Currently ambassador to Cuba, Rodriguez Araque is one of the president's old faithful supporters, a former foreign minister and head of the state oil corporation, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
Friends and foe alike credit him with having turned PDVSA from an old-fashioned state oil company into a vehicle for social engineering through Chávez' welfare programs or "missions."
Announcing the appointment during his regular Sunday radio and television broadcast, Alo Presidente -- which was well short of normal length -- Chavez described Rodriguez Araque as having the necessary qualities: "experience, revolutionary, studious, honest and capable, a proven revolutionary."
The program was broadcast from a home for rehabilitating troubled young males at La Encantada in El Junquito. The home is run under the President's Negra Hipolita program for homeless youths, and Chavez took the opportunity to lash out at his younger critics. He did so in a tone of personal hurt, referring to yet another protest march by students last week. "Don't poison yourselves," he said, in what was quickly to emerge as a reference not just to drug addiction. "Some young ones go around full of hate, shouting Out With Chavez, and everything we do is for the young ones, for the children," he declared.
"It gives us much pain to see some lads, the day before yesterday chaining themselves and sent to put on a show," he said, implying the bright young things were being manipulated by shadowy elders. "It gives me pain, don't repeat this any more, they're children of 18 or 20 years, confused. It hurts."
Chavez launched a new "mission" for minors in the barrios to attend the needs of youngsters in vulnerable circumstances or at "social risk" and he formally approved the provision of resources for two new "rehabilitation" units in Lara state. As is by now customary, electoral issues were not far from the presidential mind. He claimed a recent opinion poll gave him an approval rating of 73.9%, and predicted victories for his supporters in Guarico state, where incumbent Governor Eduardo Manuitt is deemed to be distinctly off-message.
The President said that he would be off to La Havana today. There, he will presumably call in on his old and ailing friend and mentor, Fidel Castro, as well as Raul Castro, the apparently reformist-minded Cuban president.
Reports from Bogota claimed that a meeting was being arranged for next month between Chavez and his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe. The two tend not to get along with each other, will have much to talk about -- not least of all the already much-discussed brouhaha about Chavez' alleged connections with or to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and computer files supposedly from slain FARC "foreign minister" Raul Reyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment