Really? Where's the proof?
But to be honest, I am not surprised you all think this way, the media is very anti-Chavez and understandably so.
The media doesn't necessarily make you anti-Chavez, you just have to see the reality.
In the past 12 years since he became president, there has been an alarming increase in violence across the country with an average of 200 people dead every week just in the metropolitan area of Caracas, not mentioning the increased robberies, police corruption, kidnappings and overall insecurity that its citizens face in a day to day basis.
The national currency has devalued so much that he was forced to remove zeros from it and introduce a new currency pegged to the US dollar. To make matters worse, he imposed a strict exchange control where only a government agency can sell and buy foreign currency. Making foreign investments non-existent. Since the inflation is about 24%, prices for basic goods are extremely expensive and prone to increase in price very rapidly, this effect has a detrimental impact for the majority of the population that live with a minimum wage of less than USD 350 per month. Due to his huge subsidies in the food production industry, basic goods such as milk, sugar, dairy products, and flour are scarce in supermarkets around the country.
Apart from taking the economic standpoint, can the overall system that Chavez is creating can be looked with a positive side? Sure he has done educational advances, an euphemism for a socialism-based brainwash curriculum, gives gifts such as food stamps and other social services to keep his people happy, which the majority are poor. He is creating an anti-capitalistic system where he wants to keep his citizens stupid and isolated from the evils of the "empire". It's very easy to manipulate poor people who have not seen the goodies and riches that you see in first-world nations by giving them gifts and acting as their holy father.
Chavez has also introduced expropriation laws that in a typical scenario, they take your 3-bedroom house, and according to his laws, you are required to give up two bedrooms of your own house to two poor citizens free of charge and live with them, while you live in the extra remaining bedroom of your house. Private property doesn't exist in socialism nor in communism eh?
As a result, the majority of the middle and upper class in Venezuela have left for the best, and ironically have settled in the shopping mecca of South Florida mainly in the outskirts of Miami. The expansion of real estate sales in Miami is swarmed by Venezuelans seeking to invest in properties and thereby getting out of Chavez's property expropriation insanity.
Contrary to Popular Belief - Venezuelans Dominate South Florida Real Estate
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_26/b4040048.htm
I have nothing against helping the poor and giving them opportunities instead of gifts. But the situation is not like that, the poor and working class are getting used to receiving from the government at the expense of the middle and upper classes. Why not raise taxes to the wealthy instead? Spread the wealth through taxation may be a better approach in the long run.
Chavez is sickened with power and has to get out, otherwise Venezuela would become another Cuba with a dictator and an embargo.
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