Joel Brinkley

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's flamboyant president, now should be the object of pity. He has boxed himself in, trapped by his own hubris.

His country is falling apart. How, for example, did Venezuela find itself plagued with electricity shortages so severe that the government imposed blackouts nationwide for several hours each day? After all, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has among the world's largest oil and natural gas reserves.

It happens that a hydroelectric dam on the Caroní River generates almost three-quarters of the nation's electricity. But a drought has dropped the river's water level below what the hydroelectric generator needs to function at full power, setting off the blackouts and a water shortage. That prompted the Bolivarian president to issue an important decree. Venezuelans, he ordered, were no longer permitted to sing in the shower.

"No, folks, three minutes" in the shower "is more than enough. Three minutes is what I take, and I guarantee you I don't end up smelling bad."

The government called the electricity crisis an "act of Mother Nature." I call it an act of incompetence. This wasn't an earthquake, a hurricane or some other calamity that fell upon Venezuela with little notice. The water level had been dropping gradually for many months. Chavez and everyone else could see this crisis coming but did nothing effective to prepare.

Any other leader would have negotiated deals to buy electric generators - or purchased power from friendly neighbors. Oh, I forgot. Chavez doesn't have any friendly neighbors. Even so, both Colombia and Brazil did offer help. Their leaders are certainly hiding secret grins because their obnoxious neighbor now needs their assistance.

But that's where the hubris comes in. Earlier this month, Elias Jaua, Venezuela's vice president, refused Colombia's offer to help. Chavez froths at the mouth every time he is forced to mention his archenemy, Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia. (In Chavez's mind, Uribe ranks only slightly below his chief villain, the president of the United States.) So his acolyte vice president said he would rather wait for the rains to come again in the spring.

Last fall Chavez, too, was relying on the rains to save him - actually, to save his people. You can be sure there are no blackouts at the presidential palace. Chavez tried seeding the clouds with chemicals, trying to persuade them to disgorge some moisture.

"Any cloud that comes my way, I'll hurl a lightning bolt at it," his excellency the president declared. "Tonight I am going out to bombard." It didn't work.

With all that oil money, Chavez certainly could have built electric-generation plants that run on Venezuela's natural gas. But he has been using most of the cash to buy votes. Venezuela heavily subsidizes gasoline and electricity rates, causing profligate usage. A gallon of gasoline costs 12 cents - the lowest price in the world.

That helps explain why the nation's economy, like its electric grid, is on the verge of collapse. Inflation runs at 25 percent, the highest in Latin America, and the nation remains mired in a stubborn recession. Last month Chavez devalued the nation's currency, the bolivar, from 2.15 to the dollar up to 4.30. Suddenly his citizens' money was worth half of what it was the day before.

Part of the problem is that Chavez is, quite literally, running out of money. Venezuela's only export is oil, and production has been plummeting - by nearly 30 percent over the past decade. That's not because the nation is running out of crude. Far from it. Chavez fired the professionals who ran the oil business and put his cronies at their desks. Now the oil-production equipment is failing. The oil infrastructure, like the rest of the country, is falling apart. Chavez has run Venezuela's economy into the ground.

To fix the energy problem, he asked his friends in Cuba - another nation that is falling to pieces - to come over and help. But Cuba, too, has rolling blackouts. Only cut-rate oil imports from Venezuela keep its electricity grid alive.

Angry and frustrated students rallied this month to protest the inflation, the blackouts, water and food shortages, economic deprivation, the continent's highest crime rate and Chavez's dictatorial rule. Chavez sent police to fire water cannons and plastic bullets at the youths.

Is that a man worthy of pity? Well, at the very least he has a tin ear. As all of this went on, his press department churned out adoring news releases and assorted commentary, including one last week titled "Is the U.S. Economic Model a Failure?"

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. To comment, e-mail Brinkley@foreign-matters.com. Contact us via our online submissions form at sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1.

This article appeared on page E - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle