Protests in Venezuela

[AD Chaos]

^ Actually it was me who mentioned those points, as I've been told by folks from Venezuela. It's not about some media report or some article (of whatever ideology), but about how a lot of Venezuelans feel about the situation and what they've gone through.

Granted the populous, poorest sector will always praise you if throw money or food their way, regardless of how inept the government may be in the handling of a country. Go ask those people how Venezuela is doing, they will still sing you all the praises upon their populist leaders. That does not mean a country is doing well on the economy, or social stability, or any other front.

 

[DanLights]

^ Actually it was me who mentioned those points, as I've been told by folks from Venezuela. It's not about some media report or some article (of whatever ideology), but about how a lot of Venezuelans feel about the situation and what they've gone through.

Granted the populous, poorest sector will always praise you if throw money or food their way, regardless of how inept the government may be in the handling of a country. Go ask those people how Venezuela is doing, they will still sing you all the praises upon their populist leaders. That does not mean a country is doing well on the economy, or social stability, or any other front.

You seem to know from good sources what's up, you pretty much took the words from my mouth, props

Ever since Chavez started he began these social plans to educate the poor, which of course in paper sounds great, who would be against giving free and easily accesible education to people who didn't have it before? And there really was a big problem of illiteracy in the country, so of course many people would be cool with that. The problem with those plans is that the level of education given to the people was terrible, with people recieving a high school diploma in 6 months, and even university degrees in 2 or 3 years, even for "doctors", and public schools and universities in Venezuela have been free even before democracy was first instated, with public school being of terrible quality both in infrastructure and academic level, but public universities have always been and still are highly regarded. My sister in law is a recently graduated doctor from an important public university in the East of the country, and she always tells us how these "doctors" graduated from the "Bolivarian" universities are completely incompetent always putting lives in danger and fucking up and acting like they know more and are better than the others who actually went to real universities and know what they're doing. The point is of course to keep the moronic masses happy because now they can read and think they are well educated, but not educated enough to realize how shitty the country is.

Also, making life impossible for people to travel abroad be it for tourism or visiting family or for work or anything, cause anyone who travels a weekend to any decent country will realise what a horrible state the country's in. Hell, before I moved to Spain I went to Colombia for a quick weekend tour with my band, and that was enough to make me want to get the hell out (not like I didn't before, I lived in the US when I was a kid, I always knew life outside Venezuela). And don't get me started on the ridiculous control of currency exchange, it boils my blood everytime I have to hear about that or talk about it, and I hear about it a lot because my inlaws send some money to my wife monthly, but it's getting harder and harded to the point where it's ridiculous.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

About being democratically elected though, for many years the government has used lots and lots of cheap tricks to move all elections in their favor, like assigning voting places to people who have been dead for 20+ years and voters going with several IDs voting several times, also moving people around to unreachable voting places randomly, slowing down the process and fucking up registration abroad (because 90% of Venezuelans abroad vote against Chavez/Maduro) and other things I have seen firsthand and/or heard from family and close, reliable friends, so I stopped considering it a "democratic" government long ago, specially with the constant new laws preventing the media to expose what's going on, instating a dictatorial-like state of praising the president like a god in all government offices, where public workers are forced to go to demonstrations in favor of the government (forced as in "you're going or you're fired", literally) even to other cities, just putting them all on buses to make it look like a big crowd for TV and newspapers, where criticizing the government in any way or even suggesting that you might not be in favor will land you in great trouble due to verbal and even physical threats and constant harrassment from coworkers and superiors. And again, this is not something I've just seen on papers or heard people post on facebook, this is stuff I know from very close family and friends.

I think this is the key. Saying "any bad democracy is better than dictatorship" is fine, but Venezuela functions completely like a dictatorship because of these things. Institutions matter, and both Chávez and Maduro messed with the National Electoral Council, the state governorships, media (giving 30 mins of airtime per week to the opposition while letting incumbents run borderline propaganda material all day), PDVSA management, and all sorts of government agencies. "One person, one vote" may be accurate, but everything else is plainly unfair and dictatorial. If you're serious about supporting democracy, you have to be honest about whether governments you happen to like for their social policies are or aren't democratic. PSUV-dominated Venezuela is not democratic by nearly every metric.

 

[DanLights]

I think this is the key. Saying "any bad democracy is better than dictatorship" is fine, but Venezuela functions completely like a dictatorship because of these things. Institutions matter, and both Chávez and Maduro messed with the National Electoral Council, the state governorships, media (giving 30 mins of airtime per week to the opposition while letting incumbents run borderline propaganda material all day), PDVSA management, and all sorts of government agencies. "One person, one vote" may be accurate, but everything else is plainly unfair and dictatorial. If you're serious about supporting democracy, you have to be honest about whether governments you happen to like for their social policies are or aren't democratic. PSUV-dominated Venezuela is not democratic by nearly every metric.

I'm glad I participated in this thread, you peeps know what's up :Smokin:

 

[narcossintese]

I think this is the key. Saying "any bad democracy is better than dictatorship" is fine, but Venezuela functions completely like a dictatorship because of these things.

Saddly this is where the "worst democracy" shows its face, and it's not exclusive to Venezuela or left wing countries. USA also had fraudulent elections with Bush. Colombia with Uribe. I live in a country that is spending billions of dollars of public money on World Cup and Olympics just to boost the president in charge image to score a reelection. There's a long way before we all have decent democratic systems, but refusing autocracy is the first step. You know, where we draw the line.