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http://www.counterpunch.org/araneta08252004.htmlTo denigrate him, the enemies of Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, call him a populist ... as if that were the greatest insult in the glossary of political science.
Frankly, there is nothing inherently diabolic about populism, if you ask me.
But, since a handful of false democrats and tin pan dictators have misused the concept, it now connotes a devious setting out to curry favor among the masses, inevitably resulting in bad governance.
In its true sense, populism is not the road to perdition; in fact, it can fill that yawning abyss between promises and performance, that is why it is so politically alluring. Obviously, it requires oodles of money, government funds equitably disbursed and distributed; so if a leader is secretly avaricious, downright spineless and standing on gelatinous economic ground, s/he had better not even mention the P word.
The redoubtable Hugo Chavez is a populist of the good kind and fortunately, he can very well afford to be one. For the first time, the Venezuelan government has full control of its oil industry, the 5th largest in the world.<SNIP> Oh! Oh! I can hear my senator, "Joemomentum" Lieberman, griding his teeth over another case of populist.
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