Comment Re:Price (Score 1) 430
The then President, Perez, was himself the product of a coup. And he went on to be a corrupt butcher. A coup is a political act, it's not a crime, other than in the eyes of those who support the original corrupt regime.
You mean this Perez? The one who was elected twice, first in '74 and then again in '89? The last successful military coup in Venezuela was in 1958, so I am not sure how that makes any of the Perezs a product of a coup. Unless you consider every president of Venezuela after 1858 to be a product of a coup. Now Marcos Perez was appointed president after the 1948 coup and before the 1958 coup, so maybe you could consider him to have benefited from a coup, but that is as close as it gets.
You would not be able to run a military coup in the US and then run for president later, when it failed.
The laws of the USA are certainly no standard for morality.
No, but in general this law is a good idea. Someone doesn't like the way things are run and tries to change them by force. Not by a populist movement, but by taking control of the military, and then failing. So what do you do? Let them run for president and then turn the office into a position they can hold forever? It does not make sense. I can't say that I have talked to 50% of the Venezuelan population, but I have never met someone who liked Chavez during the time I was there. Everyone thought that his 2nd, 3rd and 4th re-elections were rigged. Whether they were or not, I can't say. But if Chavez really wanted to do things right the first time, he should have ran for president the first time instead of using the military. Obviously there wasn't anything preventing him from becoming president, since he did finally run and win.