When do you think a shred of evidence is needed to support libelous accusations
<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 By: David Cabrera
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 13:24:07 +0100 From: David Cabrera davidckr@yahoo.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: nothing more than back-to-back trash talk
Dear Editor: I have a little problem that I saw fit at this moment for you to help me figure out. It seems obvious to me that what Mr. Coronel and Mr. Heck are getting into is nothing more than back-to-back trash talk, some kind of personal grievances that both are determined to war about until nobody knows when.
But I have to be realistic this time ... <a href=www.vheadline.com>although there may be things that I agree with Mr. Heck, at least I have to recognize that he's been honest enough as to declare himself a supporter of Chavez and his policies. I suppose it is because he identifies himself ideologically with the Venezuelan political process or because he simply likes the way Chavez tells his speeches, who knows.
The truth of the matter is that Mr. Heck, as also Mr. Coronel, speaks and writes what's on his mind.
Now, while reading <a href=www.vheadline.com>Mr. Coronel's articles, I also find a lot of discrepancies and contradictions that are hard to disguise. Take for example what hr wrote in his reply to Mr. Heck, where he insinuates that Chavez has his own paid personnel ready to combat letter-oriented criticism, and this he says is based on the fact that people for one reason or another realize that what he writes in his articles is solely HIS point of view ... not that of others who find his writings dubious and untrue in many cases, or they maybe would disagree with him because they are Chavistas.
Thus, in my opinion, it is simplistic and unprofessional that he does away with criticism by simply saying that those people are government-hired men determined to make him look bad. Well, if that is the case, one can judge by looking at his credentials as Salas Romer's campaign advisor and deduce that he just doesn't limit himself to answer for Mr. Salas although it is not necessary to name him to make his point ... but that he is also engaged in an anti-Chavez campaign on behalf of Mr. Salas through journalistism. I am positive he wouldn't want to be called somebody else's puppet ... but if one uses his methods of containing criticism, it would be fair then to say that Mr. Gustavo Coronel will be welcome to shut up, after the referendum, because it is obvious that Chavez won't lose it and Mr. Coronel's boss is doomed to failure if elections are to be held.
On the other hand Mr. Coronel, I could see that you love to talk about the "dictatorial tendencies" embedded in Chavez' government. I would like to ask you then, how many times has your house been raided by the government's secret police because of your political positions, as you know it was common to happen in past governments when the President at-the-time would get rid of bothersome journalists? Or how much time have you served in prison due to the same reasons?
In case you feel like making analogies between the present and the past, I recommend you to talk to Dr. Marcel Granier so he could broaden your mind with regard to compliant media and government, bribes, jailed journalists, and all about restrictions on freedom of speech in past years. Undoubtedly, one of Dr. Granier's favorite subjects he would want to share with you would be the scandal behind the El Diario de Caracas back in the eighties.
About the PDVSA affair, there are certain things that I have to agree with you, one of them being that it is wrong to call all of the fired personnel saboteurs and terrorists. You have a point with that, but you fail to address properly the complexity behind the issue. For example, you claimed that the values which guided the real PDVSA were "Meritocracy," "apoliticism" and "professional management."
- Would you mind telling me what real PDVSA was that one ... the Calderon Berti's PDVSA? Or the Luis Giustis PDVSA?
What type of meritocracy was that one that allowed Calderon Berti and Luis Giusti to handpick their friends from COPEI and Maraven to hold key positions in the company, pretty much a la Cisneros and his Pedro Tinoco in the Banco Central during the CAP years?
Would you mind describing the "professional management" that so characterized PDVSA when the magazine America Economia ranked it first in turnover income but at the same time among the least efficient Latin American corporations?
What kind of professional management is that which has almost inverted the state royalties and operational costs relation of 80-20% in 1976 to 20-80% twenty-four years later?
As far as I'm concerned, you don't have to be a prominent economist to figure out that the logic behind all corporations is to maximize profits and reduce costs as possible, then why shouldn't the same principle apply to a state-owned company?
Isn't an excess of costs to keep almost a substantial part of the personnel doing office jobs in Caracas, where there is not a single oil-field? And most important of all, why a handful of managers claim to themselves the right to decide the fate of a state-owned company whose shareholders are the 23 million-plus Venezuelans who are entitled to benefit from it?
Don't you think that by recycling petrodollars through outsourcing and joint ventures it responds only to the interests of those doing business inside it (Giusti, the former managers, UNOCAL, SAIC, including countless of other subsidiaries) and that by allowing PDVSA go the path it was taking it was going to lead eventually to its privatization?
Don't you realize either that the strategies of transnational oil capital are not compatible at all with the national interests of our country, that one of the biggest aims for people like Cheney and Bush is to undermine the efforts of oil-producing countries on protecting their exports, pretty much like the US protects its own?
When you carefully study these issues you would surely make clear conclusions as to whom the dismissed professional management was really working for.
You also like to talk about fascism. You accuse Mr. Heck of being a fascist, because you surely expected people such as myself to jump happily, party around or to sit idly while seeing how our oil corporation was literally being destroyed, including pirate-hijacking of oil tankers, damaging pipelines, valves, electric systems, computers, and countless other marvels that cost us all more than $5 billion.
So we are supposed ... including a Chavista like Mr. Heck ... to celebrate such noble achievement in the name of democracy? On top of that, Chavez-haters were supposed to sacrifice to get the tyrant out (to borrow Carlos Ortega's words) all while Carlos Fernandez sacrificed himself in Aruba by drinking whisky under a hot and pleasant Caribbean sun, and the meritocratic Juan Fernandez traveled on private jets all around Venezuela to lead the resistance against the "barbaric dictatorship" of Hugo Chavez.
But, incidentally, it was not them but the "mas pendejos" who had to carry the burden of the so-called strike by making hours and sometimes one-day-long lines at the gas stations, watching 24/7 sickening propaganda on TV throughout the month and part of the next one, and suffering a corporate lock-out nationwide.
At the end Chavez remained in power, broken promises were easily forgotten, and the entrepreneurs who stopped during the strike started a firing exodus that surpassed that of PDVSA ... but you stopped short of calling these people fascists maybe because you were optimistic that by the methods they employed, Chavez would eventually be overthrown.
Unfortunately for you and the meritocratic warriors, the end was another one. However, it just shows that the term fascism, terrorism or other epithets are only to be used when the enemy ... in your case Chavez, his hordes and Oscar Heck ... dare to denounce actions that led to irreversible damage for the nations economy and to us all. In fact, when a real fascist attitude such as that witnessed in the following days after last-year's coup, it logically did not elicit outrage or condemnation at all from you, because of course, it was not Chavez who killed the 70 people during those two precious days of democracy, it was instead Carmona and his associates who gave the orders.
But you know, this was not fascism, people with a mindset to blame Chavez for the evils of the society since 1998 would have you believe that these murders during the post-coup days were a product of measures to keep the public order from focuses of resistance pretty much like the euphemisms the media and the government employed in the 1989s genocide better known as El Caracazo.
Or at a lesser extent, take the assault on the Cuban embassy last year for instance. That was not an act of fascism they say, and it weren't hordes the people who behaved themselves that day like what they usually accuse Chavistas of being. Instead, the opposition hordes are commonly presented as peaceful demonstrators, such as those who smashed the windows of diplomatic vehicles, deprived them of electricity and water and threatened to lynch them if they didn't hand over suspected Chavistas hiding in the embassy.
- Mr. Coronel ... did you, in the name of all of your countrymen, condemn, this act of fascism?
Judging from the high morals that you withhold, don't you agree and ... to use your own words ... that these events could be subject to penal action?
Don't you also think that by the media denying or justifying these actions would make it unacceptable for honest people like yourself to bear?
What about the humble people who are not thugs and criminals, and happen to be hardworking laborers or housekeepers that support Chavez, when all they read is hatred toward them in the newspapers, and toward anything that smells like Chavez and to what they identify with?
Who is alienating who then?
Or when the media comes with fancy stories such as Aristobulo Isturiz buying luxurious yachts, why didn't you Mr. Coronel ask for a shred of evidence to support the libelous accusation?
It seems to me that you simply don't care, that's about it.
After all it is Chavez' supporters who are being attacked, so why should you bother to raise concern about their constitutional rights? As long as it is Chavez and his supporters who denounce what they consider wrong, then that's when you think that a shred of evidence is needed to support libelous accusations.
Therefore Mr. Coronel, I think you should respond appropriately to criticism without falling yourself into the same standards of Ybelise Pacheco's journalism.
I think that you are entitled to have your opinions and to express them as well, but if credibility and respect mean anything to you, I guess you should be more objective and fair before getting into blame game and citing vague examples to back your statements and insulting others who don't share your views.
The same goes to Mr. Heck of course.
David Cabrera davidckr@yahoo.com Caracas, Venezuela