Lack of an Opposition Helped Sink Venezuela

The Venezuelan case illustrates perfectly that the democratic process suffers without the proper checks and balances of a strong opposition to the detriment of the well-being of a country. Regarding Daniel Pipes’s “Venezuela’s Tyranny of Bad Ideas” (op-ed, Aug. 27): The problem with Venezuela hasn’t been the left-wing views held by the government per se, but stems from a lack of accountability that has allowed the government to pursue policies that have led to economic disaster. The 1998 presidential election was won by Hugo Chávez in a fair and democratic way. However, the main political problem with the chavista administration is that it has never faced a strong political opposition that countered its left-wing rhetoric with sensible free-market economic policies and beneficial to all the population of... More…