It seems even local opinion is against him, and many feel Venezuela is heading towards a dictatorship.
Funnily enough I see some people's reporting of the facts of this incident don't seem to match others. I specifically question the credibility of anyone who thinks this:
Makes for reasonable support of free speech. But I have seen that even locally there is some division as to how much freedom of speech people have.Hugo Chavez wrote:If the Venezuelan oligarchy ... does not accept this call to live together in peace that we are making, if it keeps on attacking using the things it still controls, it will keep losing those things one by one.
I do think that this quote from the Carter Center is pretty on point, in all of this:
Healthy democracies require spaces for political dialogue and debate to allow divisions about the future direction of the country to be addressed in peaceful ways