President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is facing intense criticism. He described his circumstances to Michael McCaughan
Hugo Chavez led an unsuccessful military rebellion in Venezuela in 1992 before winning a landslide presidential election victory in 1998 on a platform of radical social change. Since then he has emerged as a charismatic and controversial figure, polarising public opinion. Chavez has put his political programme to the vote on five occasions, the last time winning re-election to office in July 2000, with 59 per cent of votes.
The Venezuelan leader has redrawn the nation's political map, approved a new constitution and renewed legislative and judicial powers. His followers consider him a messiah, hanging on every word of his speeches which rail against the "rancid oligarchy".
However, messiahs must deliver miracles if the faith is to hold firm.
So far Chavez has reduced unemployment from 18 per cent to 13 per cent, halted the slide to poverty and lowered inflation, but he also promised followers Venezuela would be a first-world nation within 10 years, a tall order to say the least.
Voters backed the political transformation but they now expect the revamped state to generate economic prosperity, create jobs and increase social welfare.
The revised constitution introduced a new branch of government called Citizen Power which permits "revocation of mandate" whereby citizens can remove any official from office, from village mayor to the president, through petition.
The drastic changes made by Chavez have brought him into confrontation with the nation's historic power-brokers, including church, media and business leaders who consider him a dangerous radical, playing the system to impose a communist state by stealth.
The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, told Congress last week that Chavez had expressed "insufficient support" for the war on terror. The controversy began when President Chavez visited Iraq and Libya, revitalising OPEC. US hostility increased when Chavez denounced the killing of children in US bombing raids on Afghanistan as a crime equal in shame to September 11th.
The Venezuelan president spoke to the Irish Times last last week, shortly after a dissident air force colonel led a march to the presidential residence, demanding Chavez's resignation.
It was carnival time but Mr Chavez was still in his office at midnight, "dancing as I work" he said. He brushed aside the recent challenges.
"If there is one institution in Venezuela which I know inside out it is the barracks," he said. "The greatest danger to this revolution is poverty."
He has ordered army troops out of barracks and into the countryside, building schools, homes and hospitals. Last week urban squatters were granted titles to their plots while new legislation allows mayors to expropriate idle land for peasant farmers.
He is anxious to play down what he described as "erroneous comments" made by Mr Powell.
"I give Mr Powell the benefit of the doubt - I think he needs more information. We could not have done more to co-operate with the war on terror."
On the fourth of February each year Chavez celebrates his unsuccessful 1992 military rebellion. This year he decreed "a day of national happiness", angering opponents. An estimated one million people took to the streets to celebrate the event.
Why celebrate a military uprising which led to loss of life?
"What happened on that day was not an attempted coup. Venezuela was ruled by a dictatorship dressed up in democratic clothing, a dictatorship which took a people living on a sea of oil to abject poverty and limitless political corruption."
Latin America's military have been identified with names like Pinochet and Rios Montt, symbols of savage repression. Wasn't it unhealthy to involve the military in state affairs?
"I share this healthy distrust of the military uniform because the history of Latin America is littered with tyrants and killers but that is just one part of that history because there is also the glorious examples of Simon Bolivar and Francisco de Miranda, army generals who fought for the freedom and dignity of their people."
Could Mr Powell's criticism of the Chavez government be a hint of what is to come, as US policy hawks target another social experiment tarred with the Castro brush?
"I prefer to think that those in power in the US are aware of the tremendous threats in the region - I refer to the threat of poverty, the seed of future violence."
Oil revenues generate 75 per cent of export revenue and 50 per cent of tax income in Venezuela.
Venezuela now faces increased inflation which will hit the poor hardest as Chavez walks a razor-thin tightrope between fiscal rectitude and political survival.
Michael McCaughan writes on Latin American affairs for The Irish Times