VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: In my email box this morning was a message from a foreign investor concerned about the "state of affairs" in Venezuela, expressing continuing confusion over what the Venezuelan government's true intentions are and whether or not the Chavez government will be able to deal properly with a raft of problems ... most of his own, or his command executives' making."Sorry to say it," the investor wrote, "but the biggest factor effecting Venezuelas' future economic stability is the incompetence of its own government officials ... not the greed of foreign investors ... investors just expect business to be carried out in a timely, professional manner, like it should be!"
The communication was in response to a recent editorial in which I had pointed out that there's little to be gained from hassling Venezuelan officials at the Ministries of Basic Industries & Mines (Mibam) or the Environment Ministry (MinAmb) since they are generally subject to an ineffective gag order from senior management that only contributes to unconfirmed news and often hostile comment getting out from the inner sanctums of officialdom by other means, usually via disgruntled wage-slaves who couldn't give two hoots about an edict from the slave-master so long as their identity is not revealed.
While, elsewhere, it is something that senior business and government executives fully understand i.e. that you have to keep the troops happy to ensure your own position will not be undermined by internal or external information leaks, it is a concept that seems to have passed entirely by Venezuelan government ministers, ambassadors and their ilk. Understandibly, perhaps, they react with shock, horror, when they find that underlings speak confidentially about their woes and concerns with journalists and that their insistence on channelling all information via boring press releases usually means that the horse has bolted even before they've entered the farmyard in any feeble attempt to close the stable door.
VHeadline has understood the complexity of Venezuelan ministerial attitudes towards the quest for accurate and timely information with the nett effect that we're blacklisted by more government departments than we care to number. The same goes for certain diplomatic postings around the world although the fact that many Venezuelan embassies are in the hands of rank diplomatic amateurs seems of little concern to the power brokers in the hallowed hallways of the Yellow House HQ of Venezuela's Foreign Ministry (MRE) in Caracas.
As readers of our Spanish-language edition will, from time to time, have learned, there is a witch's cauldron of discontent about to boil over at the MRE with political appointees unceremoniously replacing fully-trained and competent diplomatic staff with family and friends of certain individuals in the administration who, like their sponsors, have little understanding of the role that consular and embassy staff play in a modern world scenario.
One only needs to take a case in point ... Venezuela's London embassy, house in a rather shabby corner location close to the majestic (British) Natural History Museum, the imposing Victoria & Albert Museum and Brompton Oratory in fashionable South Kensington, only a stone's throw away from bustling Knightsbridge and the tourists' much-loved Harrods department store.At a first glance at the outside it's clear that Venezuela's London embassy has seen better days and the sombre outlook inside is perhaps symptomatic of the degradation into which the embassy and its occupants have forfallen since "Ambassador" Samuel Moncada acceded to the sinecure last fall, replacing Alfredo Toro Hardy who was posted to a key role as Ambassador to Madrid in Spain. While he admittedly had held offices of high distinction back home in Venezuela as a university professor and Minister for Higher Education, it quickly became obvious in London that he was but a pale replica of his predecessor as he set about dismantling the good diplomatic relations in Britain that Toro Hardy had succeeded in winning over a space of six-seven years previously.
Local embassy staff were quite ignominiously dismissed, to be replaced with Moncada ingenues still wet under the collar direct from Caracas and oblivious to the political climate in Labor/socialist Britain, Moncada appears to have sought counsel only with the extreme left, pseudo intellectuals -- often financed by the Westminster Group or even worse by USIS or its Swedish confrere -- as well as trade unionists and others on the make. Reliable information from within security services happily spoke of embedded sources close to Moncada and the embassy residence in Holland Park. In one sparse communication the ambassador himself expressed concern over telephone security issues so he must have been aware who may have been listening in on his not-so-confidential telephone calls.
Career professional diplomats might take such matters cautionary in their stride with a degree of outward panache, but paranoia and reclusivity are unhappy bed fellows in international diplomacy and Venezuela's diplomatic reputation in the United Kingdom capital has been on a slippery slope since last December when Moncada 'hit town'.
It was therefore not really surprising that when News Editor Patrick O'Donoghue and I made individual efforts to call both the embassy and the ambassador's residence following the May 1 victory of Boris Johnson to become Mayor of London, replacing Chavez' 'best-buddy' Ken Livingstone, that we were given short shrift and basically told to take a hike even though we had met and interviewed key officials in both candidate's mayoral line-up previous to the event and already knew then what has just become apparent in the public domain i.e. that conservative Johnson knows little or nothing about what is truly happening in Venezuela (why not Mr. Ambassador?) and has just decided to return the equivalent of $14 million to curtail an honorable agreement set up by Moncada's predecessor, Toro Hardy, to provide low-cost diesel oil to power London buses in barter exchange for know-how counselling on policing, traffic control and city environment ... matters on which London has excelled. Moncada's diplomatic incapacity and his callous neglect of the basic elements of compliance with an ambassador's job description have become apparent in the professor's series of failures in eight short months at Cromwell Road. The embassy is now a paper and string botch-up of its previous status ... and we're not just talking about the urgent necessity of a coat of paint.
The ambassadorial presumption that Boris Johnson should be an avid reader of his occasional musings in the communist Morning Star is simply too much to stomach. Moncada's focus on the choir of 'born again' Chavistas in London has quite naturally neglected any discourse with the majority of other Venezuelan citizens in the south-east of England, much less anywhere else in the United Kingdom including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland or even his side-representation to Dublin, Ireland. Quite frankly, if it were not for visiting delegations from Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and other more competent Venezuelan representatives, you might as well relegate Venezuela's London embassy to the ignominious status of some sea-shell republic in the South Pacific.
Yes, indeed ... "the biggest factor effecting Venezuelas' future economic stability is the incompetence of its own government officials" ... and isn't it about time that President Hugo Chavez woke up to the fact that his ambassadors need to be more "with the job" that diplomacy is all about. It's not just enough that Moncada has a picture of his presentation of diplomatic credentials to Queen Elizabeth II to display on the shelf ... the job is a little more demanding than that!
Roy S. Carson
vheadline@gmail.com
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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.
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