Hugo Chavez’s decade long crusade to subvert one of Latin America’s longest established democracies appeared to have undergone a brief respite following the September legislative elections. Overcoming the constraints of an electoral system explicitly biased in favour of the The President's PSUV party and allied appendage and satellite parties - as well as near total control of the media - anti-Chavista candidates gained a majority of the popular vote. Despite this public repudiation of Chavismo, a recent deluge of legislation forced through the still compliant National Assembly threatens to emasculate its ability to affect change before it has assumed office. The so-called “Enabling Law” permits Chavez to rule by decree and bypass the National Assembly for example. Chavez declaimed “let's see how they are going to make laws now”, denouncing opponents as “defenders of the bourgeoisie, defenders of the empire and of its politics of aggression”, displaying some of the most explicit aversion to lawful opposition of his presidency.

This barrage of restrictive legislation only compounds a progressive destabilisation of democratic forces over the last decade. Opposition media outlets not already languishing under state control have been harassed, intimidated or otherwise brought into compliance. Noted media critics of Chavez such as Guillermo Zuluoaga have been forced into exile in order to avoid imprisonment. Anti-Chavez labour leaders such as Carlos Ortega have been imprisoned and other notable political opponents have been arrested and sentenced on dubious charges. Harsher media restrictions contained within recent legislation include the prohibition of broadcasting material which foments “anxiety amongst the citizenry or that alter[s] the public order”. Empowered with such a nebulous definition, this all but eliminates the last, tenuous vestiges of freedoms of speech and the press within Venezuela.

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Chavista devotees point to the alleged US support for the 2002 ‘coup’ which briefly removed Chavez from office as evidence of a malevolent conspiracy against his presidency. This is held as a sufficient rationalisation for the decimation of the constitutional framework of an established liberal democracy. Allegations of this intricate conspiracy are, however, groundless. The evidence for US involvement is negligible, and the allegations have been largely refuted. Nevertheless it is still used to legitimise Chavez’s suppression of peaceful dissent and his pathological opposition to the United States.

Chavez’s visceral anti-Americanism does not, however, appear to have been allayed by the election of a more conciliatory President in Barack Obama. As the recent goading of the US Ambassador typifies, Chavez has repeatedly and publicly spurned American moves to improve relations. Chavez’s antipathy to the United States is not predicated upon legitimate grievances, nor past wrongs, but upon a worldview which views liberal democracy as a threat to progress.

A successful consolidation of Chavez’s Neo-Peronist authoritarianism would entrench and strengthen a regional democratic declension, already visible from Nicaragua to Bolivia, as Chavista leaders, having attained office through democratic means proceed to equate lawful opposition with counterrevolutionary ‘subversion’. This fundamentally contravenes the uneven but steady progress of democratization across the continent. Military coups and other extralegal changes of power in Latin America are largely confined to the annals of history, the danger to hemispheric democracy now emanates from movements who have come to power through the ballot box rather than bullets.

To emphasis the anti-democratic and expansionist nature of Chavismo is not to dismiss or dispute the reprehensible levels of income inequality throughout Latin America. However, as the former Foreign Office Minister Denis Macshane has argued, a democratic left which seeks to address the societal inequalities across the region - yet with consideration for democratic institutions - has emerged. Venezuela is in fact atypical among countries in the region in that it possesses a considerable democratic tradition, a history of economic interventionism by the state, and more welfarist policies than many of its neighbours.

The comparison with former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is insightful. In contrast to Venezuela’s liberal tradition, Chile experienced a 17 year military dictatorship, among the Southern Cone’s most repressive, characterised by extensive human rights abuses and soaring income inequality. A Socialist, Bachelet’s Presidency attempted to facilitate greater social justice. It was not punctuated with the imprisonment and intimidation of opponents, such as Zuloaga or Ortega, nor by a belligerent foreign policy such as Chavez’s threatening of Colombia . Bachelet neither sought to establish alliances with, nor publicly condone the excesses of despots, as Chavez did with sycophantic praise of Robert Mugabe: “he is my friend” and a “brother”, idiosyncratic exculpatory apologia of Idi Amin (estimated death toll 300,000) “maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot”, and advocacy of “respect” for the 2009 Iranian elections and the pursuant suppression of a citizenry exercising its democratic rights. Most crucially, Bachelet permitted a transfer of power to political opponents after the victory of the conservative Sebastian Pinera in the 2010 Presidential election, a tolerance of opposition Chavez has so strenuously opposed.

Chavez’s aims, if pursued would however reverberate beyond both Venezuela and Latin America. Through his establishment of alliances with tyrannical regimes, Chavez seeks to compromise the leading role of the United States and establish a parallel order comprised of disparate despotisms unified only by opposition to US foreign policy and contempt for democratic values. Further progression of this would not only be deleterious to the promotion of democracy abroad; more disturbingly it may threaten national security. Chavez has repeatedly affirmed the legitimacy of Iran’s nuclear program and has striven to assist Tehran’s attempts .

Whether the Venezuelan opposition can withstand this assault and actively contend against the greater implementation of Chavista polices will become clear in the ensuing months, although this appears improbable. The national, hemispheric and international impact of a failure to do so remains to be seen, yet the past decade of Chavez’s presidency fails to instil much hope in a sudden democratization of Venezuelan politics, nor a relaxation of his expansionist foreign policy.