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Espanol Discussion / In Venezuela: the poor find a new candidate who looks like them
« on: October 09, 2006, 01:06:46 PM »
In Venezuela: the poor find a new candidate who looks like them
By Gustavo Coronel
October 10, 2006
Caracas 07.10.06 | Libertador Avenue in Caracas was flooded with people rallying for the new national candidate Manuel Rosales. When he started speaking at noon, there were well over 100,000 people in the several miles long avenue and more kept coming. Italo Luongo, an analyst who is an expert at estimating attendance, spoke of about 200,000 people while polling expert V?ctor Manuel Garc?a estimated upwards of 340,000 people, a crowd that the opposition to the regime of Hugo Ch?vez had not been able to gather since the controversial presidential recall referendum of 2004.
Venezuela is a country that, in spite of having significant oil income, has fallen to levels of under-development and poverty close to Haiti and Zimbabwe and very far from Chile and South Korea, to name only two countries that were below Venezuela's international social and economic rankings in the 1970's. Venezuela's social and economic decline has accelerated in the last eight years, under the tenure of Hugo Ch?vez, due to his extreme ineptness in the management of the national wealth, to the high levels of corruption existing among his collaborators and to his interest in becoming a global revolutionary leader while neglecting domestic problems and needs.
Hugo Ch?vez won the presidency in 1998 on the strength of two main factors: one, his electoral promises and, two, the fact that he looked and talked like the majority of Venezuelans. His adversary, Henrique Salas-R?mer, although much more capable than Ch?vez, was defeated because he did not look or talk like the majority of Venezuelans. He was blonde, blue-eyed and a Yale graduate. He came across almost as an alien to vast sectors of the largely poor and ignorant Venezuelan population. Although I am no sociologist I have come to the conclusion that, in today's Venezuela, the look and cultural baggage of a presidential candidate is more important than his message or administrative experience. This is unfortunate since it limits the presidential possibilities of some of our best people, a fact that has to be taken into account. This particular component of our political equation was determinant in Ch?vez's victory in 1998. The majority saw in him someone who looked like them, spoke like them and, therefore, must have had their best interests in mind. They were wrong. Hugo Ch?vez proved to be a man of tyrannical tendencies, developing quickly an oversized ego, what Venezuelan psychologists such as Doctors Robert Lespinasse, Luis Jose Uzcategui and Franz Delgado Sr. (president of the Venezuelan Association of Psychiatrists), have called a narcissistic personality. Both Delgado Sr. and Dr. Mar?a Cristina Ortega, another Venezuelan psychiatrist, have defined Ch?vez as a sociopath. ("Ch?vez, la mascara de la cordura," Mar?a Cristina Ortega, Webarticulista.net, June 7, 2006). As a sociopath Ch?vez exhibits disdain for norms and values; lack of sensibility and empathy; inability to learn from his experiences; lack of stable affective links; a low threshold for tolerance; reactions of cholera when his desires are not complied with; hate and feelings of revenge; aggressiveness and tendency to place himself above the law. Aided by record oil income Hugo Ch?vez has developed grandiose aspirations of hemispheric dominance and is trying to create a global anti-U.S. coalition. In these efforts he has spent or committed no less than US$25 billion of Venezuelan money that could have been much better used to alleviate poverty and ignorance in our country. As result of eight years of this tragically inept performance Hugo Ch?vez is no longer perceived as a genuine voice for the poor by many Venezuelans who voted for him in 1998. His alignment with Fidel Castro, Mugabe, Ahmadinejad, Assad, the Colombian narcoterrorists, Hezbollah and Kim Jong-il, have disappointed and alienated millions of democracy-loving Venezuelans.
Enter Manuel Rosales
Early this year the opposition to Hugo Ch?vez started talking about a unified candidate to face Ch?vez on December 3rd of this year. Several possibilities came up and, finally, they agreed on backing the Governor of the State of Zulia, Manuel Rosales. I do not know what led to this selection but it could not have been better. Rosales is a Venezuelan mestizo, who looks like the majority of Venezuelans and who speaks the language of the majority. It is important to distinguish between plain language and gross language. Hugo Ch?vez speaks in a very obscene and aggressive manner. Rosales speaks so that all Venezuelans can understand him but he is not vulgar, he does not use machista expressions and he does not base his message in insults but in rational appeals to collective progress. His speech is all-inclusive; he does not discriminate between poor and rich.
Manuel Rosales exhibits some other features that appeal to the Venezuelan poor and to the middle-class alike. In the first place he is a former member of Acci?n Democr?tica (AD), a party that has had a profound influence on social and political Venezuelan life. AD is the party of Romulo Betancourt, the father of Venezuelan modern democracy, of Romulo Gallegos, the most beloved Venezuelan novelist and of Raul Leoni, a respected former president. This party also had less desirable representatives, such as Jaime Lusinchi, but it is said in Venezuela "all Venezuelans are adecos (AD followers) at heart." In fact, the 1998 electoral victory of Hugo Ch?vez was possible due to the vote of thousands of AD members, who saw Ch?vez as one of them. Now this group is looking to Rosales as the person who best seems to support their hopes and expectations. Also to Rosales' benefit is the fact that he is a winner. He has defeated Ch?vez twice already in his native State of Zulia and Ch?vez is actually afraid of him. Rosales is now capitalizing the immense failures of the Hugo Ch?vez regime, the superficiality of Ch?vez's social programs that are based on handouts. The Venezuelan people now realize that these handouts are only a temporary solution. In a very intelligent campaign, so far, Rosales is emphasizing the contact with the poor, knowing that the middle-class is almost unanimously behind him. He is hammering away at Ch?vez's failures in the barrios (slums) and in the impoverished Venezuelan interior and seems to have taken the initiative away from a Ch?vez who seems paralyzed by his increasing fear of failure. Ch?vez now realizes that he has neglected his own people in his efforts to become a new World leader. He is realizing, a bit late, that unless a leader can bring progress and peace to his/her own people he, she cannot hope to make a permanent impact in World politics. How can Ch?vez pretend to be followed by foreign countries if he is not capable of maintaining the most basic facilities in our Venezuelan hospitals, schools and general infrastructure?
What will the December Elections look like?
1. Expect no transparency.
I will not attempt to make a specific prediction for the elections of December 3rd. I think there is no real need for that. As the song goes: Que sera, sera?.
I should highlight, however, that the elections will not be transparent. Ch?vez has installed a National Electoral Council Board that is totally (4-vs-1) subservient to him. Ch?vez has contracted a highly suspect company, Smartmatic to supply the electronic voting machines. Ch?vez followers who were given a rigged contract for US$100 million to provide the voting machines own Smartmatic. The electoral roll is deeply flawed, showing enormous irregularities that have been exposed in shocking detail. The Venezuelan opposition will have to go to vote under very heavy odds. Venezuelans now know that Hugo Ch?vez is not going to accept an unfavorable electoral outcome. This is a contingency he has been getting ready for. He has been buying small arms, arming and training people, claiming that his enemies want to assassinate him and that the U.S. wants to invade Venezuela. He is laying the grounds for a violent takeover, if the people vote against him.
2. The Venezuelan people will probably be ready to defend their vote.
Unless I am totally mistaken about my people, Venezuelans will not be willing to roll over and play dead this time around. There is an ample knowledge in Venezuela of the fraudulent ways of the National Electoral Council and Venezuelans will not accept this situation any longer. Unless international observers come to Venezuela in force and pressure the regime into transparency and the automated results are validated by manual, statistically meaningful confirmation, Venezuelans will not accept passively fraudulent results. This time there will be widespread protest, probably including a national strike. The Venezuelan military will be forced to decide between becoming a shameful political tool and demanding transparent electoral results.
3. Even if the opposition loses the December elections in a transparent fashion, Ch?vez will lose his capability to do as he pleases in Venezuela.
As of this writing, a good half of the Venezuelan nation opposes Hugo Ch?vez. In a transparent electoral environment he has a good chance of losing. But even if he wins his drive to convert Venezuela into another Cuba should be permanently stalled. Even the poorest of Venezuelans know that Cuban society is in much worse situation than they are, in terms of freedom and democracy. Cubans live a life of food rationing and of sad political tyranny that Venezuelans will be reluctant to accept. If the opposition to Ch?vez makes a stand in public action and in the Venezuelan Congress, Ch?vez is finished. With the death of Fidel, his mentor will be gone. Who will guide him then?
Rosales is giving Venezuela a welcome answer to Ch?vez
Rosales is not a political messiah. He is a typical Venezuelan democratic politician, like the ones that emerged during the last 50 years of Venezuelan democratic rule. He is not a genius; there is no need for one. He is not a fanatic, thank God. He is not mentally unstable. He is a hard working, Venezuelan mestizo, who wants to do good for his people. In the context of a rather small, modest, society like the one we truly are, I find Manuel Rosales a true messenger of the role Venezuela can be expected to play in World affairs. We want to be a democratic, progressive country. We want to forget the illusions of stupid grandeur that a vulgar and ignorant madman has brought to our lives and live in peace and happiness. Rosales can walk together with us along that path.
http://venezuelatoday.net/gustavocoronel.html
By Gustavo Coronel
October 10, 2006
Caracas 07.10.06 | Libertador Avenue in Caracas was flooded with people rallying for the new national candidate Manuel Rosales. When he started speaking at noon, there were well over 100,000 people in the several miles long avenue and more kept coming. Italo Luongo, an analyst who is an expert at estimating attendance, spoke of about 200,000 people while polling expert V?ctor Manuel Garc?a estimated upwards of 340,000 people, a crowd that the opposition to the regime of Hugo Ch?vez had not been able to gather since the controversial presidential recall referendum of 2004.
Venezuela is a country that, in spite of having significant oil income, has fallen to levels of under-development and poverty close to Haiti and Zimbabwe and very far from Chile and South Korea, to name only two countries that were below Venezuela's international social and economic rankings in the 1970's. Venezuela's social and economic decline has accelerated in the last eight years, under the tenure of Hugo Ch?vez, due to his extreme ineptness in the management of the national wealth, to the high levels of corruption existing among his collaborators and to his interest in becoming a global revolutionary leader while neglecting domestic problems and needs.
Hugo Ch?vez won the presidency in 1998 on the strength of two main factors: one, his electoral promises and, two, the fact that he looked and talked like the majority of Venezuelans. His adversary, Henrique Salas-R?mer, although much more capable than Ch?vez, was defeated because he did not look or talk like the majority of Venezuelans. He was blonde, blue-eyed and a Yale graduate. He came across almost as an alien to vast sectors of the largely poor and ignorant Venezuelan population. Although I am no sociologist I have come to the conclusion that, in today's Venezuela, the look and cultural baggage of a presidential candidate is more important than his message or administrative experience. This is unfortunate since it limits the presidential possibilities of some of our best people, a fact that has to be taken into account. This particular component of our political equation was determinant in Ch?vez's victory in 1998. The majority saw in him someone who looked like them, spoke like them and, therefore, must have had their best interests in mind. They were wrong. Hugo Ch?vez proved to be a man of tyrannical tendencies, developing quickly an oversized ego, what Venezuelan psychologists such as Doctors Robert Lespinasse, Luis Jose Uzcategui and Franz Delgado Sr. (president of the Venezuelan Association of Psychiatrists), have called a narcissistic personality. Both Delgado Sr. and Dr. Mar?a Cristina Ortega, another Venezuelan psychiatrist, have defined Ch?vez as a sociopath. ("Ch?vez, la mascara de la cordura," Mar?a Cristina Ortega, Webarticulista.net, June 7, 2006). As a sociopath Ch?vez exhibits disdain for norms and values; lack of sensibility and empathy; inability to learn from his experiences; lack of stable affective links; a low threshold for tolerance; reactions of cholera when his desires are not complied with; hate and feelings of revenge; aggressiveness and tendency to place himself above the law. Aided by record oil income Hugo Ch?vez has developed grandiose aspirations of hemispheric dominance and is trying to create a global anti-U.S. coalition. In these efforts he has spent or committed no less than US$25 billion of Venezuelan money that could have been much better used to alleviate poverty and ignorance in our country. As result of eight years of this tragically inept performance Hugo Ch?vez is no longer perceived as a genuine voice for the poor by many Venezuelans who voted for him in 1998. His alignment with Fidel Castro, Mugabe, Ahmadinejad, Assad, the Colombian narcoterrorists, Hezbollah and Kim Jong-il, have disappointed and alienated millions of democracy-loving Venezuelans.
Enter Manuel Rosales
Early this year the opposition to Hugo Ch?vez started talking about a unified candidate to face Ch?vez on December 3rd of this year. Several possibilities came up and, finally, they agreed on backing the Governor of the State of Zulia, Manuel Rosales. I do not know what led to this selection but it could not have been better. Rosales is a Venezuelan mestizo, who looks like the majority of Venezuelans and who speaks the language of the majority. It is important to distinguish between plain language and gross language. Hugo Ch?vez speaks in a very obscene and aggressive manner. Rosales speaks so that all Venezuelans can understand him but he is not vulgar, he does not use machista expressions and he does not base his message in insults but in rational appeals to collective progress. His speech is all-inclusive; he does not discriminate between poor and rich.
Manuel Rosales exhibits some other features that appeal to the Venezuelan poor and to the middle-class alike. In the first place he is a former member of Acci?n Democr?tica (AD), a party that has had a profound influence on social and political Venezuelan life. AD is the party of Romulo Betancourt, the father of Venezuelan modern democracy, of Romulo Gallegos, the most beloved Venezuelan novelist and of Raul Leoni, a respected former president. This party also had less desirable representatives, such as Jaime Lusinchi, but it is said in Venezuela "all Venezuelans are adecos (AD followers) at heart." In fact, the 1998 electoral victory of Hugo Ch?vez was possible due to the vote of thousands of AD members, who saw Ch?vez as one of them. Now this group is looking to Rosales as the person who best seems to support their hopes and expectations. Also to Rosales' benefit is the fact that he is a winner. He has defeated Ch?vez twice already in his native State of Zulia and Ch?vez is actually afraid of him. Rosales is now capitalizing the immense failures of the Hugo Ch?vez regime, the superficiality of Ch?vez's social programs that are based on handouts. The Venezuelan people now realize that these handouts are only a temporary solution. In a very intelligent campaign, so far, Rosales is emphasizing the contact with the poor, knowing that the middle-class is almost unanimously behind him. He is hammering away at Ch?vez's failures in the barrios (slums) and in the impoverished Venezuelan interior and seems to have taken the initiative away from a Ch?vez who seems paralyzed by his increasing fear of failure. Ch?vez now realizes that he has neglected his own people in his efforts to become a new World leader. He is realizing, a bit late, that unless a leader can bring progress and peace to his/her own people he, she cannot hope to make a permanent impact in World politics. How can Ch?vez pretend to be followed by foreign countries if he is not capable of maintaining the most basic facilities in our Venezuelan hospitals, schools and general infrastructure?
What will the December Elections look like?
1. Expect no transparency.
I will not attempt to make a specific prediction for the elections of December 3rd. I think there is no real need for that. As the song goes: Que sera, sera?.
I should highlight, however, that the elections will not be transparent. Ch?vez has installed a National Electoral Council Board that is totally (4-vs-1) subservient to him. Ch?vez has contracted a highly suspect company, Smartmatic to supply the electronic voting machines. Ch?vez followers who were given a rigged contract for US$100 million to provide the voting machines own Smartmatic. The electoral roll is deeply flawed, showing enormous irregularities that have been exposed in shocking detail. The Venezuelan opposition will have to go to vote under very heavy odds. Venezuelans now know that Hugo Ch?vez is not going to accept an unfavorable electoral outcome. This is a contingency he has been getting ready for. He has been buying small arms, arming and training people, claiming that his enemies want to assassinate him and that the U.S. wants to invade Venezuela. He is laying the grounds for a violent takeover, if the people vote against him.
2. The Venezuelan people will probably be ready to defend their vote.
Unless I am totally mistaken about my people, Venezuelans will not be willing to roll over and play dead this time around. There is an ample knowledge in Venezuela of the fraudulent ways of the National Electoral Council and Venezuelans will not accept this situation any longer. Unless international observers come to Venezuela in force and pressure the regime into transparency and the automated results are validated by manual, statistically meaningful confirmation, Venezuelans will not accept passively fraudulent results. This time there will be widespread protest, probably including a national strike. The Venezuelan military will be forced to decide between becoming a shameful political tool and demanding transparent electoral results.
3. Even if the opposition loses the December elections in a transparent fashion, Ch?vez will lose his capability to do as he pleases in Venezuela.
As of this writing, a good half of the Venezuelan nation opposes Hugo Ch?vez. In a transparent electoral environment he has a good chance of losing. But even if he wins his drive to convert Venezuela into another Cuba should be permanently stalled. Even the poorest of Venezuelans know that Cuban society is in much worse situation than they are, in terms of freedom and democracy. Cubans live a life of food rationing and of sad political tyranny that Venezuelans will be reluctant to accept. If the opposition to Ch?vez makes a stand in public action and in the Venezuelan Congress, Ch?vez is finished. With the death of Fidel, his mentor will be gone. Who will guide him then?
Rosales is giving Venezuela a welcome answer to Ch?vez
Rosales is not a political messiah. He is a typical Venezuelan democratic politician, like the ones that emerged during the last 50 years of Venezuelan democratic rule. He is not a genius; there is no need for one. He is not a fanatic, thank God. He is not mentally unstable. He is a hard working, Venezuelan mestizo, who wants to do good for his people. In the context of a rather small, modest, society like the one we truly are, I find Manuel Rosales a true messenger of the role Venezuela can be expected to play in World affairs. We want to be a democratic, progressive country. We want to forget the illusions of stupid grandeur that a vulgar and ignorant madman has brought to our lives and live in peace and happiness. Rosales can walk together with us along that path.
http://venezuelatoday.net/gustavocoronel.html