Latin Business Chronicle (Joachim Bamrud): Violent attacks against Globovision, following trumped-up charges of legal violations. Stripping away power from elected local officials that are critical of the President. Nationalizations of coffee roasters. Welcome to Hugo Chavez' world. Unlike, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Chavez has used the electoral process to try to gain legitimacy for his policies, Douglas Schoen and Michael Rowan point out in their book, The Threat Closer to Home.

"Chavez solution…was to launch a democratic coup, to use the electoral process for undemocratic ends," they write. "Chavez has justified every encroachment on democracy -- whether centralizing power in the presidency, extending presidential terms, downgrading independent institutions such as the legislature and judiciary, eliminating effective checks and balances on executive power, controlling the electoral system, taking private property, criminalizing criticism of his authority, or trampling upon the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and dissent -- as a further perfection of it."

FEBRUARY FARCE
Chavez' latest success was the February referendum on his re-election, which Chavez officially won by seven points. "If there had been free elections, I'm convinced they would have lost," civil rights activist Maria Corina Machado told a recent meeting in Miami organized by the University of Miami's Center for Hemispheric Policy. Machado leads Sumate, a civic society group that promotes democracy in Venezuela.

However, it is a process that is deeply flawed. There has not been an independent audit of Venezuelan elections since August 2003, as Machado points out. Meanwhile, a new electoral law formalizes the lack of any independence. "The new electoral law…makes all illegal abuses legal," she told the Miami meeting.

As a result, few Venezuelans have any faith in the constant elections taking place in the country, she says. She points to one poll that shows 39% of Venezuelans believe that their vote is not secret. She believes the number is even higher, but thanks to the climate of fear and reprisals, many Venezuelans are afraid to tell pollsters their true feelings.

STATE, FEAR GROWS
With the constant nationalizations, the number of Venezuelans who depend on the state for their living is growing -- further undermining those who want to stand out in opposition to Chavez. "In Venezuela it will be harder and harder to say [critical] things," Machado says.

Meanwhile, while democracy and the market have been weakened, corruption and crime have jumped during Chavez' decade in power, Schoen and Rowan point out. "Rather than fight corruption as he had promised in his campaign speeches, Chavez became an expert practitioner," they write. "Since he took over as the nation's leader, Venezuela's homicide rate has tripled, according to Chavez's own statistics."

The corruption not only means that Chavez and his cronies have gotten richer, but that funds allocated for poor have been repeatedly re-directed. "Independent studies estimate that the amounts taken from Venezuelan poverty and development funds by middlemen, brokers, and subcontractors -- all of whom charge an "administrativ