Well we’re joined now by George Galloway, who knew Hugo Chavez very well
and spent two weeks working on his campaign in Venezuela last year.
He joins us from Beirut where he’s been filming a TV programme,
and from Washington by Republican Congressman Luke Messer, who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Congressman Messer, thank you very much for joining us.
As the State Department’s just been briefing and saying
that America will send a delegation to the Chavez funeral,
and indeed President Obama was pretty conciliatory in his remarks about the death of Mr Chavez.
Are those remarks that you agree with?
Well, listen, no one likes to speak ill of the dead
but we have to recognise in this moment what Hugo Chavez was.
He was [an] anti-democratic despot, he left his country worse than he found it,
I recognise that there were some that benefitted from his leadership
but those gains were largely stolen on the backs of others in his country
and I think that’s how history will remember him.
George Galloway, your history will remember him in a very different way.
Well a Republican Congressman would say that, wouldn’t he?
Hugo Chavez expropriated the richest of the oligarchy,
he distributed Venezuela’s God-given oil wealth across the mass of the population
and that’s why he kept on winning elections.
How someone can be described as a despot and a tyrant
when he won four Presidential elections with thumping majorities
and after 14 years in power won the biggest vote that he’d
ever had and I was there, with my wife for two weeks,
and the mass of the Venezuelan people are in mourning.
Of course, the gold-toothed émigrés who were dancing in the streets of Miami last night
that the Republican Congressman speaks for;
they can dance on the lion’s grave, but they can never be a lion.
Well Congressman, it is true of course that he did win democratic elections and indeed,
no less an individual than President Jimmy Carter witnessed one of them
and certainly said it was a free and fair election and that is a problem isn’t it,
because Venezuela is a very divided country like many other countries in Latin America
and even perhaps many states in the United States have rich and poor
and Chavez sided with the poor?
Yeh, we have to recognise that while there were elections
there, and I’m not suggesting they were fixed,
you have a tie between government and government control in these elections
that is not like an election what [sic] most of us would consider [fair] in the West.
When you take from one and give to another,
the recipient of that theft may appreciate it but those who were stolen from don’t.
Margaret Thatcher famously said ‘the problem with Socialism
is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.’
Because of the oil wells in Venezuela, Hugo- or Mr Chavez-
was able to survive longer than Socialism might elsewhere
but the reality is that what he leaves for this nation is a nation whose economy is in shambles,
it’s had spiking debt, 20% level of inflation and he left his country worse off than he found it.
Before I go back to George Galloway, let me ask you
one question which is very poignant in this moment:
one of the things which has changed in the last 14 years is that America itself
has interfered much less in Latin America than ever in recent history
and that is surely a good thing and may in part be down
to the very independent line that Hugo Chavez pursued.
Indeed and he pursued Latin American unity; he introduced Bank of the South,
University of the South, even TeleSUR, a television of the South.
He was keen and working on various projects like that ALBA Grouping, for example,
to unite the peoples of Latin America so that they would
never again be victims of the hegemony of the United States,
and what the Congressman calls ‘theft’, other people call ‘taxation’,
of rich people so that their wealth can be redistributed
amongst people who don’t have enough to eat.
94% of Venezuelans now eat three times a day.
Let me pause you there George Galloway, because I
just wanted to get this point with the Congressman,
which is just the question of America basically allowing
Latin America to go its way, and what a way it is.
I mean Venezuela maybe to some extent slightly behind but the fact is
the continent is romping forwards and that is an interesting development.
That’s true, and those that have democratic governments and capitalist economies
are doing much better than the Socialist regime in Venezuela
I would associate myself though with President Obama’s
broad comments that now is a new day in Venezuela
and the Venezuelan people have the opportunity to choose new leadership,
let’s hope they choose wisely and America looks forward to the opportunity
to interact with the citizens of that great nation.
George Galloway, that is the next issue; 30 days to choose a new President.
Obviously the Vice President will be a candidate but
he is- for whatever one may say- not Hugo Chavez
and it will be very hard to match what went before.
Well no one else is Hugo Chavez. There’s not two
Hugo Chavezes in the world, never mind in Venezuela.
But Nicholas Maduro, I knew him when he was a bus
driver, when he was a bus drivers’ trade union leader,
and I look forward to, if I can, helping him get elected as the President of the Republic.
He’s a man with the common touch; he used to drive the common people in buses,
not something the Congressman can claim to do and nor the people the represents.
I believe that Maduro will win a thumping majority in 40 days’ time,
I think the people of Venezuela are not ready to abandon their revolution.
They’ve seen the future and it works.
But it is true, Congressman, as indeed you said, that the economy is not in the best of shape.
Whatever redistribution has taken place, the fact is there is inflation, pretty romping inflation.
How do you look forward, in such a short period, to really very much happening?
I mean if Venezuela is the shining star of Socialism,
it doesn’t say much for Socialism, does it?
Our hope is that the people of this nation understand
the opportunities that would come with democracy,
understand the opportunities that would come with a capitalist society
that could help grow their economy and create wealth for broad cross-sections,
not just redistribute wealth from some and give it to others.
Clearly in this new dawn there is the new opportunity
for that, that’s certainly what I’m hoping for.
I think America stands ready to help if that’s the choice.
George Galloway, it is perfectly possible that in the medium term there will be change of some kind
It’s interesting that already the stock markets in what you would regard as the Capitalist world
have reacted to what’s happened in Venezuela by investing in American oil companies
that may well very much hope to be back on the ground in Venezuela.
Yeh, despite the Congressman’s efforts to paint Venezuela
as a kind of hive of Bolshevik-stroke Anarchy,
the reality is that tax in Britain is higher than it is in Venezuela on rich people.
Most of the enterprises in Venezuela are still in private hands.
Most of the television stations are still in private
hands and against Chavez and against the revolution.
So this is not a Red in tooth and claw revolution, this is a Labour revolution.
Chavez stood for the kind of things that Labour used to stand for.
Most people in Britain and most people in the world think
that would be quite a good thing, thanks very much!
George Galloway in Beirut and indeed Congressman Messer in Washington, thank you both very much.
It’s rare that one gets both sides of that dichotomy which
confronts the people of Venezuela so articulately put.
Thank you both very much.