What's up with Teodoro Petkoff?
By Aleksander Boyd
03.12.05 | Readers of this site would probably know by now that I have the slightest of simpathies for erstwhile communist guerrillero Teodoro Petkoff. It continues to baffle me how almost all my fellow bloggers seem to be infatuated with the 'tough talker' editor of Tal Cual. Political preferences aside I want to comment about Petkoff's repeated public calls for postponement of elections. Is he, perhaps, offering an olive branch to Hugo Chavez by trying to prevent the huge embarrasment the would-be dictator is to suffer tomorrow should the farcical elections do occur? Or is he pretending to ingratiate himself, posing as the spokesman of the servient 'rational and democratic opposition'? In any case, what percentage of the population, and more importantly how many political parties, feel that Petkoff's offerings are worth considering? Perhaps people in Venezuela are best suited to respond to that. Certainly, I absolutely disagree with his double standards and predicament.
Tomorrow's elections will be a one-man race. Inspiration and accuracy do visit Petkoff's mind every now and then, and so his comment concerning the damage to be inflicted to Hugo Chavez's democratic credentials, by running a one-party election, will be dire and of unpredictable repercussions in both the national and international arenas. In the current conditions, it is impossible for chavismo to produce the much touted 10-million voter turn out. This begs for a number of questions:
1) Why is Petkoff calling for postponements if what all democratic Venezuelans want is precisely for the world to see how undemocratic Chavez truly is?
2) What purposes does he seek to achieve by providing damage-control advice to the Chavez regime?
3) Whoever told him that Venezuelans want to give a lease on life to the Castro-Chavez 'revolution'?
4) Should Chavez have the unconditional support of the masses, as he claims, and an infallible electoral machine that keeps him winning, why should he postpone an election?
5) Petkoff said recently that tomorrow's event will give Chavez the same democratic legitimacy of that of his Cuban mentor, who has not lost an 'election' in 46 years. Does that concern Teodoro Petkoff, and if so, care to explain why? So what's up Teodoro; whose game are you playing?
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