Chavez tightens grip on military

Little Hugo Chavez has consolidated his grip on the military in Venezuela. Anyone who has spent a day studying current affairs in Latin America knows that political leaders serve at the pleasure of their military.

Coming from the military, and himself having been involved in a coup attempt, Chavez fired his defense minister, General Raul Baduel and replaced him with General Gustavo Rangel – former head of Chavez personal protection force and palace guard.

Baduel left with these parting words, according to Martin Arostegui of the Washington Times;

“A socialist regime is not incompatible with a democratic system of checks and balances and division of powers. We must separate ourselves from Marxist orthodoxy.”

This move will more firmly entrench Chavez in his palace as he becomes more isolated from the people – the supposed beneficiaries of this socialist revolution. Retired Venezuelan general Muller Rojas warns that this move against Baduel signals a purge of the ranks;

Another recently retired general, Muller Rojas, believes Gen. Baduel’s resignation signals a purge of the high command, which he says has become “highly politicized and partisan.”

The new defense chief, Gen. Rangel, underwent military instruction in Cuba and is expected to merge the regular army with politically directed militias armed with new AK-103 rifles purchased from Russia.

“By naming Rangel, Chavez imposes his military thesis on the high command. The president conceives of a tactical doctrine combining professional armed forces and militias, which are the basis of the asymmetrical warfare strategy of the people in arms,” said Venezuelan defense analyst Alberto Garrido.

Of course we now know why Chavez was warning Venezuelans the George Bush was coming to get him – so he could tighten the security around himself. The next move after purging the ranks is the quelling of the “White Hands” student movement.

I suspect that some national emergency will emerge soon after the purge of military officers that would require tossing “suspects” in prison, much like the Iranians are doing to their student movements. Think Chavez and Ahmadinejad were talking about sports jackets in Tehran last month?

In fact, Chavez is cranking up his anti-US chatter this week. He blames the US for blocking Venezuela’s entry into the Mercosur trade bloc and he has put out feelers to Columbian communist rebels and terrorists.

Miguel at The Devil’s Excrement (celebratin five years of bloggin in English from Venezuela this weekend) reports money woes in Venezuela;

Because the country is a basket case and only oil prices going higher all the time will be able to sustain the madness.

For example…It went unnoticed that in the last three weeks, bolivar denominated Government bonds, mostly in the hands of the banking system, dropped 20-30% in value.

Or that Venezuela’s Global 27 bond fell 30% since March and gyrated 8% on a single day last Friday.

And that Fonden’s indiscriminate sale of its Venezuelan and Argentinean bonds, destroyed the market for some of them and increased spreads by 300% due to the amateurish way in which this was done.

And this all spells trouble in the economic front at a time when oil prices are at an all time high…imagine if they happened to go down.

Daniel at Venezuela News and Views begins a series on Chavez proposed constitutional changes to further ensconce him in office;

Here in Venezuela we are not fooled: chavista and anti chavista alike know perfectly well that the objective is to make Chavez president for life. The only difference is that the formers have no problem with that and the later will resist it. The bottom line will come from a not insignificant fraction of chavistas who are having increasingly second thoughts about giving Chavez a final blank check that this time will wipe their democratic account once and for all.

So what will it take to get the world involved in the subjegation of the Venezuelan people to the whims of a maniacal diminutive despot like Chavez? Will the world wait for the public executions to begin – it hasn’t woke up the world to the terror being inflicted on Iranians (graphic pictures from Kamangir at August the 5th here and here) Do we wait twelve years like we did for Hussein’s reign of terror on the Shi’ites in Iraq? Or an indeterminate amount of time like we have for the Christians in the Sudan?

The US is not the world’s police force, but it’s time the rest of the world woke up to the evil and stop waiting for the US to solve the world’s problem for them.

Category: Foreign Policy, Hugo Chavez, Politics