http://www.caracaschronicles.com/2016/10/11/vise-news/
I'm taking the liberty of skimming an article by Francisco Toro, that appears in Caracas Chronicles, a widely read English language anti Venezuelan government blog which he edits. I commented, he replied and here it is:
Vise News
Quico digs around in TodoChavez.gob.ve and brings the choice bits he finds to the readers of the New York Times.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that writers are never very happy with the headlines editors run over their articles. But every rule has its exceptions, and I think this is really quite apt. A taste:
For Mr. Chávez, this [putting the revocatorio article in the constitution] was partly a way to justify his role in history. In 1992, he had led a failed coup attempt against the democratically elected government of the day. It was a shabby affair: A few dozen troops machine-gunned the presidential palace in Caracas, the capital, while the president slipped out a side door and Mr. Chávez himself struggled to coordinate the revolt from the military museum nearby. The coup failed, but it propelled its leader to media stardom and eventually to the presidency.
Later, Mr. Chávez would argue that his revolt had been legitimate because Venezuela’s Constitution at the time contained no provision for getting rid of a catastrophically underperforming president.
“The Venezuela of ‘92 was so different from today’s Venezuela,” he said in a 2000 television interview. “Back then, all exits were blocked, totally blocked.”
Good clean fun.
Very fine article, too!
I guess you nailed one reason why there are anti anti Chavistas who will never support the opposition, in spite of the mismanagement and failures of the present government, and that’s the Punto Fijo roots of the opposition.
The corrupt old regime especially after the Caracazo was a democracy for the elites, a divvying up of the spoils, sitting atop violence, repression and disappearances.
Your National Assembly leader, despised by his paymasters at the US Embassy in Caracas is the perfect mascot for this cause.
Dear God please help Venezuela, caught between a rock and a hard place just as Americans also need Your intervention in the “Democratic Election” of 2016.
- Yeah, how could they *possibly* support people associated with a regime that introduced universal free public education through university level, nationalized oil, mandated profit-sharing by law, introduced universal free health care provision, created the Instituto Venezolano del Seguro Social, subsidized low income housing, mandated paid maternity leave, mandated severance payments, mandated vacation pay…peace with the neoliberals? NEVER!!
- No comment about the Caracazo, mass shootings of poor protesters or Punto Fijo, with its formalizing of a “one party with two wings” “democracy” or AD’s relationship with the US embassy. What a surprise!But just what the hell is the opposition’s plan? What are your differences with the government on the external debt? What do you propose to do about the $100,000,000,000’s skimmed through the multi tiered currency exchange rates and other forms of theft exemplified by Derwick and held outside of Venezuela?While I don’t personally have a position on the major mining proposal for the southern region I haven’t noticed an opposition position on it. It’s forgiveable for an individual who doesn’t live in Venezuela and has no expertise, but for a coalition that’s proposing to lead the country it isn’t.About Democracy – Marrea Socialista was denied the status of a legal electoral party and so could not participate in the National Assembly election last December. I am not an advocate for them but I appreciate their attention to the missing dollars. Maybe I missed what you or MUD had to say about any of that.From what I gather CLAP is indeed reaching people who are in need. I know people whose margin of staying alive is the CLAP food bag. I hope CLAP expands and improves and that efforts it’s making in food production increase and succeed.. What would you or MUD do right now in Venezuela to address the issue of hunger?
- (CLAP is the acronym for the program in Venezuela that brings bags of low cost food to increasing numbers of Venezuela's households and is involved in food production, something that Venezuela does not have enough of- Eugene Weixel).
- Eugene, my old Chavista friend, how have you been doing since the days of Oil Wars? Not a peep from this gang for a long long time now.
- I never described myself as a Chavista, but did defend the positive side of Chavez. I blog sometimes about Venezuela at https//Venezuela USA.blogspot.com.I hope life’s been treating you well.
I didn’t know the revocatorio had its origins with the hero of the museo mlitar.
Recent world events are increasingly leading me to think that referenda are fundamentally bad things, and what better suits the purpose, and can better address problems of: (a) the election of lunatics who abuse their power, (b) fights over term limits, (c) battles between branches of government, (d) deferral of important and urgent decisions and (e) process issues around the referendum itself, a thing that is little understood, not normally supposed to happen, often ambiguous in its purpose, and easily manipulated- is British Parliamentary Democracy.
I know… not going to happen, ever. And yes, parliamentary democracies are increasingly latching on to the referendum, mostly I suspect so those governments can avoid the normal consequences of…parliamentary democracy.
While I obviously support the revocatorio in Venezuela because, what other options to change the government within the existing law are there?- over the longer term, I think it is a bad idea, and this regime has amply demonstrated why it is a bad idea, one that should be dumped along with all of Chavez’s other bad ideas and replaced with something more fundamental and structural in nature, when this agony is over.
Eugene, please put down the crack pipe!
- He’s caught between a rock (“piedra”), and a hard place (trut)
- Francisco Toro's reports and opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and other publications.
