Saturday, July 05, 2003

Chavez' new plan to get rid of poverty While nobody seems to have noticed the Chavez administration has embarked in a new plan to eliminate poverty in Venezuela. It is a very simple plan: Stop the National Institute for Statistics from releasing the numbers of how many poor Venezuelans there are and how the number has done nothing but increase in the five years of the Chavez administration. Indeed, as reported today in El Universal, Emiro Molina was replaced as the Head of the National Institute for Statistics for releasing such numbers. He was replaced by the former head of Customs at the Internal Revenue Office, which means we should probably not believe any of the numbers from that office on tax collection in 2003 1:15:04 PM    comment []

Same place, different person Hugo Chavez yesterday swearing in his new Minister of Information: "Media owners should all be in jail" What a coincidence, exactly where I think he should be for the April 2002 murders. 12:55:19 PM    comment []

Pitiful Mundarain   One of the most pitiful characters of this travesty of a Government has to be the People's Ombudsman German Mundarain. The position, called the People's Defender in Spanish, was introduced in the 1999 Constitution with the intention of providing an additional independent power that would protect the rights of the citizens. But Mr. Mundarain appears to have confused his role significantly, being practically invisible when he should be outspoken, but being surprisingly speedy and agile when it comes time to defend the Government. Case in point, the strong criticism by Human Rights Watch of the Venezuelan Government. While Mundarain did not defend the right of demonstrators of the Petarazo, while he said little of the bomb against Governor Enrique Mendoza or that against Marta Colomina, he quickly jumped yesterday on the HRW report. What would be funny, if it were not simply tragic, is that Mundarain became the defender of the Media content bill which HRW criticized and is being proposed by the Chávez administration. It is not even the law!. Thus, this tragicomic personality of the Vth. Republic is not even defending the law of the land, but coming out in defense of a propsed bill that has been strongly criticized by many human rights organizations, has been labeled as a possible violation of the country’s human rights treaties and is only being defended by Chavez and his partisans. In fact, Mundarain takes advantage of the occasion to blast the press and defend the Government.   What is even more remarkable is that the strong criticism of HRW of the Government should give food for thought particularly to Mr. Mundarain. Mr. Vivancos of Human Rights Watch was highly critical of the opposition and was a defender of the Government in 2002, his turn on the Government should give a warning to those that have been entrusted with defending the people’s rights. But not Mr. Mundarain, he was partial to the Chavez cause before he was nominated to the position and much like the traveling Deputies of our glorious National Assembly; he has no inkling as to what democracy and human rights are truly all about. 12:17:30 AM    comment []