Payback time for the people of Venezuela
By Aleksander Boyd
London 14 Mar. 04 – The chavista camp is crying foul and with reason. Since February 27th when the whole world watched in awe how Hugo Chavez sent, yet again, the army to repress protesters carrying lethal weapons such as flags (previously powdered with Anthrax), whistles (blowing nerve gases) and other biological warfare, a string of condemnations aimed at Hugo Chavez has followed.
The only major news outlet still openly partisan with the Venezuelan pariah is the NYT. The Europeans have turned their back on him, human rights organizations (all of them) have requested prompt investigations in regards to political prisoners, excessive use of force and respect to the Rule of Law. International bodies –formerly quite silent about the situation- have also ostracised the president to the point of dismissing publicly stupid accusations made by the Venezuelan government against personnel of the Inter American Human Rights Court. What a bliss!
I had the chance to read an interview made to members of a commission that was sent recently around Europe to ‘convince’ all of us here that Chavez is indeed the saviour of the poor. Their comments are just appalling not due to the sheer nonsensical nature of them but rather because of the evident lack of credible arguments presented by the lot. Adina Bastidas was one of the lucky ones touring Europe with our money. At the present moment she is the Vice President of CADIVI (Venezuela’s foreign exchange control institution). Other important figures of the commission were Iris Varela, Hector Acosta, Henry Navas and allegedly a lady whose signature was forged in the collection drive. La crème de la crème in sum. Bastidas gave a ridiculous account of PDVSA and how Chavez’ good auspices have contributed to the steady augmentation of oil prices worldwide. The comical thing about it is that there’s already a term utilized by oil traders to refer to the Venezuelan president which is “the Chavez effect” pointless to say that the bunch of imbeciles do not know anything about it. Instead of making use of that line of reasoning they have recourse to arguments that can be so easily debunked that any person with a moderate knowledge of the country could make them look like shams.
The Chavez effect is the impact that the verbal diarrhoea of the incumbent president has in oil prices. Allegedly, Chavez has rescued PDVSA from the criminal hands of the former technocrats who were so bent in privatizing it, in giving it away to the Yanks. It turns out that the exploitation deals made then count for about 1 million BPD of the present output of PDVSA. It so happens that the ‘aggressive neo-liberal policies’ of previous administrations are motive or pride for the inept current managerial team; I am talking about CITGO here. Ergo PDVSA was a model of what a state enterprise could achieve. Chavez has not only destroyed it, he has turned it into the Revolution’s milk cow. Question, how are the poor going to profit from a company whose production is in steady decline; whose international expansion policies are non-existent; whose market share is shrinking; whose outlets in Europe have been sold; whose personnel are utterly inefficient; whose future depends on a mentally ill person?
We will always have to put up with the revulsion produced by the fundamentalists supporting Chavez; now they are ‘offended’ owing to the late wave of opinion against him. To them I can only say that the time has come for the people of Venezuela. Nowhere in this world (lest of course Cuba, North Korea and other rather disgraceful places) have communism and barbarism chance of success and Venezuela will not become one such system. Madrid has just witnessed a terrible and tragic event, yet the leftists instead of condemning the terrorists are banking on the issue to voice all sorts of accusations towards Aznar, Blair, Bush et al. We know where they stand and payback time is already here.
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