How Chavez Keeps Power

The Palm Beach Post this morning has a fascinating blog entry on how Castro's buddy, Hugo Chavez, stays in power by keeping track of individuals that sign petitions for recall elections. What happens is if you sign a petition asking for a recall election of Chavez, your national ID number is published on a website established by a Chavez crony named Luis Tascon. Here's how it works:

That is, you could enter the ID of any people you would know, co-worker, relative, friend, neighbor and you could figure out whether that person was for or against Chavez. Soon that list ballooned with the inclusion of people participating in Chavez social programs (pro Chavez) and people who manifested against Chavez in other activities (e.g. other referendum petitions of anti Chavez nature). That list was actively used by the government to discriminate against people that were perceived or assumed to oppose Chavez. Those people were fired from governmental jobs, denied promotions, and if they were not working for the government could be subjected to all sorts of abuses starting from passport denial.