Word: chã
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...spite of the demonstrations in the streets of Caracas, Hugo Ch??vez is quite likely to squeak through with a win in this weekend's referendum - legitimately. Nonetheless, critics say he may be morphing into a "democratator" - a democratically elected dictator...
Elections and plebiscites are a sort of a moral Teflon for Ch??vez against charges from enemies like the U.S. that he's another Latin despot. (And he has developed some expertise at them: he has been elected three times and beat back a recall referendum in 2004.) But despite Ch??vez's claims that he's forging "a more genuine democracy" that finally enfranchises the nation's majority poor, Venezuela hardly looks poised to become a showcase for the separation of powers. The National Assembly and Supreme Court are Ch??vez's virtual rubber stamps; and, while free speech...
Given how profoundly Ch??vez has altered hemispheric politics in recent years, it's not surprising that he seems to be leading the so-called democratator trend in the region. In Bolivia and Ecuador, left-wing Presidents and Ch??vez allies Evo Morales and Rafael Correa are hammering out new Constitutions that would let them run for re-election indefinitely. In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega, hoping to relive the broad Marxist powers he enjoyed as President in the 1980s, is ruling virtually by decree. In Argentina, many suspect that the leftist husband-and-wife team of outgoing President Nestor Kirchner...
...Ch??vez backers of course reject the democratator label. "Yes, the intent of socialism is that the collective interest predominate over individual interests," says Haiman El Troudi, director of the Miranda Center in Caracas, a policy research think tank set up by the government. "But if our agenda were Stalinist we would have imposed it by now. Instead we're subjecting these reforms to an election - totalitarian states don't do that." Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to the U.S., concurs: "We're trying to create institutionality in Latin America precisely because its present institutions don't function...
...autonomous Central Bank under the President's control; and the creation of regional vice presidents. Provincial leaders like Ramón Martínez, Governor of eastern Sucre state and himself a socialist, consider the latter idea a lavish centralization of federal authority, as well as a betrayal of Ch??vez's Bolivarian Revolution (named for South America's 19th-century independence hero, Simon Bolivar). "This revolution was supposed to create more pluralism in Venezuela," says Martinez. "We don't want a megastate like the Soviet Union...