Gerald Warner: Long live Chávez! SNP goes all banana republic

Published on Saturday 13 March 2010 19:32

THEY are doing global geopolitical stuff these days in the Wee Scotch Senate. Last Monday, Jamie Hepburn, a Scottish Nationalist MSP, tabled a motion on "The Achievements of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela". The preamble states: "That the Parliament considers that Venezuela has been transformed through the progressive policies pursued by the Chávez administration in the last decade…"

It goes on to express concern that Chvez has been undermined "by reactionary elements in the United States" and that America is co-operating militarily with Colombia; attributes the "recent coup" in Honduras to "reactionary forces in the area"; and expresses solidarity with the Agitprop lefties planning to demonstrate in support of Chvez in London on 27 March. Useful idiots signing the motion include Bill Kidd, Alasdair Allan and Bill Wilson, all of the SNP, and Elaine Smith, of Labour. This buffoonery is a nostalgic reprise of the golden era of Tommy Sheridan and his Trotettes.

The motion has attracted a hostile amendment from Hugh O'Donnell, Liberal Democrat MSP, unhelpfully noting Amnesty International's expressed concern "at the deterioration in freedom of expression in Venezuela" and injuries and deaths among protesters in recent months, as well as the threats made by Chvez against six television broadcasters for refusing to broadcast a presidential speech.

The Holyrood fellow travellers were joined by another from Hollywood. Last week Sean Penn, the leading luvvie fan of Chvez, demanded that journalists in America who criticise the Marxist autocrat should be imprisoned – as they already are in Venezuela, where exhibiting "contempt" not just for Chvez but for any official of the regime is now a criminal offence. "Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it…" whined Penn. "There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies."

Attaboy, Sean! Throw them in pokey to share cells with climate "deniers". Isn't liberalism the reassuring guarantor of freedom – look at how our own liberties have prospered under 13 years of political correctness. The formidable intellectual coterie acting as cheerleaders for Chvez also embraces Oliver Stone, Danny Glover, Noam Chomsky (ex officio) and Naomi Campbell.

The Peruvian commentator Alvaro Vargas Llosa has characterised resurgent Marxism in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela as "The return of the Latin-American idiot," citing its characteristics as "revolution, economic nationalism, hatred of the United States, faith in the government as an agent of social justice, a passion for strongman rule over the rule of law". Nobody more completely embodies that programme than Hugo Chvez.

Last year, after losing a referendum on the same theme just 14 months previously, Chvez, in true EU style, forced his subjects to vote again on extending the number of terms a president could serve. This time he won and announced his modest intention of ruling until 2049. That is the least he could expect, after ordering the central bank to transfer $12bn of reserves into a development fund, as a referendum bribe.

This subversion of democracy is precisely what was prevented in Honduras when Chvez's client Manuel Zelaya attempted to imitate his example. Its Supreme Court enforced Article 239 of the Constitution, which declares any president proposing the permissibility of re-election "shall cease forthwith" in his office, while Article 4 defines such an "infraction" as treason. This legal implementation of the Honduran constitution was described as a "coup" in the infantile Holyrood motion.

For Venezuela, the prospect is galloping stagflation. The annual growth rate last year was –2.9 per cent and inflation was just over 25 per cent. Chvez's grandiose Marxist schemes were predicated on an eventual oil price of $200 a barrel; today it is $80.

Under Marxism, oil-rich Venezuela has an energy crisis: Chvez has had to appoint a Minister for Electricity Shortages. Last October he banned his subjects from singing in the bath, on the grounds it would encourage them to linger and waste energy. "What kind of communism is that? We're not in times of Jacuzzi," he said reproachfully.

If that phrase has a ring to it of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in Times of Jacuzzi?), the whole scenario is redolent of an independent Scotland. A state-controlled oil industry haemorrhaging revenue, while the lights go out in the absence of any energy policy, and a president trying to bully his way on to television – that is a vision of Salmondland. No wonder Hepburn and his SNP colleagues identify so closely with Chvez, the paradigm of the Latin-American idiot.