Venezuelan opposition - Blinkered and jumping through hoops

By Arturo Rosales* reports from Maracaibo, - Axis of Logic Exclusive Aug 30, 2007, 09:28

August 30, 2007, Maracaibo - What exactly is the Venezuelan opposition good at doing? A broad question perhaps but since President Chávez was first elected in 1998, the opposition managed to briefly oust him from power in the April 2002 coup d’état and then proceeded to all but destroy the economy and the relative gains made from 1999 - 2001 by sabotaging the oil industry.

The opposition is excellent at criticizing, lying and manipulating facts and figures in the private media in order to discredit the government and President Chávez in particular. It is brilliant at “making mountains out of molehills” by influencing public opinion that an insignificant event means that “Chávez is a dictator” and is going to “cubanize” Venezuela. There are just too many examples to quote here, but one ongoing theme is the alleged limitation on freedom of speech and expression.

Watching cable TV with the necessary air conditioning turned up full in my Maracaibo hotel room, I would go insane if I was obliged to watch RCTV Internacional and Globovision for two consecutive days.

Freedom of speech is constantly abused, news items covered almost hysterically, emotive language combined with equally emotive background music and videos are pumped out, all designed to appeal to the deep rooted social and political prejudices of the moneyed classes. This is the reason why so many middle class people cannot see the wood for the trees in terms of the social revolution taking place here, even though they have never been better off then now.

The middle classes believed that with constitutional reform just round the corner that Chávez intended to do the following – and remember that all these “leaks, rumors and ideas” come from the private media:

• Reform over 200 articles of the 350 in the 1999 Constitution. Wrong. Only 33 articles will be reformed
  
  
• Confiscate second homes, second cars, second TV sets and give them to the poor. This stupidity is not even worth commenting on. It’s like saying that if you have two women, Chávez will take one away.
  
  
• Force families with a spare room to let it to the homeless. Needless to say this only existed in the fevered imagination of the opinion makers.
  
  
• Nationalize all private clinics and schools. Nothing even remotely similar to this bourgeois paranoia is in the reforms
  
  
• Oblige people with double nationality to choose just one – either Venezuelan or Estonian, for example. Completely wrong again.
  
  
• Take away parents’ custody of children and hand this over to the State. The paranoia is now turning into a full blown psychosis.

Any level minded Axis reader will ask how people can be so….what’s the word…ingenuous believing this rancid pack of fear laden mendacities digested by the impressionable bourgeoisie.

The private media blinkers the rich and middle classes and has them jumping through hoops. And to make thing worse, the victims of these media campaigns then switch the same channels back on and swallow the next farrago of twisted lies and rumors. This is unbelievable but sadly true!

Going back to the original question of what the opposition is good at doing, well that’s about it. Nothing positive is ever put forward and if this group is ever to defeat Chávez democratically then they will need to have something to offer the Venezuelan population, such as a “national plan” to govern and develop the country.

Let’s look at their “plans”. Hmm…after Googling for an hour I cannot find anything on the Venezuelan opposition’s national plan for the country. That’s because if it exists it has not been made public and upon being made public, they would sink even lower into the political detritus of Venezuelan political history. Why you may ask?

Let’s take an imaginary scenario that the opposition manages to win the presidency and gain political control of the National Assembly and institutions. What would their policies be? Here is another list which is far nearer the truth than many readers may think:

• Privatize PDVSA and oil and gas reserves and the basic heavy industries of steel and aluminum and sell these key industries off to the highest bidder –i.e. the transnational corporations.
  
  
• Privatize all education and healthcare
  
  
• Privatize Social Security and let it be managed by Citibank, for example.
  
  
• Privatize telecommunications, electricity, gas and water supplies
  
  
• Dismantle exchange controls in the name of free market policies sparking hyperinflation – after the rich had changed their bolivares into dollars.
  
  
• Allow uncontrolled deforestation south if the River Orinoco and grant concessions to transnational mineral companies to extract gold, diamonds, silver and other valuable natural resources in Bolívar state.
  
  
• Free up prices of basic foodstuffs to ensure that their supermarket owning friends make a bundle at the expense of the poor. Close down Mercal.
  
  
• Cut taxes for transnational oil corporations operating in Venezuela – probably back to the 1% they were paying before.
  
  
• Starve the social missions of cash and destroy them thus plunging millions back into poverty.
  
  
• Invite the US military back to the main garrison at Fuerte Tiuna
  
  
• Kick out all Cuban doctors, educators and sports trainers. Break off diplomatic relations with Havana, Tehran and Minsk.
  
  
• Export oil just to the US and not to other South American and Caribbean nations
  
  
• Cancel the national rail plan so that Detroit can sell more vehicles
  
  
• Abandon any idea of Latin American integration since this does not suit the US or its interests in the region.
  
  
• Give the banks free rein to do what they please with interest rates, bank charges etc. making mortgages impossible to obtain unless you are super rich and fleece the general public.
  
  
• Hand all government funded house construction over to private contractors.
  
  
• Allow the police and National Guard to brutally repress peaceful demonstrations as was the case in the IV Republic.
  
  
• Political cleansing of all “chavismo” as a priority.
  
  
• Suspend the prison rebuilding and rehabilitation program currently underway, since the penal system is full of poor people who have never entered into their plans, and finally privatize the prisons.
  
  
• Change the country’s name back to Republic of Venezuela, abolishing “Bolivarian”.
  
  
• Hand over the Ministry of Communication and Information to the private sector so that the “truth can set all Venezuelans free”.

This is the national plan for Venezuela in the minds of most opposition spokespeople and politicians and it is clear as the light of day why it cannot be divulged to the general public.

The opposition’s spiritual home is in Washington and Miami and it is precisely for this reason that the above plans are already on the drawing board somewhere in Eastern Caracas and in the boardrooms of the US transnationals.

It’s a good thing that the nightmare scenario outlined above was only imaginary at this point in time. If it ever were to become a reality I would not like to imagine the consequences of bloody social upheaval it would cause – and don’t forget that these are the real plans of the Empire to be implemented by their lackeys living in Eastern Caracas.

These puppets are also “blinkered and jumping through hoops” for their masters in Washington and have been doing so since the 1961 Constitution was drawn up pledging unswerving allegiance to the US.

Nothing would have changed and Venezuela would once again revert to the status of a “US colony” in its back yard.

© Copyright 2007 by AxisofLogic.com

*Arturo Rosales is a seasoned journalist and Axis of Logic columnist based in Venezuela. His in-depth knowledge and refreshing analyses of current events in Latin America leave no hiding place for those who would allow transnational corporations to regain their economic grip on Venezuela and other Latin American countries who are rejecting Washington's neoliberal policies.