictator. What matters is that for a fact, Chavez holds those intentions.
I’m not concerning about it because his intentions might come into reality. I have said earlier that they never will. Lets say we have not seen a case of a disease called “dictatorasis” since (put here the year you like, this gives room for a lot of discussion); and there's a guy who’s speaking about going to the graveyard to extract the body of the last person who died from that disease, and look for a component present in the DNA of his bones that can make the disease appear again. Even if we have loads of experts telling us that this guy is crazy and that doing that is impossible, it doesn’t mean we are going to like the guy. His intentions are more disrespectful with our achievements on our work of make the disease disappear than actually dangerous. But that doesn't mean we are just going to leave the guy alone.
And Chavez intentions might not end up in a dictatorship but they are ending into a democracy filled with vices and limits and lack of political culture. Not exactly the kind of system I want to live under.
4. Last but not least I must say that there are political systems, democratic systems, which are built under speeches that concern us in terms of losing individual rights but that doesn’t mean they are not any less democratic.
There are many examples, but right now I can only remember two speeches in particular: the security speech and the hunger speech. Those speeches work as politically correct excuses to make actions that neither provide more security nor mitigate hunger but give excuses, plus democratic support, to all kinds of arbitrary actions. Chavez uses both, but the hunger speech has provided him more legitimacy, especially over seas. So we must concern about such speeches, we must show to others that they are not cute caring words from our president and we must raise our voices against it. Not because the democracy is in danger, but because we are in a democracy expressing dissent and because we don’t want to fall in a democracy filled with arbitrary actions. We are not doing it because Chavez is a dictator but because his arbitrary actions reduce the guarantees we need to pursue a normal personal life and fair and normal aspirations. And the good part is, like I said on point 1, that we have indefinite channels to raise our voices against him.
So I think we can speak now about new ways under democracy is presented to us. They have some authoritarian basis and some dictatorship parallels. But just because they are not a dictatorship in the Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Castro, Pol- Pot, Pérez Jiménez kind of way, just because they are not dictatorships we shouldn’t be any less concerned. I think we have reached a time where our request is not about being in a democracy instead of a dictatorship. But to be in a better, more fair and respectful democracy instead of one that continuously make us doubt of the term.
Well Cochi, that’s all I can say. I’ll be looking forward for your reply. And even better, I’ll be also waiting for the reply of other readers, if they wish to join the discussion.