Why to disagree with Chavez...

...agreeing with the closure of a TV sender

All around the world the media complains about the last move from Chavez, the president of Venezuela. He decided not to renew the permission to broadcasting of a traditional TV sender, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV). The sender, strongly anchored in the venezuelan public, has been extremely critical of the Chavez government. So, is this just another show of the antidemocratic Chavez? well, yes and no.

The start of this problem can be traced to an unsuccessful coup de etat attempted against Chavez a couple of years ago. Chavez was out of power for couple of days, but made an impressive comeback (depending of whom tell the history due to massive protests, or due to the disarray of the putchists themselves). In any case, along the crucial moments of the coup, the private television channels agreed in not showing any news whatsoever. People was left with old movies in the screen. Eventually the senders supported the new government... to their big regret, since Chavez was back in power soon enough.

The relevant question is if this action is enough to close a TV sender few years later. We could argue about many details, of course. But before, just a simple question. Imagine that Fortuin would have managed to become prime minister. Imagine that couple of years later, say in 2003, a sector of the military, associated with Talpa, would have take power for few hours. Imagine further that Talpa fully supported the coup. And, to round up the simulation, imagine that prime minister Fortuin came back from exile in Italy two days later, and his democratic elected government was restored to power. Now. Would it be very undemocratic that the minister in charge of TV licenses would have not renewed the Talpa permission, when possible? Would you have not agreed with such a move?

Chavez is the head of an extremely incompetent and authoritarian government. There are many reasons to disagree with his policies. But hey, he has been repeatedly elected in reasonably democratic elections. Whether we like him or not, his is a valid government. And in this case, his opposer's have been proved extremely undemocratic. Can we seriously blame a government that do not renew the broadcast permission to a clearly putchist TV sender?

But hey, Chavez has some eight years as president, so there are many other cases to consider him as a dangerous politician, certainly an undemocratic. The most clear, at least for me, is their decision to deny official jobs to persons that supported a referendum against the government some years ago. Never you mind that the referendum was eventually won by the government. After this referendum was called by signatures collected in the street, the government allowed those names to be posted in internet (still online few weeks ago, the infamous Tascon list), and check every job application against this list. If your name was there, you would not get the job.

It is a bit depressing to see that so much noise is made of Chavez, most of the time by the wrong reasons.