Why rebels rebel...

www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: The rebellion of the PDVSA managers and technicians ... regardless of how it is perceived by different people ... has good reasons. I consider this rebellion as one of the most wonderful examples of institutional loyalty I have ever seen in Venezuela, and the only example of a collective decision.

The reasons behind this decision can be understood by analyzing the nature of true professional managers. Already in 1918, Weber predicted that the big showdown of the 20th century would be between professional managers and professional politicians.

Later, Putnam and others (Harvard) detailed the characteristics of both groups, some of which are:

Professional Managers.

1. Take a long time to be educated, have formal schooling
2. They have long and ascending careers (marathonists)
3. They go up thru a ladder based on performance
4. They work within pre-existing values, norms and procedures 5.Their process of decision-making is collective
5. They show loyalty to the Institution

Professional Politicians.

1. They are graduates of the University of "Life"
2. They tend to have brief and descending careers
3. They can go up on the strength of a 30 seconds speech
4. They abide by no rules, create their own
5. They are loyal to men or tribes

Being so different, it is hardly surprising that an organization, led by managers or by politicians, should also show drastic differences.

In the case of PDVSA, this company was managed professionally for 24 years. During this period it had a President every 3.7 years ... their executives were selected on the basis of merit. The orientation of the company was strongly commercial, designed to make a profit. Its operation was largely respected by the political sector.

But during the last 3.8 years, it has been politicized by Chavez, and it has had a President every 8 months. Its executives have been selected on political and ideological grounds ... one has been mentally unstable, one has a criminal record and one had an obsessive hatred of the managers he was supposed to work with.

The orientation of the company became political and designed to serve as a source of ready cash for the government.

Under professional management PDVSA was a company of the First World.

Under the political control of Chavez it has rapidly become a Third World company.

Why, then, rebels rebel?:

Because they can not see their company under the Presidency of the mentally unstable; of someone with a criminal record or of someone who hates the organization..

Because they can not accept that a company so important for Venezuela should change Presidents every 8 months,

Because they can not accept that company installations should be used for political events,

Because they can not tolerate seeing the headquarters taken by violent, armed groups and social lumpen,

Because they can not accept that the company should be politically controlled by the President of the country,

Because they can not accept the breaking down of the company into uncoordinated, regional entities.

In summary, they rebel because they can not passively accept the destruction of the company they have created and made into one of the most important petroleum companies of the world.

Each one of us has to have an ethical posture in life ... there are many events that fall within the zone of moral indifference, to which we need not react in any particular way. There are events that demand from us a moral obligation, based on the principle of minimum altruism.

This means that we have to commit ourselves to be of help, but without real sacrifice (donating 1-5% of our salary to the poor, perhaps?) ... but there are events that call for maximum altruism, that call for maximum commitment short of total sacrifice. No one is morally obliged to react heroically.

However, this is what the rebels of PDVSA have done.  They have put their careers, their economic well-being, their family life, their personal ambitions, on the line.

They are not talking money.

They are not talking power.

They are demanding respect for the institution which is the economic bloodline of Venezuela, and which is being destroyed by a bunch of demagogues.

They have behaved as heroes.

Knowing many of them in person ... knowing how they were trained ... being familiar with the values of the organization they came to cherish ... I am not surprised that they reacted in this way ... I am not surprised that they remain steadfast, unmovable in their convictions ... loyalty by conviction is indestructible.

Loyalty bought (such as the one a portion of the military had for Perez Jimenez and now for Chavez) usually ends abruptly ... when the money or the privileges are no longer available. He who buys loyalty invariably ends up as hostage of the people he buys.

Modern 'janizaries' will overturn their caldrons at the first indication that their leader is weakening.

In summary, rebels rebel when they can no longer live in a moral environment which violates their principles and innermost convictions.

They have read John Locke, John Stuart Mills, Martin Luther King.

They have read the categorical imperative of Kant.

Rebels rebel when their decision ... no matter if successful or failed ... becomes morally unavoidable.

As Luther said: "Here I stand. I can do no other..."

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.  In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort.  You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email ppcvicep@telcel.net.ve