Democracy Fights Back in Venezuela

Ray Walser / September 30, 2010

With due respects to Abraham Lincoln, one can say that Venezuela is a “house divided against itself.” The question for the Obama Administration is how long this important nation can remain half free and half a Hugo Chavez fiefdom. A powerful tug-of-war is underway between those who support Chavez’s radical, anti-American program of “Socialism of the 21^st Century” and those in Venezuela who have had enough and believe that tyranny, repression, and economic misery take root in the accumulation of unchecked executive power.

Chavez took a pummeling in the September 26, 2010, National Assembly elections.

Rising Venezuelan political star Maria Corina Machado called it right: Chavez “turned the election to the National Assembly into a plebiscite and lost.  t is very clear. Venezuela said no to Cuban-like communism; Venezuela said yes to a way towards democracy and now we have the legitimacy of citizens’ votes; we are the people’s representatives.” (more…)