Will Chavez be the next Mugabe???

An apt comparison...

Mugabe, like Chávez, took power after elections that were widely agreed to have been fairly conducted. Over time his governing philosophy came to consist of an economic nationalism underpinning a state socialist system, mobilised by exploiting resentment towards a privileged minority (the whites), treacherous elites (journalists) and interfering foreign powers (Britain).

To varying degrees in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, the same national-Left populism is today in power. Industries are nationalised, oligarchies are excoriated, journalists are traitors and behind every reversal and problem is the demonic power of the Great Gringo in the White House. Powers are sought by the populist presidents, which, while they are argued to enhance the power of the people, unarguably enhance the power of the president.

The week before last, by a small margin, the people of Venezuela refused Chávez the extension to his powers that he had sought. Encouragingly, Chávez seemed to concede with good grace. Impeccable grace, actually, saying: “I recognise the decision a people have made.” A week later and more ominously the President was describing the people's decision as “a shitty victory, and our - call it, defeat - is one of courage, of valour, of dignity,” adding: “We haven't moved a millimetre and we won't.” Several times now he has seemed to suggest that the proposals, in some form, will return. “This Bolivarian Republic will keep getting stronger,” he predicted.

Incidentally it is almost always bad news when the word “Republic” is preceded by an adjective. Ask those who have dwelt in Democratic, People's or Islamic Republics.

Before the Venezuelan vote there had been a convocation of British Signaturistas lining up behind Citizen Chávez. Exuding a reflexive sigh of admiration for the Bolivarian Revolution were the inevitable Pinters and Loaches, as well as Jon Cruddas, MP, who ought to know better, and Ken Livingstone, who never does. Anticipating a “Si!” vote, however, and demanding that the international community live with it, these progressives now contemplate the possibility that its is Chávez who cannot live with the result.

Of course, this may turn out to be wrong, but Mugabe suggests the trajectory: start with foreign sequestration, use the proceeds for internal bribery, watch the economy collapse and blame first the outsider and then the traitor. Finally, watch your people starve.

And Mugabe also suggests the trajectory of the apologists. There's a new dawn, shiny new clinics, optimism in each eye, power to the people and expropriate the expropriators. And if there are problems, such as a shortage of powdered milk in Caracas, then, according to Richard Gott, of The Guardian: “No one knows for certain if this is the result of opposition manoeuvre and malice, or of government incompetence.” Seventy years on and the class traitors are still putting glass in the worker's butter. Possibly.