Is democracy at risk in Venezuela?
By Kenneth T. Tellis
09.08.05 | I wonder, how many people are thinking to themselves whether there is a danger in Venezuela of democracy itself becoming the victim of a leftist conspiracy? What are the chances that, while claiming to oppose U.S. intervention monetarily and militarily, the real goal of leftists now claiming to be liberators is to create a Police State?
People should not take for granted that the propaganda now being fed to the common people in Venezuela is not really the intent. Like any other system whose very raison d’etre is not to bring about a better life for the masses but to convince them that the old system was so rotten that anything else is much better, can waylay democracy. It is under that guise that the real enemies of democracy operate. This was exactly how the Leninists of 1917 operated and created the world’s biggest prison. After the overthrow of Aleksandr Kerensky and his short-lived Social-Democratic government, a dark cloud hovered over all the Russias. That cloud took another 74 years to clear up, but it destroyed countless generations in the process. It was 74 years of authoritarian rule by an iron fist, which no one dare challenge, for fear of imprisonment.
The people of Venezuela should be very careful with what they wish for, because they just might get it. Totalitarianism has always put on a benign face in order to create a sense of security for the people, but once it has achieved its aims, it no longer cares. Then came the chains of slavery and the hardships followed closely with shortages of everything, from food, to clothes, to housing. People were conned into believing that a new day of prosperity had arrived and let their guard down, only to find that they did not inherit democracy but slavery.
Time will tell, whether the “Bolivarian Revolution” is what it really claims to be, as many revolutions in the past have been hijacked and their course changed by charlatans posing as liberators. For democracy to exist there must be an opposition that is free and independent. Whether Venezuela have that today is the moot point. If a dark cloud suddenly covers the sky over Venezuela, then I will know what I perceived was true. But then it will be too late for all concerned to do anything about it.
There is of course an American Website based in the USA/Canada that purports to have Venezuela’s best interest in mind. But is that really so? Could they well be the architects of the demise of DEMOCRACY in Venezuela? Do Americans no matter their politics really have the good of Venezuela in their mind? Perhaps not, that is the very reason Venezuelans must be on their guard.
kenttellis@rogers.com
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