The Castro Route

Tom Ginsburg
Chavez’ power grab, (sic) pursued through perfectly legal channels, exposes the Achilles’ heel of the rule of law: so long as you abide by its principles, you can do just about anything, including changing the rules to extend your control.

As long as 54% of voters agree to it. A bit like electing Obama.

Oooh, you are awful, Mr Chavez. Sticking to the rule of law and all, you clever little man!  Not like those great democrats and 'leaders', Bush and Blair, for whom the rule of law meant sweet fuck all.

Chavez has been crafty in manipulating this set of understandings. In December 2007, voters narrowly rejected Chavez’ proposed constitutional amendments, which included both the abolition of term limits and the expansion of emergency presidential powers. Some human rights groups and the United Nations condemned that proposal, mainly for the low bar to invoking a state of emergency. This time Chavez has been careful to restrict the amendment to the abolition of term limits, and the international community has been quiet.

Right. So Chavez dropped the most controversial part of his amendments after they were democratically rejected (although only just) and presented a revised and scaled down version, which the people accepted (slightly more assiduously, by the way,  than the US voters accepted Obama.) This, according to Mr Ginsburg was a 'crafty' thing to do. I wonder if he ever uses the word 'crafty' to describe the behaviour of white US politicians? I doubt it, somehow.

Unbelievable pile of tosh from, naturally, a fucking academic lawyer. Read it and weep (or laugh).