XXIst. Century Socialism? By Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual
XXIst. Century Socialism? Up to now what we have about that is pure BS, gas, empty words, a diversion operation to deviate attention from the really pertinent themes. Because it is the other ones that are on the board, having to do with the institutional collapse that is being produced with the help of the impulse that is born at the Miraflores Palace.
Authoritarism, autocratism, militarism, centralism, statism and corruption are the defining characteristics of the regime. They are not the only ones, but they are sufficient for a more pertinent and substantial discussion. The authoritarian exercise of power, skipping the Constitution and the laws, even when it is unnecessary in order to achieve its purposes, everything depending on the discretional will of the Supreme, has significantly deepened. The concentration of powers in the fist of the President reaches autocratic levels.
The Parliament, the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor, the People’s Ombudsman and the Electoral Board operate, in everything that has to do with the political interest of the regime, as transmission belts to Chavez’ s desires.
The mechanisms of mutual control and equilibrium of powers have been nullified. The Executive is on the fringes of all true controls by the rest of all the political powers.
Militarism has turned into the dominant feature of the regimen. Since the approval of the Organic Bill of the Armed Forces, these- whose Commander in Chief is now an active military officer, with that rank puposedly created for Chavez himself-acquires the condition of agent of the Government. For all practical purposes this is a Government of the Armed Forces.
The Republic has been recentralized again. The aversion of the Supreme to any form of institutional autonomy and to the territorial and political decentralization have been taken away progressively and with ever increasing speed, from the Central Bank to the Governorships and municipalities, of the attributions that had been transferred and recognized to them.
The State, which turns itself more obese with time, more costly and more inefficient, doubling its bureaucracy, creating countless new institutions and public companies, is invading all fields of society. From the economy to culture, the State has acquired an increasing leading role. From peasants reduced now to the condition of tenants of the Government, established in lands that are not and will never be their property, even to the blackmail style in which cultural subsidies are handled to fit and regiment politically and ideologically the cultural world, passing though the incremental confusion between party, state and Government, the statization of the whole of social life appears in the horizon.
The cherry on this sinister cocktail is the horrendous expansion of administrative corruption. Corruption, of course, did not arrive with Chavez but the impunity that protects it today is an exclusively Chavista creation.
Never had it been as easy and with so much impunity to steal public funds. Particularly when the crooks have the power of fire guns.
XX!st Century Socialism? Please!
Authoritarism, autocratism, militarism, centralism, statism and the corruption of all times.
10:11:32 PM 
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