An open letter to Miss Kira Marquez-Perez
<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel
VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: When I started to read Miss Kira Marquez-Perez's editorial "Damaging our Venezuela with his fanatical rhetoric", the headline gave me the impression that she was referring to President Chavez ... but I soon found out that the person she saw as doing all that damage to Venezuela was ... ME!
This led me to read the piece more carefully, as I now realized that many of her comments were connected with me.
The first comment she makes is that "Money seems to be the key word for many opponents to the government of President Hugo Chavez..." This is not a fortunate opening, since millions of Venezuelans who reject Chavez do so at the expense of their tranquility and financial stability. I'm sure she knows that.
The implication that we who oppose Chavez for his ineptness, his vulgar and aggressive language, his tolerance of corruption, his lack of real concern for the poor and his authoritarian style of leadership, do it for money is counterproductive to her position.
The world, Miss Marquez, is not only made of criminals and corrupt people, but also of decent and idealistic persons. I assume that you are one of them. I would love to be considered decent too ... unless you have some evidence to the contrary ... in which case you are welcome to come up with it.
Your editorial abounds in adjectives: "greedy, treacherous, opportunistic...." I would rather read about facts as arguments against my comments. I wrote about facts: explosions taking place, oil spills that are well documented, disarray and anarchy within PDVSA, the guerrilla history of Ali Rodriguez ... who specialized in explosives. I did not invent these things.
Why, then, should my "rhethoric" be fanatical?
A fanatic is someone who asserts something for which he has no shred of proof or one who insists on something against the weight of evidence. Am I in this category?
I know that you are particularly disturbed about what you consider to be my "destabilizing comments about the Venezuelan economy." You feel that I am purposely creating a bad image of Venezuela abroad, out of hatred for Chavez. This is a very important issue and I would like to comment on it. You see, the image of our country is highly damaged ... not by those who oppose Chavez, but by Chavez himself and by his actions.
Let me briefly list some of them: Acceptance of the Colombian narco-guerrillas as friends of Venezuela. The romance with Fidel Castro, one of the last specimens of the Latin American 19th century type dictator. The ideological affinities with the outlaw governments of Hussein and Khadaffi. The authoritarian style of his government. The abysmal mediocrity of his collaborators. The way he has intervened in PDVSA. The manner in which he has divided the country into two tribes: Chavistas and Oligarchs. The flamboyant manner in which he travels around the world in a $65 million airplane, trying to tell others how to run their business when he can not run his own business at home. The aggressive speech and the inconsiderate breach of protocol he systematically commits in international meetings.
I could go on and on, but these examples will suffice to explain the discredit of the Chavez government in international circles.
To criticize this government ... to say that Chavez has led to an economic collapse of the country ... to argue against his exchange and price controls ... the horrendous poverty ... the 120% devaluation, the highest inflation in Latin America ... is not trying to discredit the country but trying to place the blame where the blame has to be placed: in the failure of this government to conduct a reasonable economic program, a political program of democratic coexistence and a sensible social policy.
- We have to make a clear distinction between the love for our nation and being the pimps of this historical freak called Chavez.
When I criticize multinational companies helping Rodriguez' PDVSA, I am not attempting to damage PDVSA or Venezuela. Quite the contrary ... I am saying that the best help PDVSA and Venezuela can obtain is the rapid return of PDVSA to a professional, non-political management. Any help received from multinational companies by the improvised staff running the operations today, will tend to retard the return to the PDVSA that our country needs.
The word "opportunistic" that you mention in your editorial can very properly be applied to the multinational companies which are using the chaos within PDVSA to position themselves.
What I remind them is that such positioning might not be permanent or stable ... unless it is based on sound ethical principles and on the empathy that must exist between the company and the host country, rather than the host government.
In summary, I love Venezuela, therefore I reject Chavez.
Chavez does not speak for my country or for me ... by speaking against his government, I have the conviction that I am not damaging my country but helping it.
It is clear that you feel differently.
I respect your position and I think that your intentions are perfectly honest...
And so are mine...
your friend, Gustavo Coronel
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 gustavo@vheadline.com