In my mind, no Venezuelan politician has been more pragmatic and has made used of common sense better than Teodoro Petkoff. Petkoff saved Caldera’s Government from sinking. Unfortunately for him, and for us, oil prices dropped just when things were getting better. Teodoro’s common sense and rationality comes through in today’s Editorial in Tal Cual (by subscription). Some highlights:
“The best demonstration that everything they said (Chavez and Rangel) is false is that while they were both screaming that the organizers were to blame, the event proceeded peacefully, a few blocks away from where the band of thugs destroyed with impunity the police module and was trying to break the police barrier to attack the opposition rally.”
“If these “heroes of the revolution” had not acted, nothing would have happened. Nobody from the rally went over to attack the police or the National Guard. No one went from the rallyto throw tear gas in front of the hospital. Rangel’s argument that it had been suggested to the organizers that the rally take place elsewhere and not near the hospital is cheap cynicism.”
“If the rally had taken place elsewhere there would have been no agression? Why the hell didn’t they suggest to their supporters not to attack the rally? Why didn’t “daddy’s son” who happens to be Mayor of the Municipality and directs the police, control and stop their supporters from going overboard?…What do they pretend, that the Hitlerian thesis of the opposition being confined to the residential areas of the East be accepted? Once again, they have used the argument that raped women are to blame for the rape. According to Rangel and Chavez, the opposition “provokes” the peaceful thugs that support them because they have rallies in “Chavista territory”
“Before anything, Gentlemen, get off that cloud. It has been a while since there has been no “Chavista territory”. Those that acted in Petare are nothing but organized thugs, nothing spontaneous and quite reduced of mercenary activists, and they counted with the passivity, if not complicity of the authorities that are supposed to maintain public order and guarantee the right of the opposition to hold its rally. “
“What is making both Rangel and Chavez nervous is that there is an opposition that makes an effort of acting within democratic territory and separates itself from the coupsters.”
Well said, particularly the part about the RIGHTS of the opposition, which the Government seems to think don’t exist.