The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies yes­ter­day held a pan­el dis­cus­sion in an at­tempt to counter what was de­scribed as the de­mon­is­ing of Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez by the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia in the wake of his death last Tues­day.

Host­ed by the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, the dis­cus­sion was ti­tled The Chavez Lega­cy and sev­er­al speak­ers por­trayed the for­mer pres­i­dent as a hero­ic po­lit­i­cal leader, one of the few who kept his promis­es to the peo­ple, and as a de­fend­er of the rights of women and the poor.Prof W Andy Knight, di­rec­tor of the in­sti­tute, told the au­di­ence: "If the pan­el came across as some­what pro-Chavez, it is to cor­rect the de­mon­is­ing of him by the main­stream me­dia."

"There is a lot of an­ti-Chavez sen­ti­ment in the me­dia right now," he lat­er told the T&T Guardian."I think it's im­por­tant to have a pan­el like this. What you are get­ting from this is deep­er than what you are get­ting in the me­dia."Our at­tempt is to say, let's look at the lega­cy of the man, and to cor­rect the false­hoods be­ing prop­a­gat­ed about him."

Nor­man Gir­van, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus and the Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al's per­son­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the Guyana-Venezuela Bor­der Con­tro­ver­sy, was a key speak­er on the pan­el.Gir­van said there has been a huge change from the sabre-rat­tling of for­mer Venezue­lan ad­min­is­tra­tions in the bor­der con­tro­ver­sy and he be­lieves Chavez' ef­forts to­wards a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion have some­thing to do with it.

"There is a great deal of bi­lat­er­al talks tak­ing place now be­tween the two coun­tries," he said."Chavez used to say the con­tro­ver­sy be­tween Venezuela and Guyana was a rel­ic of the colo­nial past."Gir­van, telling about the "Chavez I knew," re­ferred to the "Chav­ista phe­nom­e­non" and said what was dif­fer­ent about Chavez was that he ac­tu­al­ly kept his promis­es to the peo­ple."He used the State to ben­e­fit the mass­es. He did not break his faith with the peo­ple."

Gir­van said Venezuela is now the coun­try with the low­est in­equal­i­ty rate and with sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions in pover­ty and child mal­nu­tri­tion.Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the floor on whether there was an­oth­er side to Chavez, the dic­ta­tor/au­thor­i­tar­i­an, he dis­closed that Chavez had got more votes in var­i­ous elec­tions than any oth­er de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed leader in the hemi­sphere. He said there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port the charge that Chavez was a dic­ta­tor.

Oth­er mem­bers of the au­di­ence said thou­sands of work­ers were re­trenched af­ter an­ti-Chavez protests and claimed the for­mer pres­i­dent con­trolled Venezuela's me­dia and gave out "free­bies" to the peo­ple for their sup­port.Knight said Chavez' po­lit­i­cal ri­vals were fi­nanced to the tunes of mil­lions of dol­lars by the US in the last gen­er­al elec­tion and warned ex­ter­nal in­ter­fer­ence might play a part in the next elec­tion.