If it is true, then it would totally unacceptable IMO.
Honestly, I don't believe it to be, but I'm definitely going to look it up.
Any threats to freedom of speech is unacceptable. Which is one of the reasons why i believe China, for all of its recent improvements, is still a dictature.
If any head of state would take such actions, he or she would be an asshole of epic proportions.
YIP
Zack
Knock yourself out . . . Foreign Affairs may/june 2006
I bolded the relevant parts.
BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER
Almost as soon as a collapsing bridge forced the government of President Hugo Chavez Frias to shut down the only highway linking Venezuela's main airport and capital city in January, the recriminations began. Chavez's opponents accused him of wasting the country's oil bonanza on politically driven projects abroad while neglecting infrastructure at home. His supporters, in turn, charged the traditional elite that governed before him with squandering resources and ignoring fundamental needs for decades. In fact, both sets of charges were nearly identical. And both were right. Venezuela's leaders, Chavez as well as his predecessors, have long been guilty of misplaced priorities.
As with so many things today in Latin America's most politically polarized society, they all share the responsibility for failing to maintain what is arguably the most important stretch of road in Venezuela.
Just before Chavez took office in February 1999, Gabriel Garcia Marquez accompanied him on a flight to Caracas from Havana, Cuba, where the Venezuelan president-elect had visited with Fidel Castro.
"I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had just been traveling and chatting pleasantly with two opposing men," the Colombian Nobel laureate later wrote. "One to whom the caprices of fate had given an opportunity to save his country. The other, an illusionist, who could pass into the history books as just another despot." Seven years later, these "two opposing men" live on in the minds of Chavez's supporters and opponents.
To his most ardent backers in Venezuela and among the international left, Chavez is a hero driven by humanitarian impulses to redress social injustice and inequality -- problems long neglected by a traditional political class intent on protecting its own position while denying the masses their rightful share of wealth and meaningful political participation.
He is bravely fighting for Latin American solidarity and standing up to the overbearing United States. With charisma and oil dollars, he is seizing an opportunity to correct the power and wealth imbalances that have long defined Venezuelan and hemispheric affairs.
To his opponents -- the embattled domestic opposition and many in Washington -- Chavez is a power-hungry dictator who disregards the rule of law and the democratic process. He is on a catastrophic course of extending state control over the economy, militarizing politics, eliminating dissent, cozying up to rogue regimes, and carrying out wrong-headed social programs that will set Venezuela back. He is an authoritarian whose vision and policies have no redeeming qualities and a formidable menace to his own people, his Latin American neighbors, and U.S. interests.
These caricatures have defined the poles of a debate that has obscured the reality of the Chavez phenomenon -- and thwarted the development of a sound response to him. Chavez's appeal cannot be explained without acknowledging the deep dissatisfaction with the existing political and economic order felt by much of the population in Venezuela and throughout much of the rest of Latin America, the world's most unequal region. Chavez's claims that he could remedy Venezuelans' legitimate grievances won him the support of many in the region.
But Chavez's policy ideas are mostly dubious. (Despite the record oil profits that are funding social spending, his initiatives have yielded only very modest gains.) His autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies have undermined governance and the democratic process in Venezuela. Still, his seductive political project has offered a measure of hope to many, and his critics have proved chronically inept: every effort to challenge him, both domestically and internationally, has failed, and usually ended up making him stronger in the process.
Chavez's opponents in Venezuela and abroad have spent much time and effort condemning the model he claims to represent, but far too little time and effort putting forward a model of their own. Until they do, Chavez will likely continue to have the upper hand.
ALO, PRESIDENTE
Venezuela was ripe for major change when Chavez was elected president in 1998. For 40 years, an alliance of two parties -- Democratic Action and the Christian Democratic Party -- had dominated the political order. By the 1970s, both were rightly considered guilty of chronic corruption and mismanagement; the exclusionary political system they managed was wholly divorced from the central concerns of most Venezuelans. The fact of ample oil wealth (Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest producer) only deepened the population's rage.
During the 1980s and 1990s, no South American country deteriorated more than Venezuela; its GDP fell some 40 percent. In February 1992, with unrest already widespread, Chavez, a lieutenant colonel and former paratrooper, led a military coup against the government. Although the coup failed and Chavez spent the next two years in prison, his bold defiance catapulted him onto the national political stage and launched his career.
When Chavez entered politics six years later, his combative style and straight-talking populist charisma served him well in a country marked by pervasive discontent. His fierce indictment of the old political order -- and his promise of a "revolution" in honor of South America's liberator, Simon Bolivar -- held wide appeal among poor Venezuelans. Unlike the "out of touch" politicians, Chavez projected a sincere concern for those living in poverty. In Venezuela, that meant three- quarters of the population.
Chavez's political project has been an eclectic blend of populism, nationalism, militarism, and, most recently, socialism, combined with a "Bolivarian" emphasis on South American unity. Chavez sees himself as the embodiment of the popular will. "Participatory democracy," focused on empowering and mobilizing Venezuelans, is the essence of Chavismo. Taking advantage of his communication skills, Chavez, a consummate showman, speaks directly to the Venezuelan public through his Sunday television program, Alo Presidente, thereby cementing his bond with the masses.
Behind democratic trappings and a fig leaf of legitimacy, Chavez has concentrated power to an astonishing degree.
Although he benefited considerably from the complete collapse of the old order, he has also proved to be an astute and skilled politician, despite being frequently dismissed as a mere buffoon. He has constructed his edifice of power through a succession of elections, including a 1999 referendum for a new constitution. That new "Bolivarian" constitution allowed consecutive reelection for the president and set up an electoral council that is a fourth branch of government.
The contours of Chavez's "illiberal" regime have become increasingly better defined over the past seven years. Virtually all key decisions are in the hands of the president. The rule of law is at best peripheral. The Electoral Council and the National Assembly have become mere appendages of the executive. In May 2004, Chavez took advantage of majority support in the National Assembly to have a measure passed that increased the number of Supreme Court justices from 20 to 32, thus allowing him to pack the court with handpicked political loyalists.
To be sure, dissent is permitted, and the largely privately owned media still frequently criticize Chavez. But instruments have been put in place to clamp down, if deemed necessary, on critical voices. According to the criminal code, it is now an offense to show disrespect for the president and other government authorities, punishable by up to 20 months in jail. A December 2004 Social Responsibility Law comes close to censorship by imposing "administrative restrictions" on radio and television broadcasts. The measure has been strongly condemned by various groups, including the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a body of the Organization of American States (OAS). By raising the disturbing possibility of arbitrary enforcement, such restrictions have had a chilling effect on the press. There is also credible anecdotal evidence of the existence of lists of individuals' votes that have been used to deny Chavez's opponents jobs and services.
To rule, Chavez depends chiefly on the military, the institution he knows best and trusts most. Thanks to a specially tailored law, Chavez remains an active military officer, and more than one-third of the country's regional governments are in the hands of soldiers directly linked to Chavez. As the editor of the daily Tal Cual, Teodoro Petkoff, has noted, "For all practical purposes, this is a government of the armed forces." Moreover, the government has been organizing private unarmed militias and developing plans to mobilize up to two million reservists in the name of national defense. Citizen power, as reflected in such groups as government-sponsored neighborhood "Bolivarian Circles," helps undergird the regime (and represents the fifth branch of government, according to the 1999 constitution). Chavez has shown little desire to build a coherent party, relying instead on the heterogeneous political grouping he calls the Fifth Republic Movement.
Chavez's strategies have been particularly effective in the face of an opposition that has been consistently inept and is now weaker than ever. It has used various tactics -- a coup, a national strike, and a recall referendum -- in a quest to unseat Chavez but has never had a viable strategy, an alternative program, or effective leadership. In April 2002, a failed coup not only raised questions about the democratic credentials of the opposition; it also gave Chavez the perfect pretext to take full control of the armed forces, purging any dissidents. The strike at the end of 2002 enabled Chavez to establish control over the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). And the August 2004 recall referendum ended up enhancing his legitimacy when he won. Last December, the opposition's decision to boycott elections for the National Assembly left Chavez's coalition with control of all 167 seats. Looking ahead to the December 2006 presidential vote, it is hard to see how the opposition could regroup to mount a serious challenge. Although polls vary, they suggest Chavez is in a very strong political position, with popular support hovering around 50 percent, placing him far ahead of his closest challenger.
Chavez is frequently compared to Castro and Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi, as well as to Bolivar. The more apt historical precedent is Argentina's Juan Peron. Peron, too, was a military figure who attempted a coup and used his considerable oratorical skills to attack the political establishment and make rousing appeals to the downtrodden. Even Chavez's audacious decision to provide discounted home heating oil to poor families in the United States through the Venezuela subsidiary CITGO echoes the actions of the mythic Argentine first lady who supplied clothes for 600 needy American children in 1949. "Shrewd Evita Peron knew a good chance when she saw one," Time magazine noted, and the same is true of Chavez. And like Juan Peron, whose Peronism dominates Argentina to this day, Chavez is likely to succeed in building a social and political force -- Chavismo -- that will endure for some time.
