Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-24-Speech-4-154"
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"en.20070524.24.4-154"2
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".
Mr President, dictatorships are not established overnight. They take form through a thousand small subversions of the democratic order – the targeting of opposition leaders, the subversion of the electoral commission, the vitiation of the judiciary, the dissolution of the national assembly and, not least, the silencing of independent media.
Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela has something of the feel of Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. There are still elections, there are still opposition parties, there are still free newspapers, but the direction is unmistakable. True, President Chávez has not annulled the electoral process, but then there were elections every four years in the Comecon states throughout the Cold War. There are elections today in most of Mr Chávez’s closest allies – Iran, Byelorussia, Zimbabwe – it is simply that opponents of the regime find it hard to contest those elections, and that is why we should be so alarmed by the harassment and expropriation of Mr Chávez’s critics.
Venezuela is not Cuba, at least not yet, but the complacency exhibited by some in this House is at best naive, and at worst shameful. We are witnessing the slow asphyxiation of a once open and liberal polity. If we do nothing else, for heaven’s sake, let us at least register our disapprobation!"@en1
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