Shadowy billionaire Gustavo Cisneros in back-channel ploy uses Miss Venezuela plight
<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, May 22, 2003 By: Roy S. Carson
Having used the plight of beautiful Miss Venezuela 2003, Mariangel Ruiz to create worldwide headlines, shadowy billionaire Gustavo Cisneros has stepped in to save the maiden in distress by paying for the trip out of petty cash.
Cisneros had played the political violin strings with precision as he launched his media network into overdrive, with Miss Venezuela as the centerpiece, attacking the Venezuelan government saying that Mariangel could not attend the June 3 Miss Universe pageant in Panama because she (personally?) could not get the necessary greenbacks to pay for her participation.
The international PR coup had all the hallmarks of Cisneros' own shadowy participation in the April 11, 2002 coup d'etat against democratically-elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias but low-keyed the reality that Cisneros' television syndicate is literally rolling in US revenues from Spanish-language TV stations across America as well as his key participation in Time/AOL, Coca Cola etc. There was effectively "no way, Jose" that Cisneros was NOT going to have Miss Venezuela turn up for the event, considering the multi$ million revenues the Misses always make for the mogul.
Then, having garnered the worldwide negative publicity he so expertly craved against the Chavez Frias regime, Cisneros played his Howard Hughes' role to a T and called Panamanian organizers Tuesday to tell that Miss Venezuela will indeed be participating in the annual Miss Universe pageant ... he staged to rescue the "damsel in distress" in a supreme show to upstage the Venezuelan government, battling on a home front to contain the economic damage caused by the USA-backed coup d'etat last year and continued rebellion by corrupt elites.
Cisneros' VeneVision TV channel had claimed last week that foreign exchange controls imposed by President Hugo Chavez Frias had prevented it from obtaining $80,000 to send Miss Ruiz (23) to the pageant ... Miss Venezuela president Osmel Sousa had said his organization had the funds in the local bolivares but couldn't exchange them for dollars.
But the Cisneros organization ploy to discredit the government was neatly holed when Edgar Hernandez, the president of CADIVI (the government agency in charge of authorizing dollar sales) said the Miss Venezuela organization hadn't even bothered to apply for dollars ... but that he would consider granting a fast-track currency conversion if officially asked.
Venevision TV executives have remained resolutely mum following Hernandez' explanation and had persisted in their original claim that Venezuela's economic woes threatened Miss Ruiz' candidacy. Cisneros claims Chavez' government is cracking down on his personal freedoms while Chavez Frias says there is conclusive evidence to show that Cisneros had been involved in destabilization efforts against his reform government.