Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez moves yesterday toward creating what he calls "21st Century Socialism" by vowing to nationalize Venezuela's biggest telecommunications and electricity companies, throw out its commercial code and strip its central bank of all remaining traces of its autonomy take his country straight towards communism.
Chavez vowed to nationalize both the country's largest publicly traded private company, Compania Nacional de Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV) - owned by US-based Verizon Communications - and Electricidad de Caracas - owned by US-based AES. The choice of two US-owned companies won't be missed elsewhere in Latin America, where Chavez has struggled to persuade nations to follow his lead and not Washington's.
Consolidating his power politically, he also unveiled plans to join his coalition of center and leftist parties into a single party controlled by him called the United Venezuelan Socialist Party, a move seen as leading the country down the road to a single-party state.
[Source: WSJ]
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
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