Deafness is a sure symptom of fanaticism...

<a href=www.vheadline.com>venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, June 22, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

"No hay peor sordo que quien no desea oir" "The worst type of deafness belongs to those who do not want to listen" Old Spanish proverb.

"Chavez has utilized 60,000 minutes of national TV and radio hookups to distill his hate... in his "yagua" speech ... only two hours long ... he mentions "Chavez" twice as often as he mentions Bolivar ... he mentions revolution 16 times and democracy 9 times ... he uses terms like armed forces, army, soldiers, generals ... 207 times and citizens only one time ... he mentions coupsters 30 times ... traitors 6 times ... oligarchs 2 times ... squalids not at all ... Chavez shamelessly suggests that Venezuelan history started with him..." The Distillery of Hate; Antonio Pasquali, Venezuelan philosopher and communications expert Tal Cual, page 9, June 20, 2003.

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: My summary of a plan being put together by Venezuelans who are preparing for a probable post-Chavez transition has received at least two replies from followers of the current President. I would like to comment on those replies since it would serve to expand on some aspects of what I see as the Venezuelan tragedy.

I will comment, first, on the commentary by David Cabrera: What are the real incentives for Venezuelan right-wing and semi-fascist ideas?  The headline contains an archaic term (right wing) and an imprecise one (semi-fascist.... is that 50% fascist?).

A response is very disappointing for those who are waiting for concrete ideas on how to help Venezuela emerge from its most profound social and economic crisis since Ezequiel Zamora was alive and destroying the countryside. In fact, it looks as if the commentarist had essentially used my editorial as an excuse to exhibit his new-found knowledge on economic theory. He dedicates about one third of his reply to a description of neoliberalism in the US and China, mentioning Keynes, the "invisible hand," free market and so on ... all well and dandy, but mostly irrelevant to the issue at hand.

So that we are on solid ground, let me remind readers of what the Venezuelan reality looks like (percentages are approximate, as I am writing from memory, but within 10% or so):

• Poverty ... 80-85% of total population.
• Unemployment ... 22% according government ... 25% according the private sector.
• Inflation ... 35% according MVR member Rodrigo Cabezas, 45% according to the private sector.
• GDP for 2003 ... will fall between 10 and 15%, an historical record.
• Internal Debt ... has increased by a factor of six since 1998, to $12 billion.
• External debt ... stable at about $30 billion.
• Crime Rate ... second highest in Latin America. 500 murders per month.
• Quality of Governance ... next to last in Latin America, according the World Bank.
• International Competitiveness ... next to last, according the Davos Group.
• Index of Corruption ... second highest in Latin America, after Paraguay.
• United Nation's Human Development Index ... Dropped four places since 1998.
• Children in the Streets.... more numerous today than in 1998.
• 2003 Budget Deficit ... about $8 billion, new debt being sought.
• Agricultural production ... down about 10% according expert Hiram Gaviria.
• Food consumption in 2003 ... 35% lower than last year. This means hunger.
• Industrial production ... in chaos due to the government restrictions.
• Foreign private investment ... 60% lower than in 2002.
• Car sales  2003 ... 70% lower than in 2002, already considerably down from 2001.
• Currency controls ... foreign currency only available on the black market at Bs. 2,500 per US$.

These indices are just an example of the revolutionary fiasco, although they do not take into consideration the "intangible" components of the crisis, such as the hate, stress,  fear, frustration and indignation prevailing in society.

This explains why 75% of Venezuelans ... as shown by all available surveys ... reject the government today. It also illustrates why it is so important to have a plan to try to revert Venezuela back to normalcy. The experience of Chavez in the Presidency has shown us, beyond doubt, that Venezuela can not be efficiently managed by a charlatan, particularly when surrounded by inept collaborators.

Cabrera claims that "there is hardly anything new" in the plan. I ask: Why should there be "new" elements in the plan, besides those old and valid elements of reconciliation, private investment, justice for all, action over rhetoric? What should be new in a plan is the will to put it into motion. What is new about this plan is that it has been structured by a group of true democrats, in an open forum. This is a welcome change from the Chavez "plan", made as he goes along from Sunday to Sunday in "Alo Presidente." Depending on who he has been talking with, he will decide to create the vertical chicken coops, the route of the empanada, the Bank of Women or a new literacy plan staffed by Cubans, although the country has had over 92% literacy for years now ... without Cuban help.

The commentarist resents that the plan calls for military subordination to civilian authority ... something that is the norm in all developed countries of the world. He says that, then, the military will not be able to sell chickens anymore. Well, they probably will not. Frankly, military selling chickens while the Colombian guerrilla trespass our national borders with total impunity is not my idea of what an army should be.

We spend over $1 billion per year in military toys for these boys ... only good for parades three times a year. I say that this is money badly spent. More conceptually, military subordination to civilian authority is a fundamental ingredient of democracy. Countries which are not democratic ... like Cuba, Iraq and North Korea ... have had a military regime for many years. When we speak of progressive societies we term them civilized, not militarized. In a civilized society Generals do not burp on national TV.

Cabrera is also worried about the privatization of prisons ... he mentions the negative experience of  the Wackenhut Corporation in New Mexico. I am no expert on prisons, but I think that what can not continue is the present situation of our prisons. I go by the Tocuyito prison almost every day, and I am horrified by the sight of this filthy group of buildings which have 2,000 inmates originally designed for a capacity 600 . These inmates eat rats and snakes because money allotted to feed them does not reach the place.

The man responsible for this outrage is General Lucas Rincon Romero, the highest ranking officer in the Venezuelan Army and current Minister of the Interior & Justice ... the same man who asked Chavez to resign in April 2002 and obtained his resignation ... according to his report on national TV in the early hours of April 12th ... as everybody in Venezuela saw and heard.

Rincon Romero is also the same man who has been charged with illegal use of military funds, together with other generals, by no less than by the Military Comptroller.

While the commentarist is fully entitled to his views on the privatization of prisons, and he could well have some valid points in this regard, what he is not entitled to do is to say that "I happen to believe that all of these right wing and semi-fascist ideas should be looked upon carefully to discover the real incentives behind them..."

In plain English, he says that the promotion of the privatization of prisons has as its main objective making a buck or two i.e: the opposition is corrupt.

Well, this is insulting and does Cabrera no credit ... rather than predicting corruption in a future that seems a little distant, he should be protesting, like all decent Venezuelans, against the high levels of corruption present at this very moment within the revolutionary government ... a corruption which already involves many of the big fish and the small fish in the regime. His silence about the current reality contrasts with his sentencing of people he has never seen ... a selective ethical posture which is typical of the fanatical deaf.

Cabrera confesses to being all in favor of a "politically-oriented PDVSA." This is all I need to hear to calibrate his views. What he wants is what we now have ... a PDVSA in shambles, undergoing a power struggle while normal operations grow increasingly faulty, where maintenance has ceased, where exploration, research and training are words of the past. This current PDVSA is a mad house and if this is what he wants ... he can have it.

Mr. Elio Cequea's reply is much more to the point, no intellectual cellulitis here.

However, it shares many of the presuppositions which weakened Mr. Cabrera's posture. Mr. Cequea chooses to say that what the plan means by "national reconciliation" will be no more than "rapid elimination of subversive elements." I ask: why should reconciliation mean this rather than reconciliation? Mr. Cequea shows a deep distrust of the "others" which illustrate how successful the distillery of hate constructed by Chavez has been.

To almost every point of the plan, Mr. Cequea adds his own deformed vision of what he thinks the point "really" means ... economic recovery, to him, is "surrendering to the IMF." Self-financing of universities, to him, only means that no poor student can enter them (he has never heard of scholarships to the bright?). Military obedience to the civil authority only means that the army will be used to "disappear" people.

I have news for him. Today, the armed force in Venezuela is an instrument of popular repression at the service of a man, not at the service of the nation. With this attitude of distrust, Mr. Cequea, how can we solve the Venezuelan crisis by non-violent means?

• If distrust is at the bottom of this discussion, how can we ever hope to get out of this horrible mess?

You remind me of the patient who was to undergo a colonoscopy. The night before, he was put in a hospital room and, just before sleeping, he placed his glass eye in a glass of water by his side. Next morning they went to look for him and he, very nervous, drank the water and swallowed the glass eye. When the doctor inserted the instrument up the tract, the first thing he saw was the glass eye that seemed to be looking at him. Taken aback, he said to the patient: " Mister Smith. I am very sorry, but if you don't trust me, I will not be able to be your doctor."

Well, let us make an effort to be more trusting...

I refuse to join this insane tournament of hate and fear which Chavez has been very good at installing in our country. And. above all, never swallow your glass eye...

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.   You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email gustavo@vheadline.com