Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): The government and its pals in parliament may well rue the day they pushed Domingo Maza Zavala into retiring from his directorship at the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV). He was bad enough when he was on the board there, but now, if anything, he's even more outspoken. In remarks to the Union Radio website on Tuesday, Maza Zavala tore Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez Araque's Budget Bill to shreds, starting with a vote at the National Assembly (AN) to approve big pay rises – 42 percent or more – for legislators and high officials.
"Where's the austerity so much urged by the president?" he asked out loud. "This is in the opposite direction," he answered himself, noting that this was a long way from better distribution of incomes and welfare. The increase, he continued unabashed, was for "a reduced number of the population, the privileged of the regime, on high executives supposedly adherent to the cause of Socialism of the 21st Century." The authorities had to ensure efficiency in governance, he argued.
Building new hospitals and schools wasn't such a priority; what was important was that existing hospitals functioned well, that doctors were well paid, and it was much the same at schools. That very same morning, teachers in Táchira state protested in demand of pension contributions due since January 2005.
Maza Zavala insisted that the budget had to be revised in response to the world financial crisis. The government had to show it was capable of reorganizing the national finances in the light of a crisis that was undoubtedly going to bring economic recession to countries like Venezuela.
Then he latched on to a miserly target of 12,500 new housing units this year. These, he claimed, would be "conditioned on the creation of socialist cities" -- an aim to which Chavez sometimes refers. Cities, he remarked, weren't actually socialist in themselves.
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