Chávez was Right to encourage Zelaya to Rupture the Status Quo

By Ayinde
July 14, 2009

The article, "Honduras Supreme Court: It Was 'Common Knowledge' That Zelaya Was No Longer President" written by Jules Siegel, is another case of a writer presenting information, but is lost when it comes to evaluating the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. Of course, he is entitled to his opinion, so, like him, I am giving my opinion in response to aspects of his article.

Jules Siegel said:

"Manuel Zelaya has been an incendiary figure in Honduran politics. He raised the minimum wage, allied himself with Hugo Chávez, and gave both the Honduran army and the Supreme Court the finger, clearly making himself a candidate for crucifixion. As far as I'm concerned, he was wrong to go ahead with the encuesta after being forbidden to do so by the Supreme Court, whether or not the court's decision made any sense. To me, it was like the Al Gore decision, illogical, political and without support in constitutional law -- but still a decision by the nation's highest legal authority."

President Zelaya was not wrong to go ahead with the poll even though the Supreme Court ruled against him doing so. There was no real legal basis for stopping him. If the Supreme Court felt it had a legal case against President Zelaya, he could have been arrested and tried in court as the Honduras constitution allows. Clearly, government factions and the military broke the law in staging the coup and that should not be excused.

At least here the writer does not offer an opinion about the merits or lack thereof of Manuel Zelaya aligning himself with Hugo Chávez, but I would expand on this some more later.

Jules Siegel also said:

"I also feel that Hugo Chávez was also wrong to encourage Zelaya to rupture the status quo. The Obama administration may find it politically convenient to tolerate Chávez, but from a strategic point of view they can't accept his meddling in the internal politics of other nations and disrupting their social peace."

Chávez was totally in order to encourage Zelaya to rupture the status quo. Any caring person would want to overhaul a system that pauperizes so many. The status quo economically benefits a few White elite families at the expense of the majority who remain extremely poor. Chávez understands the situation as it was the same in Venezuela. He also knows that aid from the U.S. comes at the expense of the masses, so he offered assistance without the type of conditions that only seek to protect and expand U.S. interests at the expense of the majority.

The Obama administration, like the previous Bush II administration, does not like Chávez who is clearly against the U.S.' style of governance that wages wars for profit and promotes capitalism, which inevitably robs the masses. How is Hugo Chavez dirupting social peace in other nations? What peace is he disrupting? If anything, Chavez is disrupting the 'peace' that the elites in the society enjoy at the expense of the majority. Certainly, the poor people who cannot afford proper meals and health care do not experience peace under those conditions.

What has Chávez actually done to deserve the hatred of many?

Hugo Chávez is vocal about his dislike of U.S. foreign policies - for very justifiable reasons. Remember, the U.S., under Bush II, supported a coup against him in 2002. Chávez, like I would expect from any progressive leader, strongly opposes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He opposes the ongoing attempts to demonize and destabilize Iran as a part of the U.S. campaign to control the entire Middle Eastern region. Hugo Chávez knows that once the U.S. and its allies are allowed to succeed without a strong resistance then that spells doom for the sovereignty of all nations.

Chávez's ideas and policies, which align with his rhetoric, are about raising the standard of living for the disenfranchised; assisting them to realize power in their political affairs; improving health care, wages and literacy; implementing land and business practice reform; and overall, developmenting democracy. Chávez has been developing democracy more than has been attempted by any Western country.

In contrast, the Western powers' idea of democracy was born out of slavery and colonialism where wealth and power remained in the hands of White elites who controlled the political landscape and who developed laws to protect them from the masses. Democracy in the West is an illusion never to be realized.

Chávez has brought the majority of poor people in Venezuela into the political power landscape. He has ignited the imagination and passion of many poor Latin Americans who no longer see themselves as spectators of political manoeuvres that do not bring benefits to them. Today, they know they can realize a system where they too have to be taken seriously and will help determine the course in their own lives. This is the first time in recent history that so many people across the vast region of Latin America are fired up about change. They no longer see change as an illusive dream.

Chávez is often faulted for meddling in the affairs of other neighbouring nations. Ironically, one of his biggest critics accusing him of meddling is the U.S. This would be quite comical under different circumstances. The U.S. meddles in the affairs of every nation on earth. There is hardly a coup or war that does not have the U.S.' involvement. Any revolution that aims to empower the masses will call for making alliances with leaders who realize that they suffer from the financial and military manipulations of the West. Chávez is quite right to want to export his idea of socialism (contrary to capitalist ideals socialism is not a dirty word) to other nations, much the same as the U.S. tries to export theirs.

Some of the critics of Chávez give the impression that the meddling of the mighty U.S. is the norm and any challenge to that is obscene. It appears that although many so-called liberal writers are aware of the ills of the U.S. their superiority complexes bar them from appreciating the genuine, revolutionary efforts of Hugo Chávez to bring about people power.

Continue to the article: "Honduras Supreme Court: It Was 'Common Knowledge' That Zelaya Was No Longer President" by Jules Siegel

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