The internet is filled with reports that supporters of Rafael Correa stormed the Ecuadorian Congress, where a debate was underway about the approval of a call for a Constituent National Assembly. Sources indicate that the completely democratic mob wanted to lynch the legislators, as some of them heard shouts of “kill them, kill them all.” However, I would like to disagree with the comments from John Negroponte, who is quoted by Reuters saying that Chávez is exporting his “radical populism” (sic).
Negroponte’s assessment is incorrect on several fronts, but I find it crucial in understanding the specific dangers exported by dictator Hugo Chávez. Certainly, radical populism is not one of them. The most dangerous export of Castro’s mini-me is the Constituent National Assembly. This small subterfuge is the MAIN cause of Venezuela’s current institutional void, as it allowed Chávez to subvert democracy through a pseudo-democratic mechanism that wasn’t even part of the constitution. Wrapped in ‘popular support’, it effectively replaced existing powers with lackeys in charge of completely dysfunctional institutions: a truly ‘democratic’ coup. Today, we learned that Venezuela’s Congress, as expected, granted Chávez the ultimate weapon: the ability to govern by decree.
Chávez has managed to convince his regional group of fools that the Constituent National Assembly is the way forward. However, none of them seem to realize that the conditions under which this experiment was implemented in Venezuela in 1999 do not exist in Bolivia, Peru, or Ecuador. For this reason, as already seen in Bolivia and soon to be executed by Correa, it will be impossible to replicate the model, no matter how loudly the supporting mobs shout ‘kill them all’.
Mr. Negroponte should stay better informed by reading these pages more often.