Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Citgo backtracks on oil cutoff to the US poor And today everyone was wondering why it was that CITGO backtracked on cutting off cheaper oil suplies to the US poor, which is distributed via Joe Kennedy's Citizen Energy Corporation. The press release two days ago by Citizen Energy certainly transmitted a feeling of being left out in the cold: "Citizens Energy has recently been informed by CITGO that due to falling oil prices and the world economic crisis, CITGO has been forced to re-evaluate all their social programs, including the heating oil program, which has provided hundreds of thousands of low-income U.S. households with much-needed fuel these past three years. I have reached out repeatedly to government officials in Venezuela at the highest levels, including former Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez and President Hugo Chavez.  While I have yet to receive any indication of their ultimate decision, I will continue to fight and advocate for a continuation of this critical assistance for our most vulnerable citizens" As you all know, I oppose this program and was actually surprised it was the first one to be cutoff, since it is the cheapest one in terms of cost of Chavez' cheaper oil aid programs to other countries. In fact, I was wondering how priorities were going to be managed, since cutting Kennedy off (He makes about 400,000 grand a year as President of this noble cause for himself) was certainly going to have a bigger splash than for example, asking PetroCaribe nations to pay up 75% rather than 50% up front. But the impact must have been felt and today CITGO backtracked and Kennedy apparently managed to reach out to someone and solve his problem. Thus, as Venezuelans are being asked to tighten their pants, their imports get more expensive as the Government reduces items that receive dollars at the official rate of exchange and the country's reserves are threatened, Chavez once again, establishes politics as his main priority. What else is new? 11:04:59 PM    comment []

Hugo Chavez vs. Hugo Chavez It was only about a year and a half ago that Hugo Chavez said in unequival fashion when talking about the 2007 Constitutional referendum to allow his indefinite reelection: "No, no and one thousand times no. If there is continuos reelection here it should be only for the President...¦No, no, let's forget about it..they are defending party interests. I will do what the people say, not what one group or the other says, the people own the sovereignty" Of course, the people rejected that exact proposal in Dic. 2007, but he wanted to try again, but those silly polls put him so far behind that he had this sovereign revelation that the people somehow now want everyone to be allowed to be reelected indefinitely. I wonder what happens now to the recently reelected President of the National Assembly Cilia Flores who said that it was not the same to reelect the Governor, or a Mayor than the President of the country, who directs national and international politics. Or Deputy Carlos Escarra, who barely two or three weeks ago justified Chavez' proposal to limit reelection to the President with these now infamous words: "To extend reelection to  other levels would be to split the Republic into fragments. Our vision is that of a State-Nation" And he turned out to have a very short term vision, no? So now everyone has to change their tune. The idea is that now that everyone can benefit from the indefinite reelection, they will work for it rather than against it like they did for the December 2007 Constitutional referendum. Which still makes it illegal and now, in the eyes of the voters, the "people", the owners of the sovereignty, extremely confusing. And the opposition has to take advantage of that. Show them Chavez versus Chavez, arguing both sides of the equation in his best incoherent style that we are accustomed to. There is no Nation-State concept. It is just how to perpetuate Chavez in power stepping over the law and the Constitution and why not, everything said by Hugo Chavez before about the perversion of allowing everyone to be reelected indefinitely. 10:23:38 PM    comment []