Paxety Pages

chavez was reelected Sunday by what the American media is calling a landslide.  Daniel at Venezuela News and Views sums it up.

Today it was quite a hallucinating day. Oh, I was not surprised. My carefully documented predictions were giving Chavez a victory by 5 points. It might be by almost 20 points when all is counted. But with Chavez it does not matter, even with a single vote majority he would go ahead and try to do as he pleases. There is no brake for him. He is not a democrat. A democrat is always aware of the rights of the minority because a democrat knows that one day he might be that minority. Chavismo has made it clear long ago that all revolves around Chavez and that there is no other option for Venezuela. Elections are a necessary ritual that is extremely expensive but a necessity to justify all sorts of other different abuses. Unfortunate Rosales was not running against Chavez, he was running against a whole state whose complete resources were at the service of the autocrat who needs a regular plebiscite to boost his ego.

And thus today the amateur historian in me realizes that he has had the privilege to witness an historical day, the day that democracy completely left Venezuela. We have lost it. You can see it in the vulgar speech of Chavez at Miraflores after his victory. You can see at these noisy women, perhaps erasing some uncomfortable evidence this late at night as the results of that school could now be manipulated. Who will check if they are altered from what we were read this afternoon? Why would the opposition care anymore? Why should not they go and alter the results if they were given the chance to do so? The way they talked and acted and laughed told me all that I needed to know about them, even if they are loving parents, sisters, daughters. Those things are not exclusive of each other.

chavez has recently said that if re-elected, he would move to ban private television stations, as reported by CNN:

Chavez's comments late Thursday came amid rising tensions between the government and the country's largely opposition-aligned private media ahead of Sunday's vote.

Chavez was asked in a televised interview if he would consider asking the nation whether the government should block certain channels from renewing their broadcast licenses next year. (Watch Chavez land a nod as Time magazine's Person of the Year )

"That is perfectly possible," Chavez said. "It's perfectly possible that the country gives its opinion, including for how long."

Chavez also said he regretted not having shut down the country's major private broadcasters right after a short-lived 2002 coup against him, citing four in particular: Globovision, Venevision, RCTV and Televen.

Not to be outdone, the mullahs blocked access to some of the Internet's most popular web sites - YouTube, Amazon.com, Wikipedia, IMDB.com, and the New York Times. The Guardian Unlimited reports:

The clampdown was ordered by senior judiciary officials in the latest phase of a campaign that has seen high-speed broadband facilities banned in an attempt to impede "corrupting" foreign films and music. It is in line with a campaign by Iran's Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to purge the country of western cultural influences.

Iran is believed to have more than seven-and-a-half million Internet users - more than any Middle Eastern country except Israel.

Reporters Without Borders says Iran remains the region's biggest prison for journalists and bloggers

hugo and the mullas - two of a kind in being sure only the proper information gets to the people.