It's been three years since
Nicolas Maduro went on national TV to announce the tragic death of
beloved revolutionary leader, Hugo Chavez. The size and intensity of
the outpouring that followed would show the world, in some measure,
the huge impact Chavez had had both in Venezuela and around the
world.
When Hugo Chavez won his first
election as Venezuela’s President in 1998, it was against a
backdrop of a deep economic and social crisis.
Venezuela's economic performance
was one of the worst in the world. Its economy per head had been
falling for over 25 consecutive years. Living standards had been
driven down, and just a few years before Chavez came to office over
40 percent lived in extreme poverty.
This despite the vast oil wealth
that the country possessed. In the late 1950s Venezuela's income per
person was on a par with Britain. That era came crashing down thanks
to misrule and, later, the implementation of neoliberal policies by
the country's political elite, which failed the Venezuelan people.
As a result Venezuela’s income per head was lower in 1998 than it
had been in 1960, in real terms.
Popular revolts against this
decline were brutally repressed. In one incident alone - the Caracazo
- up to 3,000 died and the constitution was suspended.
Chavez's "Bolivarian
Revolution" — named after Latin American independence hero
Simon Bolivar — began to reverse these decades of failure, and
after the state oil company was taken under full government control,
following a coup attempt and failed oil strike in 2002-2003, the
social improvements accelerated.
Poverty reduction and
inequality
Arguably the most impressive
achievements of the era of progressive change that begun with
Chavez's election is poverty-reduction programs, which have seen
startling results.
When Chavez arrived in office in
1998, Venezuelan poverty levels were at 44 percent. The Revolution
has reduced this substantially to 27 percent today. Whilst extreme
poverty has declined from 20% to 5.4%, according to figures released
earlier this week.
Inequality has also been tackled.
Using the internationally recognized measurement, the Gini
coefficient where zero represents perfect equality, inequality fell
from 0.48 at the time of Chavez's election to 0.38 today.
Tackling a humanitarian crisis
Free-market extremism devastated
the living standards of the Venezuelan people. One clear example is
the widespread hunger that afflicted the oil rich nation. In 1998, 21
percent of the population suffered from undernourishment according to
the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations
definition. Today that figure is just 2 percent.
Likewise, the number of
underweight children at the end of the pre-Chavez was 5.3 percent, a
figure that had halved by 2012. Today 95.4 percent of Venezuelans eat
three times per day according to the National Institute of Statistics
(INE). Social programs providing subsidized food, free meals, and
free school dinners have played a significant role in eradicating
hunger and child malnutrition. Access to drinking water has
significantly improved too, from 80 percent in 1998 to 96 percent
today.
Enriching lives through public
services
In the 15 years prior to Hugo
Chavez, from 1983 to 1998, just 37 percent of the state budget went
on social investment. In the 15 years of the since Hugo Chavez
initiated the Bolivarian Revolution that figure has shot up to 61
percent.
As a result, Venezuela has risen
substantially in the UN's Human Development Index.
Increased social investment led to
huge improvements in education, for example illiteracy was eradicated
and Venezuela now has one of the world's highest proportion of people
attending university.
Healthcare was also a major
beneficiary of this investment. Over 80% of Venezuelans have accessed
the nation's now-free public health system with some 700 million
consultations via the more than 10,000 new free health centers. As a
result, infant mortality in revolutionary Venezuela has dropped by a
third and this effort is estimated to have saved hundreds of
thousands of lives.
Sharing
the economic gains
The reversal of a 25-year economic
decline has seen employment opportunities flourish. Unemployment was
14.5 percent in 1998, a figure which, today, has been reduced by two
thirds, with over 4 million jobs since 1999. Employment in the formal
sector has risen considerably to 60 percent. Whilst in retirement,
many more have a dignified life, with the number of people accessing
a state pension increasing from 387,000 pre-Chavez, to over 2.5
million today.
Backed by the people
All this progressive change has
been backed in election after election. Since Hugo Chávez took
office in 1999, Venezuela has held 18 national elections with the
coalition of supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution winning all but
one. This is a greater number of elections than were held during the
previous 40 years of Venezuelan democracy, following the fall of the
dictatorship in 1958.
Source:
Comments
Post a Comment