VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: Excuse me a cotton-pickin' moment, but didn't Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias tell the national several weeks ago that he was going to suspend his Sunday TV 'Alo Presidente' show until after the November 23 local and regional elections? I know my hearing may be getting rather dim, but I did have my new digital hearing aid plugged in ... and I'm absolutely sure that that's what he said...But here we have Venezolana de Television (VTV) back with a three-hour 'spectacular' yesterday, Sunday, doing the same old, same old 'Alo Presidente' stunt -- this time with US actor Sean Penn in tow -- in yet another outside broadcast from Sucre State, about 250 miles east of Caracas.
Just a side-thought: How much does Penn get paid for the corporate personality sponsorship gig?
Of course, wasn't it Shakespeare who said "a rose by any other name smells just as sweet" ... but conversely this broken promise by Venezuela's very vocal leader is just another in a shed-load of broken promises that are dragging his once-hopeful administration down the tube. If the President himself can;t keep a promise, how on earth can we expect anyone else in his bunch of Cabinet desk-pilots to navigate Venezuela through the troubled waters that undoubtedly face it. In the name of democracy does it not behove a rational government to abide by its undertakings unless, of course, there's a State of Emergency declared.
Yes ... Chavez was back on Venezuelan TV screens AGAIN yesterday in his three-hour telethon to call for "unity and more unity" from his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) supporters in Sucre State where, apparently, the greatest danger lies in the fact that, as Chavez perceives it, local government "traitors" have turned their backs on the "Bolivarian Revolution."
Using his bully-pulpit to maximum effect Chavez claimed again and again that the opposition "has the sole objective of overthrowing him in 2009" and, for that reason, he warns his "revolutionaries" that they can NOT allow their opponents "to gain positions of power" in the regional and municipal elections on November 23. He emphasized that "we must put aside any personal opinion, any differences, that might exist at this moment ... we need unity, and more unity, to ensure victory on November 23!"
Of course he was directing his call for unity to already branded "traitors" in the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) and Patria Para Todos (PPT) who have distinct variances with the thrust of the President's red-shirted PSUV activists who, according to reports from across the country, are getting rather out of hand in their efforts to enforce compliance with the new party's structure, originally intended to unite Venezuela's panorama of leftist splinter groups under one presidential banner. PCV and PPT's defiance of a central edict to "unite ... or else" has only created further divisions within Venezuela's more rational political colors who see the current tendency within PSUV as a reincarnation of some kind of 'Kristalnacht' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht with motorcycle "enforcers" terrorizing ordinary members of the public who are not visibly red-bereted or red-shirtedly "with" the Chavez monopoly on governmental power.
Significantly, an opposition candidate for the mayoralty of an eastern Caracas municipality, Carlos Ocariz (who has a 16% lead over the Chavez candidate) had had to take refuge for his life in a security vehicle after rampaging Chavez supporters threatened to tear him limb from limb, hurled bricks and stones and assaulted campaign workers. Justifiably Ocariz later told reporters ''the government wants to polarize the country!'' As if it wasn't already polarized more than enough as it is!
As Ocariz sees it, PSUV wants to turn the November 23 elections into a quasi-referendum on Chavez, principally because the opposition defeated a constitutional reform referendum last December that would have given Chavez a series of powers that he has recently sought to impose anyway through a special emergency presidential decree facility granted to him by the National Assembly (AN) for 18 months which ran out at the end of June.
A significantly more united, rejuvenated and democratic opposition in Venezuela has attempted to get Chavez and his list of electable gubernatorial and mayoral candidates to focus on concrete proposals, but daily hysteria is drummed up in repetitive national TV "chains" (political broadcasts, mandated to be broadcast on all air-to-air radio and TV stations) in which unsubstantiated claims of impending presidential assassinations or coup d'etat plots are spun, clearly, to frighting the bejeebers out of ordinary the Joe Public (Juan Gonzalez) who would rather concentrate on earning a daily crust of expensive bread -- inflation is Latin America's highest at an obscene 35% -- rather than be force fed raucous rhetoric from either side of the widening divide that is Venezuelan politics today. "A lot of young people have been killed!''
- With 22 governorships up for election and some 320 mayoral offices, the opinion polls say that Chavez' PSUV is losing greatly. Perhaps significant of the forces against Chavez is the fact that his ex-wife, Marisabel Rodriguez is running for Mayor of Barquisimeto, in western Lara State, on an anti-Chavez ticket that the polls say she has a shoe-in to win.
Caracas Metropolitan University political scientist Anibal Romero says that Chavez is likely to lose control of eight governorships and more than 100 municipalities and that such a defeat will be a tremendous slap in the fact to Chavez who, logically, cannot afford to see any more mayor's offices or governorships in opposition hands!
Such a setback will very obviously help to reduce Chavez' substantial control of control the military, the Central Bank and the Judiciary ... adding to Chavez' constitutional complications inasmuch as he had effectively organized the legally questionable disqualifications of a series of extremely strong opposition candidates on unproven corruption allegations that were very obviously politically motivated.
With President Chavez broken promise on 'Alo Presidente' (or any other monicker) Sunday broadcasts, perhaps a resolution could be found in an 100% blackout of all political broadcasting on Venezuelan radio and television for the next month leading up to the November 23 local and regional elections ... you could call it a "cooling off" period like they have in many European countries ... but it would give respite to Venezuela's 25 million population to get on with the basic elements of day-to-day living the best they know how.
But, let's wake up to reality! It ain't gonna work!
Just how the heck would Venezolana de Television (VTV) and Globovision 24/7 TV news be able to pad out the remaining 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds of daily broadcasting if anti- and pro-Chavez politicking were suddenly to be culled from their scheduling...
I mean, does Hollywood have enough Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse cartoons to cover that very positive eventuality?
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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