What Is Chavez Up To?
Posted on 08/19/2003 5:03:25 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
I can understand that unless you are here in Venezuela, seeing and listening by yourself, you will be prone to discard most reports of the events which take place in our country as the work of a perverse imagination.
Let me give you an example: Although Venezuela currently has 85% poverty, 25% unemployment, 200,000 abandoned children in the streets, hospitals that lack the most essential facilities, schools which are falling down and 65% of the working population trying to earn a meager income as street peddlers (buhoneros), President Chavez just went to Uruguay, on a private visit which cost Venezuelan taxpayers $800,000, and gave a 90-minute speech to members of the Association for Latin American Integration (ALADI).
And, what did he say?: First of all, that Venezuela would be willing to contribute $1 billion per year to alleviate the plight of poor nations such as Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua or El Salvador ... which “currently have many economic and social difficulties.” How noble of the man, pledging such an immense amount of our money to help others. But what about us? We are already almost as miserable as Haiti, according to the latest Human Development Index of the United Nations. In 1998 we were ranked 46 among 173 nations in this index. Only five years later, we are ranked 69 among 176 nations. This is a monumental collapse, which happened under the nose of a President who has no idea of how to run a country.
In his speech, Chavez also repeated his intention to create a PetroAmerica ... an energy company to be owned by Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
This is a wild and potentially very costly idea since such a company would bring together countries which are net exporters of energy and countries which import energy, having very different interests. It would try to bring together Uribe and Chavez, Lula and Fox, Gutierrez and Toledo… Can you just imagine this group trying to agree on any issue?
Chavez also intimated that Venezuela would probably leave the IMF, which, he charged, has led Latin American countries to “hell.” I think he feels that pulling Venezuela out of the IMF will cause the collapse of the institution. He also said that he would travel on to Argentina and try to help that country “to create a State oil company.” He probably does not know that Argentina created the first State-owned petroleum company in Latin America, YPF, and that, some years ago, privatized this company, which had become highly corrupt and inefficient.
This blunder is similar to the one he incurred in China, when he went out of his way to praise Mao to a government which represented the very opposite of what Mao had stood for ... this is why I maintain that Chavez is a Marxist, in the best tradition of Harpo…
Another event of the “revolution” which is hard to believe is the “take over” of the company VENEPAL by the combined forces of burping General Acosta Carlez and Miss Iris Varela ... a government deputy in the National Assembly, a.k.a. Commander Fosforito (little match), due to her easily inflammable temperament. VENEPAL is a producer of paper, which has 3,000 shareholders but has fallen on hard times, as most Venezuelan companies under this regime. They decided to reorganize the company and started dismissing workers, paying the legal severance amounts. However, the above-mentioned couple decided to lead an assault on headquarters, together with some 200 disgruntled workers, name their own Board of Directors and take over the company.
As simple as that. An active General of the National Guard ... an armed outfit that exists to guarantee the civic rights of Venezuelans ... leading an assault on private property. This is not the first time that this lout has done a similar deed. Some months ago he became famous when he led another assault on a Coca Cola facility , opened up a bottle and, after drinking it, proceeded to burp three times in close-captioned fashion, for the enjoyment of thousands of TV watchers.
Miss Varela is a worthy companion of the General ... she sports a Medusa like hairdo that was probably in fashion during Neanderthal times. Facing the TV cameras she becomes instantly passionate against oligarchs and the rich (whoever owns a home). She is the author of a proposal to modify the Constitution to allow the simple majority of the government in the National Assembly to decide on all issues ... this proposal does not even have the support of her own party. To see a member of the National Assembly, the legislative body ... which should guarantee the protection of citizens under the law ... leading a mob to rob owners of their property, is like watching a picture upside down.
Another event, which seems like a page out of Alice in Wonderland, is the one about the naming of the new Electoral College ... which is indispensable to go ahead with the Presidential referendum. The government has said several times that it will not help to make the referendum come true. It will not help because they suspect it will be ejected from power. But what it cannot do is to oppose it with all kinds of legal, pseudo legal and illegal maneuvers.
Since the naming of the members of this college by the National Assembly requires a qualified majority of 75% of the deputies, the government has not been able to impose their unconditional supporters as members and have been obliged to try to compromise with the opposition. As they were not successful and, as they were in favor of postponing the decision indefinitely for the reasons explained above, three months went by without the naming of the college.
This forced the Supreme Tribunal of Justice to intervene and declare their intention to name the college, a move that is contemplated in the Constitution. At this moment the government cried foul and has threatened the Supreme Tribunal with over-ruling them if they go ahead and do that. In short, a coup…
As the days for the naming of the college by the Supreme Tribunal grow near, the political atmosphere becomes tenser. More Venezuelans now believe that Chavez will not surrender power peacefully, although he kept claiming all the time that the referendum was the proper way to go.
One has to ask: Why does Chavez want to keep the Presidency when he is not able to solve any of the growing national problems?
Why should he keep the pretense of a revolution when it has become apparent that the overwhelming majority of the population does not want to follow that path?
The only answer I can come up with is that the man is increasingly divorced from reality. His grandiose speeches about donating billions of (Venezuelan) dollars to poor countries, about creating a Latin American energy company, about withdrawing from IMF; his arbitrary promotion of land invasions, of takeovers of private companies; his interminable TV and radio compulsory hookups; all of these “Chaplin” like attitudes patterned after the comedians’ imitation of the Great Dictator, strongly suggest an increasingly unbalanced mind. I am reminded of Humphrey Bogart in his extraordinary role as Captain Quegg in “The Caine Mutiny”, a poor man reduced to utter mental confusion by a relentless cross examination…
I think Chavez is on the brink of a major mental collapse ... this would be regrettable for any person to suffer but, when the President of Venezuela is the patient, the welfare of the whole nation hangs in the balance.
I know that this all sounds like fiction but I can assure you, readers from across the oceans, that we are living through it ... a reality that sounds stranger than fiction. As I send this, I see that Venezuela is the only country which refused to sign the Asuncion (Paraguay) document supporting the Colombian government in their fight against the terrorist, narco-guerrilla. Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, all signed ... our government did not…
Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983.
You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email gustavo@vheadline.com
They always come down to "a mental collapse"?
Mugabe and Chavez need to go to the same clinic.
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Chavez has the hook in their mouths.
Yeah, I've heard it helps ya get your head on straight .....
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