Friday, June 5, 2009

Re: [bangla-vision] Venezuela's Chavez: Poll Numbers Fuel His Socialism



On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Steven Robinson <srobin21@comcast.net> wrote:


Venezuela's Chavez: Poll Numbers Fuel His Socialism
 
By: Reuters
June 4, 2009
 
Even more than the abundant revenues from Venezuela's reserves of oil, strong approval ratings are fueling President Hugo Chavez's increasingly radical push to build socialism in the consumer-mad country.
 
havez, a fierce critic of the United States, is still popular after a decade in power for lavish spending on welfare programs and he has expanded state control of the economy through nationalizations and closer scrutiny of businesses.
 
Shrugging off a drop in oil prices over the past year and emboldened by high ratings after winning a referendum vote in February that allows him to stay in power for as long as he keeps winning elections, Chavez has this year nationalized oil projects and iron works and bought a bank.
 
He announced on Wednesday he was taking control of 70 gas compression units in 14 plants in different parts of the country, including the Maracaibo and Orinoco oil heartlands.
 
A close ally of Cuba, Chavez has also stripped opposition mayors and governors of key sources of income and power, while threatening to punish anti-government television station Globovision as part of his self-proclaimed revolution.
 
"Now there is a revolutionary government here, and a revolutionary president who feels for the poor, who feels for the people and has no commitment to those rich types, to the bourgeoisie of any kind," Chavez said in a recent speech.
 
Such strident steps and heated rhetoric against the rich and middle class put a dent in his popularity in the OPEC nation with a long democratic tradition where trips to shopping malls and baseball games are national pastimes.
 
His ratings fell to 55 percent in May from 61 percent in March, according to respected pollster Datanalisis.
 
n the long term, Chavez is likely to keep up his offensive against the private sector and critics to help him stay in office and forward his socialist experiment but his speed will vary depending on the numbers he sees.
 
Like many politicians, the former tank soldier keeps a close eye on opinion polls and drives through unpopular policies when the numbers are high. He has also slowed down the pace of reform in more difficult times.
 
"Chavez is popular despite his radical project not because of it, and he needs to invest his popularity to move forward," said Datanalisis director Luis Vicente Leon.
 
He makes hours-long television broadcasts several times a week that help shore up support -- until he uses them too much. When support dips he backs off until high government spending replenishes his popularity.
 
The former coup leader first won the presidency in 1998 and polls show he has a solid base of about 30 percent of hardcore supporters. But others are more fickle and back him largely because he has put money in their pockets. They recoil when he becomes overly extreme.
 
"He is the combination of a charismatic leader and a fat checkbook that allows him to lubricate that charisma," said Teodoro Petkoff, a Chavez critic writing in Tal Cual newspaper. "Without oil, his leadership would have dropped off."
 
Profit Limits
 
Most Venezuelans are still optimistic about the economy despite spending cuts this year after oil revenues fell by a half from 2008.
 
With crude prices on the rise again, Chavez may be able to ramp up spending at the end of the year to offset the damage done to his support by radicalization.
 
He launched his most radical period to date after winning another presidential term by a landslide in 2006.
 
In the following year, he nationalized the country's largest telecommunications company, the electricity industry and oil projects worth an estimated $30 billion.
 
But his ratings fell after he refused to renew the license for the country's favorite TV station RCTV, implicated in a brief coup against him. At the end of 2007, he lost a referendum to give him wide new powers.
 
With the wind knocked out of his sails and his ratings under 50 percent for the first time in years, according to Datanalisis, Chavez vowed to knuckle down to issues like crime and trash collection.
 
A few months later, a bounce in polls gave him the confidence to order the takeover of the cement and steel industries, but he rowed that back after public disapproval of a proposed ideology-infused school curriculum and outcry at a planned intelligence overhaul dubbed the "snitch" law.
 
This year, Chavez stripped control of half of Caracas from a newly elected opposition mayor and gave it to a handpicked representative. These moves have hurt Chavez's ratings, but not enough yet to slow him down.
 
Policies being discussed at the moment include a new look at the school curriculum, a law to regulate the profits of businesses, and new electoral rules critics say will give Chavez's socialist party an unfair advantage.
 
Copyright 2009 Reuters.
 
 
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