Chavez failure and his embrace of hypocrisy

Amir Taheri:

I FIRST met Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's flamboyant president, after one of his earlier trips to Iran. With a few colleagues, we dined at an Italian restaurant in Paris.

The conversation touched on a range of topics, but two themes dominated. The first was his "determination" to end poverty in Venezuela. "There is no need for anyone to be poor in a country as rich as ours," he asserted as he sipped his Chateau Lafitte. "Give me four years, just give me four years!"

The second main theme was Chavez's claim that the Catholic Church, prompted by "wealthy oligarchs," was trying to sabotage his social revolution.

Chavez claimed to be the ideological heir of Simon Bolivar, the father of Latin American liberation from colonial rule, and recalled his hero's commitment to "secular government." Bolivar had said that while the individual was free to have whatever faith he wished, the state should have no religion. As for society, its sole religion should be freedom within the rule of law.

In that context, Chavez was particularly critical of the theocratic system established by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He said he admired the Iranian revolution and had fallen in love with Iran's natural beauty and cultural richness - "ah, those roses in Isfahan!" - but was uneasy about the mullahs' attempts to impose their version of Islam on all Iranians.

Well, Chavez has had eight years - twice as much as he had demanded in that Paris restaurant.

Thanks to rising oil prices, Venezuela has garnered something like $180 billion net in oil export revenues. That income has been topped by $30 billion worth of government borrowing. That means a total of $210 billion, not taking into account the government's other revenues from taxes and custom duties.

Yet, under Chavez, Venezuela's public debt (domestic and foreign) has risen from $21 to almost $47 billion. His own government's reports show a steady rise in the number of people below the poverty line. Despite a $5 billion bonanza from the seizure of foreign funds from the Venezuelan Central Bank, the government last year issued bonds worth $4 billion to cover a looming budget deficit.

What happened? What did Chavez do with the unprecedented wealth that came to Venezuela under his stewardship?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that Venezuela leads Latin America in capital flight. Over the last eight years, Venezuelans have transferred something like $70 billion to foreign (mostly American) banks. Chavez has also spent billions helping Cuba and distributing free or cut-price oil in several countries (including some U.S. areas). During his visit to Iran last week, he extended that generosity to the Islamic Republic by promising to supply cut-price gasoline to meet a shortage that has already caused riots throughout the country.

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Chavez shows how easy it is to be a hypocritical buffoon. Taheri goes on to explain the difference between the ideals of Bolivar and the reality of Chavez. It is hard to imagine a greater contrast not a greater contrast with the states that have embraced the Chavezista vision. He is squandering the wealth of Venezuela by donating to the regimes that have chosen the path of poverty that all communist regimes take. In theocratic Iran he is also working with a regime that believes that the laws of economics do not apply to true believers as it too squanders its wealth.