If you can't beat them, buy them

摘要

The efforts of Venezuela's faction-ridden opposition to bring down President Hugo Chavez, the country's maverick leader, have tended to backfire: his poll ratings rose slightly after an attempted coup last year, and picked up again after a two-month strike designed to force him into an early election. That pattern may be about to change. A California-style referendum on whether to recall Mr Chavez as president now looks possible, perhaps in February or March 2004. Since, according to one recent survey, 73% of the electorate think that the country is in a "bad" or "very bad" state, the president has his work cut out to avoid being thrown out of office. He has begun it in earnest. Mr Chavez was elected in 1998, promising to reduce poverty and end corruption, both of which have worsened under his rule. He was fiscally prudent in his first year; but then, in 2000, he was re-elected under a new constitution, which lengthened his presidential term to six years and made another Chavez term possible. The president's innate populist streak, with its attendant fiscal sloppiness, began to assert itself, aided by his control of all state institutions, including the emasculated government auditor.