Tuesday, April 12, 2005

The travesty of revolutionary justice While the Government prosecutes people for simply going to the Presidential Palace on April 12th. 2002, prohibiting them from leaving the country and harassing them, the man who started it all, General Lucas Rincón is exempt from even testifying, least of all being accused of anything. Last Sunday the Prosecutor said Rincón had been threatened into saying Chávez had resigned. Today it is the Minister of Defense Garcia Carneiro who says that Rincón showed braveness and was under pressure that day. Meanwhile, the other cynic, that modern version of Perez Jimenez' Pedro Estrada called Isaias Rodriguez, gives a speech describing how he had to break the "information circle" to tell the world that Chavez had not resigned. Neither of them notes the "slight" inconsistency that it was only their hero and buddy Lucas Rincón who told Venezuela and the world that Chavez had resigned. The rest is simply rewriting history the chavista way. Thus, under the outlaw revolutionary justice and logic, Rincón is declared innocent by all his buddies, without testifying or even telling the Venezuelan public why he acted the way he did. Everyone else is similarly guilty, tried and sentenced by the same legal code of the revolution even before they testify. Such is the travesty of Justice in Venezuela under the Chávez revolution. 2:50:19 PM    comment []

The Mcarthyist list of Chavismo: Case 3: “Squalids have to die small!” The Mcarthyist list of Chavismo: Case 3: “Squalids have to die small!” by Teodoro Petkoff Jesus Moreno, “Chuchin” to his friends and family, ID card  number 6.717.643, worked in Corpoven, an old PDVSA subsidiary up to 1996 when he quit. In November 2004, he was contacted by PDVSA people to propose to him that he work, under contract, in maintenance at the El Palito refinery. Obviously, those that knew him wanted to take advantage of his experience and “Chuchin” Moreno, who is not political, accepted the offer. When he showed up for the usual paperwork for working there, a supervisor, whose initials are PL, noticed him and shouted: “Squalids have to die small!” And ordered him kicked out of the refinery. Of course, he was not hired. They did not even look for him in the infamous list. It was sufficient that someone knew him as not a Chavista, to deny him the right to work.   In the context of this campaign of accusations that we are carrying forward to demonstrate concrete cases of the reach of the policy of segregation and discrimination of the Government, whose basis is the list of Adolfo Tascón, some Government supporters have written to us to refute our considerations. There are two main arguments in the e-mails. One, “the adecos used to do exactly the same” so there is no right to complain now, another, “that in the private sector they also kick people out for political reasons”, so who cares. Let’s look at the first one. It is true that in previous Governments similar things happened, in that people were asked for political affiliation to obtain a civil service position. That is why we used to talk about the “carnetocracia”. One day Jorge Giordani told us that he simply aspired to make a more decent country. Is this a more decent country, governed by Chavez, in which they reproduce, but in extended and refined fashion (The Tascón list) that were never seen in the past, the same hateful practices of sectarianism? The Government was then conquered, not to end, among other things, with those scoundrel-like practices of the past, but to take revenge? Revenge was then, the great motivator? As for the firings in the private sector, let us admit, to begin with, that they are true, but they are as repulsive and can be condemned as much as the other ones. There is a difference though; there is no private Tascón list that would allow a massive and generalized retaliation. But, once again, that way of arguing is not dignified... If the private sector kicks people out for political reasons, then, why can’t the revolution do it too? An eye for an eye then. Instead of asking the authorities to stop those sectarian practices in the private sector (if proven), the “revolutionaries” pay back with the same treatment. No, this is certainly not the path towards a more decent country. 1:05:16 PM    comment []