As you probably know, Pat Robertson recently suggested that the United States assassinate Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela.  As a person who has spent a substantial amount of time in Venezuela during Chavez’s presidency, and as an individual who studies politics for a living, I thought it might make sense to offer a brief overview of what the situation is there.

So, the first question: is Chavez a dictator?  Robertson’s call for his murder was based on the idea that Chavez was a dictator like Saddam Hussein and that the United States would eventually have to go to war to eliminate him anyway.  And an assassination is probably cheaper and easier than a war.  However, setting aside the question of whether we are required to go to war against dictators, it’s really unclear whether Robertson is correct in classifying Chavez as a dictator.

Why not?  Well, first of all, Chavez was elected.  Several times, in fact.  Chavez became president through elections in 1998 that were generally regarded as free and fair.  He was reelected by a 60% to 38% margin in new presidential elections in 2000.  In 2004, he got 58% of the vote in a recall election.  The fairness of the recall election was disputed; the political opposition argued that there had been massive fraud.  However, at least three considerations argue against this.  First, the Carter Center (run by Jimmy Carter, ex-president of the United States) observed the entire electoral process.  It’s hard to imagine the Carter Center signing off on a clearly fraudulent election.  Second, the final results were pretty close to being the same as the last public opinion polls before the election.  Chavez outperformed the polls–but he always has, even in 1998 when he didn’t control the electoral institutions.  The reason Chavez outperforms the polls is that pollsters in Venezuela have a very hard time including the poorest Venezuelans–yet these folks overwhelmingly support Chavez on election days.  Third, statistical analysis of the results showed little evidence of the kind of fraud the opposition was alleging.  (Two Harvard professors did an analysis supporting fraud; however, when their results were replicated with a correction for the way the sample was taken, the end result was not statistically significant.)  So, Chavez may not be a dictator because Chavez regularly wins contested elections.

A second reason that Robertson’s categorization of Chavez as a dictator seems problematic is that Chavez retains majority support in public opinion polls, even those done by his opponents.  One pollster recently told me that his support may be as high as the 60-70% range, and I haven’t seen any recent data that puts him below 50%.  Dictators routinely claim to be wildly popular in their countries; what makes Chavez different is that he can prove that he is wildly popular.

Third, and for the moment last, is the fact that the political opposition in Chavez’s Venezuela is alive and well.  The news media routinely prints editorials and news pieces that depict Chavez negatively; for proof, if you read Spanish, look at the daily editorials here.  Likewise, opposition political parties continue to exist.  They just don’t have any supporters.

So, in at least some ways, the title of "dictator" is inadequate for Chavez.  However, the man has shown what we might call dictatorial tendencies.  Chavez has repeatedly used the court system to harrass and persecute his opponents.  One current drama of this type involves charges of treason against a group called Sumate.  Sumate ran a voter education campaign in the lead-up to the recall referendum in 2004, something which is legal in Venezuela even if the campaign is politically biased.  (Sumate has a clear, openly acknowledged bias in favor of the Venezuelan opposition.)  Because Sumate used money from the US National Endowment for Democracy to help fund the campaign, its leadership now faces substantial jail time.  International observers have reported that this prosecution really does not meet the norms for the rule of law.  Nor is it one of a kind; Chavez has used the courts against other opposition leaders.

A second area of concern is Chavez’s apparent inability to distinguish betwen Fidel Castro’s regime and democracy.  Over the last week, Chavez explained that Castro’s country isn’t a dictatorship, it’s a "revolutionary democracy."  This is the most recent, and most explicit, in a series of statements in which Chavez has been evidently unable to see the flaws in Cuba’s one-party regime that routinely sends protestors and dissidents to prison basically forever.  If Chavez cannot understand these problems, one is forced to worry about Venezuela’s future.  But it’s really not clear to me that assassination would be the proper way to express such worries.

Last but not least, what has Chavez’s presidency meant for the church in Venezuela?  As far as I can tell, not much.  When we were there about eight months ago, there were still plenty of US missionaries working in Caracas and other parts of the country.  (Poor kids!)  There’s a functioning temple in Caracas and there are several stakes in the country.  Fast and testimony meetings have a certain tendency to devolve into political debates ("The church supports Chavez!  I have a testimony of his health care programs."  "No!  The church opposes Chavez!  I have a testimony that he’s a communist and an atheist."), which is entertaining if not very spiritual.  But I think that’s about it.  So I’m not sure that, as members of the church, we legitimately have a horse in this race.