CHAVEZ IN CHARGE

Yet all this energy and excitement has been channelled through new institutions, financed directly by the oil revenues, and essentially unmonitored. Again, this is a revolution in progress. At the same time, much of the old, pre-revolutionary Venezuela still remains. The country's traditional infrastructure is plagued by bureaucracy and corruption, the twin-headed disease inherited from the Spanish colonial era. Bureaucrats, and that means public servants in every ministry and ancient state entity, exist to ensure that nothing ever gets done, while corruption exists to lubricate their powers of inaction. What is true of the state is true of private industry as well. So this week's "enabling" legislation will give greater powers to the executive at the expense of the legislature, with the hope that Chávez will be able to push through some necessary changes. At some stage, the new institutions and the old bureaucracies will have to be merged. Is this road to dictatorship or the path to reasonable reform? The nature of the problem is familiar to political scientists, and certainly not new to Latin America. Where should the balance fall between the executive and the legislature? Each country makes its choice, and revolutions provide an opportunity for the balance to be changed. Allowing the Venezuelan president to issue executive orders is nothing new. It is permitted under the constitution of 1999, as under the previous constitution. Chávez's recent predecessors availed themselves of a similar facility from time to time, notably when dealing with economic and financial matters. Even Thomas Shannon, the US diplomat in charge of Latin America, admitted in an unusually friendly comment that the enabling law was nothing new. "It's something valid under the constitution (and) as with any tool of democracy, it depends on how it is used." http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_gott/2007/02/gottvenezuela.html

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