HOLD THE MOET

My car started instantly despite having sat unstarted for the whole past frigid week and so we took a little ride around town. I had a successful shopping excursion, managing to come home with even some items I had forgotten to put on the list. The new shower curtain in particular, changed my world.

My current obsession with water aside, it's time to get back to business. Looking south across the beautiful blue Caribbean, Dave Borden at DRC Net sends editor Phil Smith's sobering reminder on the state of decrim in Venezuela.

While it's true Chavez signed off on the legislation, it is not the end of the road. It still has to pass through two more levels of contentious bureaucratic processing in order to succeed in its goal.

Whether the proposed decriminalization becomes the law of the land depends on whether it is approved by the judicial and legislative branches, Venezuelan embassy spokeswoman Arelis Paiva told DRCNet Thursday. "Under Venezuelan law, the reform has to be approved by the Supreme Judicial Tribunal and then by the National Assembly," she said. That process "could take months," she added.

The passage of decriminalization also depends on the survival of the Chavez government. The democratically-elected president faces a possible referendum over his rule this summer. The referendum to remove Chavez -- signatures are still being counted in a highly contentious process -- is the latest effort by Venezuela's elites and upper classes to remove the populist, nationalist leader. Those elites, aided and abetted by the US government, attempted unsuccessfully to overthrow Chavez with a coup in 2002 and have remained unalterably opposed to his rule ever since. (Chavez himself attempted a coup in 1992 and was imprisoned, but he used that imprisonment to launch his career as a democratic politician.)

The move toward decriminalization of drug possession will likely provide even more ammunition for the Chavez demonization campaign emanating from the White House, the State Department, and more shadowy agencies. Chavez is already well-hated by the conservative ideologues, such as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, a former aide to Sen. Jesse Helms, and Bush's special envoy to the region Otto Reich, who cut his teeth helping craft the Reagan administration's wars in Central America in the 1980s.

I don't know about this legislation but Chavez, despite his bluster and inexperience will survive I think, because he is a charismatic leader who really does care about the welfare of his people and the principles of representational democracy.