Bush calls Chávez “the Mugabe of South America”

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez is an “anti-US dictator” similar to his Zimbabwe’s counterpart Robert Mugabe. He is bringing his country to “ruin,” said former US President George W. Bush in his memoirs entitled Decision Points that went on sale on Tuesday in the United States.

In the chapter entitled Freedom Agenda, in which Bush discusses the democratic situation in several countries, the former US president considered that with Chávez’s inauguration, Venezuela “also diverted from democracy,” DPA reported.

“Unfortunately, (Chávez) squandered the money of Venezuelans and is bringing his country to ruin,” he said.

Chávez “has become the Robert Mugabe of South America,” Bush wrote. He regretted that other regional leaders, particularly those of Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador, “are following suit with Chávez.”

Among the “other isolated outposts of tyranny,” Bush mentioned Cuba along with Belarus, Myanmar and Sudan.

Elsewhere in his memoirs, Bush calls Chávez “an anti-US dictator.”