Yesterday, a new Minister of Defense was sworn in and legendary General Raul Baduell gave his farewell speech. Leaving aside his strange religious and samurai musings, the speech represnts a very strong condemnation of Hugo Chavez and his Government. Politely but firmly, Baduel took shots at everything that Chavez and his Government stand for, making you wonder how much more was left unsaid.
Here are some pearls of wisdom by Baduel:
On XXIst Century Socialism:
“The call by President Hugo Chavez to construct XXIst. Century Socialism implies the urgent and imperative need to formalize our own theoretical model…We have to admit that such a theoretical model does not exist up to this moment nor has it been formulated and I estimate that as long as this persists, uncertainty will persist among social groups.”
Jeez, where do I start. After eight years in power Hugo Chavez has only managed to give a label to whta he wants to do, but exactly what he wants to do and how is unknown, has yet to be defined and we have to go along with it no matter what it ends up being. I guess you could call this journey into the unknown led by an amateur and ignorant autocrat/dictator.
“On political matters, , our model must be profoundly democratic”
Well, given the fact that it has not been defined, Baduell seems to be saying that so far it is not.
“A socialist model for production is not incompatible with a political system which is profoundly democratic, with counterweights and division of powers”
My God! Can it be any clearer than that? Counterweights? Division of Powers? Certainly not in Venezuela under Hugo Chavze, where exactly the opposite is happening. There are no counterweights or divisions of power and Chavez wants even more control an more decisions by him, whom Baduel has already told us is clueless about the type of system that he wants.
“We can not allow that our system be transformed into State Capitalism, where the state is the only owner of the means of production”
Well, so far it seems as if that is all Chavez’ model is about, he has not only expanded dramatically the role of the state in the means of production, but also on the distribution area where the state is now competing head to head with the private sector in a very inefficient manner and talking advantage ofi ts access to foreign currency at the official rate of exchange. In fact, just today (next post) it became known that PDVSA will create as many as 8 companies which have little to do with its core business of exploring for and producing oil.
“Let us not forget something which is evident but we obviate many times. Before distributing wealth one has to generate it. You can not distribute something that does not exist”
Need I say anything about this dart by Baduel? This Government has given away abroad and in Venezuela the easy oil money, destroying value, rather than creating it , by spening money in acquiring efficiently run operations, rather than creating new wealth or getting rid of good managmenet because they were not ideologically aligned with him.
“Our model must break with the bad custom of the past (recent?)of teaching the people about their rights, but not about their duties…the model has to each the people that things do not appear by magic, but they need to be obtained on the basis of effort and work”
With this sentence Baduel is saying the model has to be exactly the opposite of what Hugo Chavez has said and done for the last eight years. With Chavez you get only if you are loyal and you get it for nothing. Chavez has created useless dierct assistance programs which do not promote work or responsibility only to create unquestioned loyalty. Baduel can not be talking about a project led by Hugo Chavez, this statement is the definition of the anti-Chavismo.
Baduel spoke directly, he is ambitious. In private he tells his friends he would like to be President one day (“If Chavez can, so can I” he has been quoted as saying). Was he warning Chavez? Was he telling him he will be watching? There are rumors Baduel will be named to an important position in the next few days. If he is not, Chavez better watch his back all the time, there may be a criollo Samurai who is religious ready to step into his shoes…
I guess our military is full of megalomaniac nuts.
The Devil's Excrement 
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