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Maria Paez Victor
SINCE the election of President Hugo Chávez in 1999 there has been antipathy and deliberate media distortion of politics in Venezuela. Last Sunday, the Toronto Star (newspaper that self-identifies as liberal, broad thinking, progressive) published a defamatory article about the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. Once again the Canadian press goes on the attack against Venezuela, ridiculing and misrepresenting its president.
And if at any time you thought that it was the personality of President Chávez that offended the world press, think again because all that media aggression now focuses on his successor, President Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro is a tall, dark, handsome man, a good orator, intelligent and friendly, but he is not charismatic like Chávez. But who could possibly be like Chávez? He was a singularity. Maduro is the first to admit it and so repeats that he is not Chávez, but with the slogan “We are all Chávez” he spurs solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution of his government.
The Toronto Star is worried about inflation in Venezuela — but did it worry in the decade of the 1970’s when inflation jumped from 7.6 percent to 20.4 percent? Or that in the decade of the 80’s the average inflation rate was 19.4 percent until it reached 47.4 percent in the decade of the 90’s?
And what world newspaper or politician at that time forecast with undisguised glee the ruin of the Venezuelan economy? None. Which newspaper denounced the immoral excesses — mistresses, drinking, fraud and corruption — of presidents Betancourt, Leoni, Caldera y Carlos Andrés Pérez? None.
But now President Maduro is ridiculed for his symbolic language and, curiously, because he is not Chavez. I have just returned from Caracas where I witnessed that there is social order; people go out Christmas shopping to shops full of products, all anticipating the season festivities. There is, however, strong political activity because of the coming municipal elections on December 8.
It is so good to see a population that is politically alert, not like Canadian elections that seem to be done by sleepwalkers due to the lack of confidence that erodes political participation here.
Not so in Venezuela. The Communal Councils and the Communes are at the front of political activity; the government does not take a step without consulting them, and the participation of the communes in local projects is essential as they are its initiators.
Maduro has taken measures to combat what is called “ an economic coup d’etat”. Chileans know what this means because before the coup that overthrew the unforgettable martyr of the Americas, president Salvador Allende, the opposition with full support of the United States unleashed a terrible economic sabotage against Chile, with the aim of, as the sinister Richard Nixon stated: “to make Chile scream”.
And so it was. Venezuela has the advantage of learning from that experience and Maduro has taken the offensive with strong measures to control the economy, which have proved to be very popular. His popularity however was not in question.
In October he was considered the number1 most popular president in the Americas according to a survey by the international news outlet NTN24 and by the ICS network.
Corruption in the Venezuelan private sector works like this. It is an oil economy, the private sector is not the main sources of income, and instead of investing in their own country, the private sector prefers the comfort of importing, and depending on government largess.
If Venezuela let the bolívar float in the international currency market, there would be a spectacular exodus of capital because that class that believes it is “capitalist” is not. In truth, it is a bourgeois, parasitic, rentist class that produces nothing.
The merchants obtain dollars from the government at a preferential price of 6.30 bolívares supposedly because they are going to bring into the country, imported goods, which is not always the case. They then sell those goods as if the dollars had cost them the price on the black market, which could be from 60 to 80 bolívares.
Thus they make a profit of 200 percent, 300 percent even up to 1500 percent. Normally in capitalists countries merchants can obtain a profit of about 15 percent – but not even the drug traffickers have profits like those of the corrupt Venezuelan merchants.
Maria Páez Victor, Ph.D., lives in Toronto. This article is reproduced from Trinicentre.
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