Venezuela Ramps Up Border Security and Presses on With Iran
By Douglas Farah
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is militarizing his border and urging his people to prepare for war, while at the same time lavishing billions of dollars to an essentially parallel government in Nicaragua and announcing yet another summit with Iran's Ahmadinejad.
None of these are good signs, given his creation of militia units that are responsible to solely to him while at the same time moving aggressively, as the International Crisis Group notes, to further shrink the democratic spaces in Venezuela in the face of growing unpopularity and discontent.
At the same time the support for the FARC and ELN (both designated terrorist organizations) is unabated and drug trafficking is booming.
According to the ICG, the Chávez government has progressively abandoned core liberal democracy principles guaranteed under the Inter-American Democratic Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The executive has increased its power and provoked unrest internally by further politicising the armed forces and the oil sector, as well as exercising mounting influence over the electoral authorities, the legislative organs, the judiciary and other state entities. At the same time, Chávez’s attempts to play a political role in other states in the region are producing discomfort abroad.
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