From: Paul Zarembka (zarembka@BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Fri Dec 07 2007 - 10:43:08 EST
Dogan, The only comment I'd make about your reply to me is that, on the one hand, I was not making a comment about Bolivarians in general, but rather about Chavez and those close to him. On the other hand, the constitutional proposal presented to the Venezuelan people did not have a good smell to it. The reason it doesn't smell good I've already stated (the economic progressive steps could have been legislated, and the issues around Chavez and increased executive powers could have been untied from the economic proposals). I smell a bribe. If I remember correctly, Venezuela did not have term limits before 1999. When the 1999 constitution change was proposed one of the selling points I recall was the introduction of term limits on the President. It was described as increased democracy. Now that the President is in the second term, socialism has replaced the former agenda and, viola, now unlimited terms (and increasing each term from 6 to 7 years) return. This is NOT a good message for our movement. Nor are increased executive powers, hardly more "power to the people". Chavez is now only saying the proposal was too complicated and our enemies told lies. According to him, the substance is still fine. Paul ************************************************************************ (Vol.23) THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF 9-11-2001 "a benchmark in 9/11 research" video summary from Snowshoe Films at http://snowshoefilms.com (Vol.24) TRANSITIONS IN LATIN AMERICA AND IN POLAND AND SYRIA ********************* http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Dec 31 2007 - 00:00:04 EST