How long has Chavez ruled Venezuela, in fact?

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, is particularly fond of repeating to whomever wants to hear him that there is an international media campaign whose only objective is to destroy his reputation, to misrepresent his accomplishments and to block him from doing the reforms so needed by Venezuela. Maybe. But what people also should know is that Chavez is leading a counter campaign of his own, using public funds, rewarding, rumor has it, many a hired pen. That campaign has for double objective to hide its incompetence by blaming his failures on an obstinate opposition to his programs, while it tries to make him a world leader.

In additions of this orchestrated effort there are those writers, paid or not, who are just enamored of Latin Revolutionaries from the safety and comfort of their European or East Coast chic meeting quarters. As long as it does not touch their wallet, many people support many causes that they would not tolerate for a second at home. A recent installment in this glorifying prose comes from Richard Gott in an article published in UK Guardian. My colleague Gustavo Coronel has made a brilliant job not only to debunk this faltering article, but to unmask Mr. Gott as well, either for his blind love or his shoddy work "a la" Golinger. No need for me to go into more details.

However Gustavo did write the following sentence which made me want to elaborate on it:

In order to calibrate properly the article by Gott, we must remember that Chávez has already been in total political control of Venezuela for almost seven years. This is a longer period than that of any other elected president in Venezuelan history and is getting close to equal the 10-year military dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1948-1958).

Indeed, when one read these Gott like panegyrics to Chavez there is a recurrent line, still after 6 years voiced by the chavista on foot as a variation of "they do not let him work", a line that would have us believe that Chavez has been blocked all along the way and he still cannot show results because of all the bad guys against him. This is false. Indeed Chavez has been opposed strongly and even a coup managed to displace him for a couple of days. However the truth, the awful truth that many would like to ignore, is that in soon 7 years in office Chavez has had plenty of time to deliver and if he did not do it, it is due to the sheer incompetence and corruption of his administration.

So, this blogger, in his ever present desire to enlighten the masses, has constructed the following table a time-line of Chavez rule. The main events and their date have been listed. The effect of these events has been codified according to the ability of Chavez to rule effectively. In Green are the periods where the Chavez administration was able to promote laws, establish programs, follow through with previous projects, apply adequate corrections, just as any normal government. In those periods months are counted in full. In Yellow we have the periods where some political trouble was distracting enough to impinge on effective administration. These periods are counted as half only, and rounded down to benefit Chavez. And in Red, the crisis periods, where of course, survival and recovery were a must and which thus receive a 0.

Political Events	Date	Ability of Chavez to rule [months of effective rule]
Inauguration	02/99
First enabling law	03/99	1
Constitutional referendum	04/99
Constitutional assembly	07/99
Judicial intervention	08/99
Ratification of New Constitution	12/99	7
Vargas disaster	12/99
Nomination of "transition team"	01/00	0
Elections for new public offices	07/00
Second enabling law	11/00
Trade Union referendum	12/00
Completion of enabling law	11/01	21
First general strike	12/01
April events	04/02	2
April coup	04/02
Reorganization period	06/02	0
The march toward the general strike	11/02
General strike	12/02	2
Currency control exchange	01/03
End of strike	03/03	0
Recovery of PDVSA	03/03
First Misiones	04/03
August agreements	08/03	3
Signature gathering for Recall Election	12/03
"guarimba"	03/04	6
Signature repair process	05/04
Recall election called	06/04
Recall election	09/04	1
Regional elections	10/04
Today	06/05	7

From this table we can see that Hugo Chavez has benefited of at least 50 months of effective administrative time. That is: 4 full years out of his 6.5 years in office. The political trouble and Vargas disaster distracted him of LESS than half of his ruling time. Other presidents of Venezuela did not benefit from even 4 years of peace and yet did manage a body of work more comprehensive, more elaborate, more complete than Chavez. Examples:

Romulo Betancourt: although faced with military right wing coups, a real assassination attempt and a Cuban landing to support the guerilla, in his 1958-1963 term he managed to establish and stabilize democracy in Venezuela.

Rafael Caldera, first term 1968-1973: not only he did not have the majority in congress but actually he did not even disposed of a third of it while Chavez has had a crushing majority since July 2000. Yet, he maintained democracy, maintained economic growth through his five year term. And in his second term 1993-1998, he managed to survive banking collapse with again less than a third of congress for him.

So, a message to all of those Chavez lovers and professional apologists: I suggest that you apply a more objective yardstick when you evaluate the achievement of your hero. No Venezuelan president since Gomez has had as much discretionary power as Chavez. No president in our history has had the income that Chavez has received from the high price of oil. No president has as little to show for his power and his income: only a constitution that he has violated himself repeatedly and a plethora of mostly unsustainable social programs which have not stopped the poverty index from increasing.