Hugo Chávez, Venezuela and the Corporate Media
Hugo Chávez, Venezuela and the Corporate Media
OpEdNews Op Eds 4/6/2013 at 10:46:34
These days the big powers, along with their embedded corporate media, like to undermine independent states by branding them as either "dictatorships' or "populist' regimes. The first label suggests generalised repression, though of greatest concern is the repression of corporate privilege; the second suggests some form of deceptive demagoguery.
Venezuela's late President Hugo Chávez, in life and death, was branded both a "dictator' and a "populist'. In fact, he was neither. What he did, as Luis Bilbao and William Robinson note, was lead Latin America's break with neoliberalism and "put socialism back on the public agenda'. The impact of this is still being felt
Chávez was also the main driver behind south-focussed regional integration in the Americas, initiating both the eight-nation ALBA group and the 34 member CELAC, a clear counter-weight to the Washington-controlled Organization of American States (OAS). He therefore leaves a powerful regional legacy.
In Venezuela Chávez won successive election victories, gaining between 55% and 63% of the vote, in an electoral system described by former US President Jimmy Carter as "a model for other democracies'. You might not appreciate this, from the corporate media. In one of the many half-truths and outright lies peddled daily about Chávez, Alejandro Chafuen in Forbes magazine claims Chávez was "one of the most unpopular' Latin American leaders. He cites polls by Latinobarometro in other parts of Latin America, where the man was demonised by the corporate media. However within his own country (which is what matters in any democracy) Chávez had great popularity. Indeed Latinobarometro shows that Venezuelans rated satisfaction with their own democracy very highly (7 out of 10, in 2010), an achievement reinforced by the near doubling in participation rates at Presidential elections, to more than 80% in 2012.
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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Hugo-Ch-vez-Venezuela-an-by-Tim-Anderson-130406-875.html
