Paradise is a fitting destination for Venezuela's coup conspirators

www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 By: Roy S. Carson

VHeadline.com editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: There are occasions when I simply want to emulate the little boy in the Hans Christian Andersen story and yell out an anti-thesis to "The Emperor has no clothes!"

Put quite simply in the topsy-turvy scenario of a Venezuela gone 'loco' it's not the emperor who's naked but, instead, the bare-faced gall of an opposition that is about as far removed from constitutional and participative democracy as Vega is from Mars.

• They're quite literally so spaced out that it is difficult to determine if they will ever get their feet back on the ground or if they'll simply self-destruct like a New Year's firework display or fail to do anything more than splutter-out as they realize their own impotency.

The Emperors of Venezuela's opposition, having been faced with reality, are now either in hiding, have already fled the country or have been helicoptered to their luxury abode pending charges of willful and wanton destruction of the country we all love.  Okay, the beautiful land of Venezuela will still be there long after we all have shuffled off this mortal coil, but millions of children will be left with the dreadful legacy of four years of dishonesty bickering compounding more than 40 years of corrupt abuse of basic rights and democracy.

We're not talking here of the privileged 5% who hold up the bars in the Caracas Country Club, La Lagunita or Valle Arriba.

We're talking about the more than 18 million Venezuelans who have been driven into the depths of despair and poverty by a succession of evil and manipulative governments whose only thought was to line the feather-bedding of their Boston bank accounts and to retire to Florida when the goose that laid the golden eggs was all but slaughtered.

Our esteemed commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes fondly of a bygone age in which he was able to enjoy a 15-year-old whisky aboard a car ferry from Margarita en route to his family home in Carabobo State.  His version of reality is valid as the version that Venezuela's privileged classes prefer to view reality, but like the original Hans Christian Andersen story's Emperor what did that have to do with the real reality lived by millions of other Venezuelans.

Has Venezuelan incurred its massive foreign debts exclusively during the four years that Chavez Frias has been President?

Was "freedom" proclaimed from the battlements during Lusinchi's, CAP's, RJV's or Caldera's Presidencies?

Was Chavez the originator of the 1989 food riots?

Was Chavez the planner for Carlos Andres Perez' blatant corruption?

Was Chavez responsible for $11 billion going up in smoke when 18 banks were closed during the 1994 financial crash?

Plainly, the answer is NO!

Nor was Chavez responsible for the way in which Caldera's financial genius Luis Matos Azocar manipulated the movement of massive $ millions into forward-looking loans, foisted on the next-following regime to pay willy-nilly!

Forget the fact that Matos Azocar's sister was imprisoned for money-laundering in the United States.  Forget the fact that any journalist who dared to write about his nefarious practices was "sat upon" by Caldera hoodlums, or worse.

• I am reminded of the fact that pages had to be torn from Pan-Am's inflight magazine after Carlos Andres Perez took umbrage over an article which spelled out just some of his acts of corruption ... he even threatened to rescind Pan-Am's landing rights at Maiquetia, he got so mad!

Impeached, imprisoned and clearly unfit to ever hold political office again, CAP is nevertheless beatified by Venezuela's opposition as a salient memory of the lavishly corrupt privileges they enjoyed a decade ago ... corruption that brought Venezuela to the brink of the economic disaster that the opposition has perpetuated in a failed 2-month stoppage which saw Christmas repealed and Venezuela's international standing as one of the world's foremost oil exporters dragged through the mud.

And to what end?

They say Chavez Frias is a dictator!  With what cause?  Elected several times by a majority vote of the people, he is entitled to govern Venezuela for the next constitutionally convened period of years.

Uniquely among nations, there's Constitutional provision for a mid-term referendum on his Presidency.  But the opposition quarrels with the idea of the Constitution, decided-upon by a majority in a democratically-elected Constituent Assembly which reformed, among other things, a corrupt judiciary and set Venezuela on the route to the participative democracy it now enjoys.

But there's the rub.

The disloyal opposition doesn't like the fact that Venezuela's 80% poor should have any voice in their little clique of running a country, and so they stomp their little feet and demand that everyone does it their way, or nobody does it at all.

To hell with Constitutionality, to hell with democracy ... if Venezuela's opposition says it's the way to go, hey, it's the only way to go!

To hell with the courts, to hell with law enforcement and legal responsibility ... it's get away with what you can, as much as you can and for as long as you can that holds sway and current events are proving it.

Where else on this glorious earth would an anti-constitutional saboteur who has shown patent disregard for law & order and the country's constitution, be able to calmly sit himself down in a luxurious city restaurant to celebrate yet another day of haranguing the lawful government and plan the next day's sabotage itinerary?

Oh Dear!  And who are those nasty men who come in to the restaurant to take him downtown for questioning.  Forget the fact that his face is already well-known and the evidence against him piled higher than the twin towers at Parque Central ... the cops must first establish their documentary credentials to his satisfaction (no simple "Cops Freeze!" here) when dealing with such an Emperor.  No slamming the suspect up against a brick wall, frisking and handcuffing him.  No!

Venezuela's leading saboteur was conducted, perhaps rudely considering his Emperor status, to HQ for questioning.  And then ... to top it all ... he's given house arrest pending trial on such supremely serious charges and actually flown back home in a helicopter.

Can you just imagine Bush or Blair conceding such privileges to a common criminal who threatens to overthrow Washington or London?  Scarcely!

This Venezuelan Emperor, though, is not naked as the day he was born ... he's wearing Armani suits and other items from a wardrobe replenished during a New Year holiday on the island of Aruba ... a getaway vacation far from the mayhem he and his co-conspirators left behind for ordinary decent Venezuelan folk to cope with in the run-up to a non-celebration of Christmas and only more poverty to look forward to in 2003.

What would you do?  If it were down to me, I'd have Fernandez and Ortega transferred immediately to the La Planta prison in El Paraiso ... El Paraiso, Paradise ... a fitting destination for two common opposition thugs.