VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: While I know from bitter experience that it would send the more political than professional hacks at Venezuela's Ministry of Communications & Information (MinCI) into fits of apoplexy, I can only emphasize that they should scurry back to their school benches and take lessons in media relations from their counterparts at the Caracas Chacao municipality offices!Leading up to last Thursday's momentous condemnation of Venezuela's peculiar "respect" for human rights, I had tried (unsuccessfully, I might add) to contact Venezuela's imposingly titled "Ambassador for Europe" Alejandro Fleming at his usual haunt at the Venezuelan embassy in Brussels-Belgium (telephone +332 6390340) where 1st Secretary Fonseca informed me that His Excellency had already flown the coop back home and that I should call his Caracas-based PA (telephone +58/212.806.4609) where a surly "lady" curtly told me "no esta" (he's not here!) and gave me a whole string of obfuscations that basically duplicated Venezuela's London Ambassador Moncada's regular somewhat-less-than-ambassadorial "no quiero habla con Uds" dismissal to enquiries.
Persevering in our quest for Venezuela's inexplicable explanations on how come a bunch of opposition candidates for public office have been "criminalized" without benefit of judicial proceedings, we got back to 1st Secretary Fonseca asking to speak with the Charge d'Affairs at the embassy instead.
- Nope! The Charge d'Affairs was in Strasbourg-France, but we were told that he get back to us immediately on a democratic offer to give solid radio network airtime to ANY possible explanation the Venezuelan government's emmisaries could articulate.
Okay! What about the other side of the frame? Yes, former Venezuelan Ambassador Milos Alcalay was at the 2-star Victoria Garden Hotel (telephone +333/9022.4343) in Strasbourg and apart from some initial confusion when I addressed him "Bonjour Monsieur," he was able to switch from French to Spanish to English quicker than a dog can wag its tailm and I was very courteously given an update on what was happening at the European Parliament.
Yes, Caracas (Chacao) Mayor Leopoldo Lopez -- one of the significantly not-even-charged-with-crime "criminal" opposition candidates who had been excluded from running for public office -- HAD been in Strasbourg the day before, and he was flying back to Caracas meanwhile.
So ... without laboring too much on the mechanics of how we get news and views of what is happening in Venezuela ... we contacted the Caracas Chacao municipal offices and, without much difficulty spoke with Mayoral assistant Astrid Redmond who listened patiently to our invitation for the Mayor to come on Thursday's radio show at 12.30pm Caracas time (1.00 pm New York). For one reason or another, principally because he (Lopez) had already scheduled a local press conference at precisely the same time as our live broadcast was taking place from Eagle Point (Oregon, USA) to more than 1,000 radio stations around the world, it was "difficult..."!
- Very much to her professional credit, Astrid stuck with it and at least tried to get Mayor Lopez on the line before John Sanchez in New York hit the sign-off music at the end of the day's VHeadline Venezuela Newshour radio show, and in a series of telephone calls and emails we pledged to "try again" for Friday's show.
The Venezuelan opening music for the Friday show was already running and John Sanchez was doing his excellent best to hold the fort while producer Frank Steffan and 'yours truly' tried all possible means to link-up to Mayor Lopez' cellphone and go live ... Yes!
That's only part of the unfortunately all-too-frequent behind-the-scenes drama of trying to put together a live radio talk show five-days-a-week linking guests on different continents ... as well as time zones ... but, wiping the sweat from my brow, I was able to go on-air briefly to explain the delays to our international audience and to parlay with John awhile as Frank hbit the recall button more times than he likes to remember.
FINALLY! The Mayor was out of the elevator and walking to his car, we cued to air and then (cynically, as always happens!) we went to break and I had to small-talk with Poppy, Astrid and the Mayor for three off-air minutes until we were back on the show again ... John Sanchez opened up the second half, passed the intro over to me and I introduced the Mayor (now in his car driving through busy traffic headed for the autopista and out of the city). It was a battle but the the cellphone signal held, and the audio was audible, although at times it appeared that we'd lost contact as tall Caracas buildings got in the way!
Well ... yes ... it is LIVE radio!
Astrid and Poppy's diligence paid off tremendously since Mayor Lopez was clearly able to articulate the travesty of Venezuelan justice in which he and many other opposition candidates have found themselves, condemned to a huge Chavista Gulag simply on the spurious suspicion that he might, somehow, be involved in some dubious unproven act of corruption that neither the police or any prosecutor with half an ounce of gray matter between his (or her) ears would venture to take to trial.
"Are you a criminal?" I pointedly asked the Mayor...
...dare to ask the same thing of New York Mayor Bloomberg, and it's a sue bet
his "heavies" would move in rapidly to have you removed from the Mayoral
proximity and perhaps a spotlighted grilling by his NYC equivalent of the Secret
Service!
But no! Caracas Chacao Mayor Leopoldo Lopez convincingly, and satisfactorily, answered the question in complete contrast to President Hugo Chavez' rebuttal of a BBC reporter, some time ago, who dared to ask a question that he (Chavez) immediately labeled as "stupid -- I'm NOT going to answer that!"
Were the "exclusions" condemned just the day before by the European Parliament in any way justified? NO! WHY? Because ... the details flowed nimbly from Mayor Lopez tongue and it was apparent that he's no bumbling fool when it comes to dealing with the media, local or international!
What's he then to do? He says he has a plan for Venezuela -- not just the Chacao municipality in Caracas. He had been stymied by the illegal "exclusions" edict from continuing his proven plan to reduce crime and to insitiute a series of other improvements within his municipality. He had been aiming to run for Metropolitan Mayor in the November 23 edlections, but that's now been back-burnered until the Chavez administration is made internationally to see sense and implement a little of the President's own declared 3Rs (Rectification, Reform and Revision) policy...
But, assuming that the Venezuelan government's "exclusions" policy will ultimately be thrown out with the bathwater -- admittedly too late for November 23 -- isn't President Chavez and his Attorney General rather shooting themselves in the foot by setting Leopoldo Lopez up as a major challenger for Chavez' own presidency when it comes up for electoral grabs in 2012?
Mayor Leopoldo Lopez is a realist who accepts the fact that life itself is transitory, and that with the state of deteriorating affairs in Venezuela these days, he himself could be the target of an assassin's bullet before he can come a'knocking on Chavez door! He says he wants to present a political project where ALL Venezuelans can be brought together to decide the future for ALL of Venezuela and not just a sector that is alienating itself more and more by its own rejection of democratic principals. He points to a perhaps natural fear of 'the bad old days' before Chavez was swept to power ... but, at the same time, sees that Chavez and his administration have definitely lost the plot.
He wants to unite -- NOT fraction -- the Venezuelan people in a way that is perhaps reminiscent of John F. Kennedy's call for the people of America to "ask not what your country can do for you".... etc., etc. He decidedly wants to see Barack Obama win the US presidential election and sees a positive future for Venezuela in a relationship that can be nurtured away from the Bushite fear-mongering on terrorism, where the United States is regarded around the world as being one of the principle promoters of terrorism.
Is this the young man who will ultimately help save Venezuela for Venezuelans?
Only the Venezuelan electorate has the faculty to make that decision, but, faced with sectarian alternatives across the board ... screaming at each other from both sides of an ever-widerning political divide ... it is as plain as a pikestaff and that nose on anyone's face that it will take a 'superhero' to unite the already disunited and to turn Venezuela back, again, into the "paradise" that God once deigned it to be ... before the Devil sent in Venezuelan politicians and their administrations to screw things up!
Roy S. Carson
vheadline@gmail.com
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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