The Democratic Tyrant

"...when a people is induced to make the mistake of holding someone in high esteem because he is down on those whom they hold in detestation, and that someone has his wits about him, it will always happen that tyranny will arise in that city. For he will wait until, with the support of the populace, he has got rid of the nobility, and will not begin to oppress the people until he has got rid of it, by which time the populace will have come to realize that it is a slave and will have no way to escape" (Machiavelli, Discourses, I 40).

A quick look at the last twelve years of Chavez regime in Venezuela will show a strikingly similar relation with this statement made by Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago. Venezuela didn't have a nobility but it did have a political party and economic elite. For the most part of his presidency, not to say all, Chavez has moved a strategy to reduce these elites to their minimum expression. Contrary to more autocratic dictators, he hasn't killed his opponents, but limits himself to wield the power he has backed by his popularity to break asunder and isolate "those whom they [the people that holds him in high esteem] hold in detestation".

But again because Chavez is not a prince, but a soft democratic tyrant, the opposition still exists, however negligible and mediocre. This has given his opponents the opportunity to rise a little bit in esteem every once in a while (especially during elections). But Machiavelli's conclusion still applies; once his opponents were reduced to nothingness, the people that had him on such a high esteem are reduced to slavery, for they have no one else to go for succor. Police repression is always stronger when it is used against the poor and the traditional strongholds of the president's popularity. The middle class in Venezuela has a wider freedom to protest, because their actions are made inconsequential by the manoeuvrings of the government. But the real threat to Chavez regime comes from the base of the people, whom loved him for years, that today have little choice but to keep loving him, even though his government is absolutely incompetent in tackling their needs: housing, personal security, water and electricity supply, etc.

Today Venezuelans have no way to escape from him, except by the miraculous act of a sickness. Machiavelli's other overwhelming force in politics, fortune, might be ending, sooner than expected by anyone, the long and exhaustive efforts made by the tyrant to rule for decades.