The fierce morning heat was a memory. The afternoon haze had come and gone. It was the cool of dusk, with shadows stretching as the sun dipped below the Andes. And Hugo Chávez was still talking. The clock showed it was just after 7pm. The Venezuelan president had started at 11am, more than eight hours earlier — a new record. He looked into the camera and grinned: ”The first time in history.” Welcome to Alo Presidente!, a television chatshow like no other. Sunday’s edition, No 295, was the longest yet, a marathon of politics and showmanship, and for many proof that Venezuela has become a country governed largely through television. There are Cabinet meetings, national assembly debates and committee hearings in the offices of state in central Caracas, but the most emphatic exercise of power resides in the weekly show hosted by the president. This is where Chávez engages with the masses, announces policies, muses on his political philosophy, and signals the next step in his self-described socialist revolution.
”Chavez governs from Alo Presidente!. It is on this show that ministers find out if they have been fired or hired; it is here where mayors and governors are reprimanded for anything they have done wrong,” said Arturo Serrano, a political scientist at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Caracas.
Last Sunday’s show, broadcast live on state television and on the internet (http://www.alopresidente.gob.ve) underlined how the machinery of government fits around the broadcast. In keeping with the practice of a new location each week, Chávez hosted it from a petrochemical plant in El Tablazo, on the shore of Lake Maracaibo.
He started it wearing a helmet and goggles to inspect machinery. The counry’s vast oil and gas reserves would be used to build up its industry and challenge US hegemony, he said, before settling behind his desk.
Among the phalanxes in red T-shirts arrayed in front of him were governors, mayors and ministers. Advisers hovered just off camera with the maps, reports, statistics and phone numbers which the president, wearing an earpiece, would occasionally request.
As he spoke, the information ministry in Caracas packaged segments of quotes into government press releases emailed every few minutes.