Saturday’s Gazeta Wyborcza carries a report by Maciej Stasinski about Teodoro Petkoff, the 74-year-old challenger to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. This newspaper, please note, is regarded with deep suspicion for its left-wing and liberal sympathies by the right wing political establishment in Poland. On a couple of things, though, this newspaper, the American media and the most ardent right wingers can comfortably agree. One is Chavez, who can win elections from now until kingdom come but never, ever, be regarded with the same sympathy as George W Bush, who as we all know, won one presidential election and will never win another. There is some entertainment value in watching journalists struggle to fit Chavez’s achievements, his huge popular appeal, his charity to America’s poor and his democratic credentials into the pigeonhole marked “renegade dictator” along with Castro, Hussein and Milosevic…
Stasinski describes Chavez in the first sentence of the article as an “extreme populist.” Now perhaps the Polish language works differently, but can you be an “extreme” populist? Does it mean Chavez strongly (extremely?) cherishes the beliefs that have made him popular? That he has principles, in other words? Here’s another free press gem: “The president of Venezuela, like his master, Fidel Castro, is capable of harassing the public for hours with relentless attacks on alleged enemies of the country: neoliberalism, capitalism, the oligarchy, or ‘the dangerous Mr. Bush’.” I did not live under the horrors of a communist dictatorship but I doubt that “lengthy speeches” would top most Poles’ lists of the ills of totalitarianism.
It is wonderful to see how scrupulously Stasinski uses the word “allegedly” (not e.g. Poland’s “allegedly” humanitarian occupation of Iraq). The oligarchy is an “alleged” enemy. In fact there is abundant proof that they are real, not alleged, enemies of the country: the oligarchy led a coup to overthrow a popular and democratically elected leader, aided and abetted by another non-alleged enemy of Venezuela, George W Bush.
No Polish discussion of left and right wing international politics can be complete without mention of the US sponsored, right wing death squads in Latin Am— sorry, of Castro, Chavez’s “master.” Kaczyński, president of Poland, also has a master. His name is George W Bush and Poland is at war with a small and far away country called Iraq because of this master-servant relationship.
Stasinski does not entirely gloss over the 2002 Venezuelan coup. Although he writes not a word about who organised, carried out or backed the coup, he does briefly refer to Chavez being returned to power after it by a “miracle.” Not by the will of the people, understand, but by a miracle. Perhaps God is on Chavez’s side.
The BBC on the by no means perfect Chavez.