| Gh0st4lifE said: Except Chavez doesn't control the media nor does his democracy go against the rights of the minority. Welcome to reality : Hugo Chavez is a popular president because people actually like him. He is populist though, and doesn't care much about protocoles. But he still is a decent President, and litteraly outshine Venezuela's traditionnal competitors. History tends to stick with the facts. |
In Caracas we have 11 over the air TV channels, of those, 6 are owned by the government and always saying good stuff about Chavez and saying bad stuff of people who oppose him. Of the privately owned TV stations 1 is a sport channel, the other 4 are your regular chanels with varied programs like news and sitcoms, of those 4 only one mantains a lot of opposition to Chavez (the other three were in danger of losing their license to function if they didn't comply to Chavez demands). That's media control for me, but only for TV stations.
Printed media is where Chavez really loses the media dominance, but that's because that's a media that needs to sell to exist, and since government newspapers don't sell well much of them are given for free. Privately owned printed newspapers are much higher in quality so they sell a lot more.
Radio doesn't really count for me, there private and public radio stations but the great majority are not politically related to chavez or people who oppose him.
Chavez is not a decent president, he's a guy who likes giving our oil money to other countries while a lot of us live in misery, what he should be doing is investing that money in Venezuela so when the oil is no longer needed whe have other stuff to hold on to. All he does for venezuelan people is give them a little while they deserve a lot more, and after 10 years of government cime rates are going up every year. People don't want to work because Chavez gives them a little wage if they participate in the events that show support to him, we import 70% of the food we eat and we don't have plans to solve those problems. Also if I want to visit another country I have to pay a huge exchange rate because the official exchange rate can only be used by government officials, and regular citizens can only use 2500$ for traveling outside the country.
The fact that you like Chavez is fine by me, but if you tell me that a president should stay as many times as the population wants then my friend I'd tell you to study a little bit of history. Chavez can be seen as a democrat, that's just because there's a 45% of the population that doesn't support him and pressure his government, he wants to be president until he dies, and with a person like that you can never know if he could take control of the electoral institution of Venezuela and arrange the elections in his favor...
