Hugo Chávez celebrate re-election win Sunday night in Caracas.
Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana! Viva Chavez!
Capriles and other leaders of the Democratic Unity coalition, a coalition of privileged right-wing private enterprise types who live primarily in only 3 of the country's 24 states - the 3 states where the is. In those 3 states Capriles and his cronies won huge majorities whereas in the rest of the country Chávez dominated in every state. If Venezuela used a US type electoral college or a parliamentary setup like Canada Chavez victory would have seemed even more massive.
Chávez won because instead of allowing Venezuela's oil wealth to further enrich the few, as Wall Street and the corporate owned western media suggests he should be doing, he uses it to enrich the lives of the many. Chávez builds homes, schools and hospitals in the poorest districts, he barters oil produced by Venezuela's national oil company with over a dozen of his Latin American neighbors in exchange for food which he sells through government run co-op stores in the barrios at cut rate prices and free medical clinics built and operated by Cubans and Cuban trained staff who are often described as the best in the world.
Venezuela, like every oil producing country in the world not subservient to the global elites, benefits from having a national oil company. Norway's insistence on firm control of its oil destiny is an excellent example of a developed western nation who's national oil company, Statoil, and it's government's use of royalty funds is a stance Canada needs to emulate. Imagine the benefits our underprivileged and native peoples would enjoy if Canada was a country capable of developing a national oil strategy similar to what has been achieved in Norway.
Hugo Chávez victory was a victory for us all. Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana! Viva Chávez!
