Chávez dead

[derspiess]

Is Sheilbh really defending Chavez?  Comparisons to Putin are not exactly meant to be compliments.

Close enough.

[katmai]

Shelf is queer.

[Sheilbh]

Elections can be stolen in many ways. The easiest and most common is to make them unfair. Viz Erdogan's threshold, Chavez' dangerous atmosphere to be an opposition politician and Putin's corruption when dealing with a completely cynical electorate. If your defense of Chavez is that he wasn't as bad as Castro then I suggest you need to look at your moral compass.

I'm not defending him. I'm saying he wasn't a dictator. If this forum was teeming with Bolivarian revolutionaries I'd be pointing out that he trashed the great democratic legacy of Betancourt, undermined his left-wing goals by tolerating corruption and often catastrophic economic policies and that he won elections through media abuse and intimidation.

But it's not. It's full of people saying he was a dictator. And he wasn't.

[derspiess]

He might not have met the textbook definition of dictator, but he was just about as bad as one.

[Razgovory]

He's almost as bad as Obama!

[Sheilbh]

He might not have met the textbook definition of dictator, but he was just about as bad as one.

Surely the biggest difference is that you're freer in a 'new autocracy' like Russia or Venezuela or Singapore than in one of the world's dictatorships? I think that is a significant difference.

Think of Saddam v Maliki.

[Valmy]

He's almost as bad as Obama!

Well lets not go crazy here Raz.

[Razgovory]

He's almost as bad as Obama!

Well lets not go crazy here Raz.

Yeah, I suppose you are right.  I mean, Obama is communist AND a Muslim, and Chavez is really on a extreme socialist.

[Barrister]

He seemed like a Latin American variation of...wait no he was the classic Latin American dictator populist who have ruined South America for centuries.

Only in America would the image of a classic Latin American dictator be a left-wing populist rather than a Colonel in sinister sunglasses dropping left-wing populists out of helicopters

Had his coup in the 90s succeeded, I'd agree. But he was democratically elected and won repeated elections which were free if nowhere near fair. He ruled autocratically moulding and remoulding the constitution to suit his needs. All of which is a part of that new autocratic style that Putin has sort-of perfected. But he was an autocrat not a dictator. Putin, not Castro.

For goodness sakes - Hitler won a "free but not fair" election.  So did Mugabe.  Hell does Saddam Hussein's 99% re-election count?

You're putting too much emphasis on elections.

[Jacob]

You're putting too much emphasis on elections.

You sound like the Communist Party of China.

[Valmy]

He's almost as bad as Obama!

Well lets not go crazy here Raz.

Yeah, I suppose you are right.  I mean, Obama is communist AND a Muslim, and Chavez is really on a extreme socialist.

Obama bin Stalin

[Phillip V]

So what now?

[Zanza]

This guy smiles at your "enemies of democracy list".

[Tamas]

I mean, comparing Chavez to Thatcher?

I'm going to just assume that you're joking.

Same evil on their country.

ain't that the truth? The UK is a dump, its economy a laughing stock of the whole world.

[Martinus]

You are joking, but the UK economy actually is in a pretty bad shape.