The Devil's Excrement

Chavistas apparently took exception to Reuters publishing
the picture of Chavez shown above, considering it offensive to Venezuela and
its President.

And I agree, he should not be singled out when there is so
much competition from Government officials saying stupid things. Only today I
found these three jewels in the news:

—The Minister of Light Industry and Commerce, William
Contreras,
said that one should not think that the problems with shortages are a
consequence of the application of certain policies such as exchange controls or
price controls. That would be “playing the game of the opposition to the
Bolivarian revolution”

Just think. There used to be no shortages of essentially
anything in Venezuela, you start exchange and price controls and as in every
single country that has experimented with such policies, shortages appear.
Whose fault is it? Obviously anyone and anybody, but not the perfect revolution.
The perfect Chavista revolution makes no mistakes; it is the people who do. If
the great leaders say so, the policy must work, even if it doesn’t.

These guys are incredibly mindless!

—But this was topped by Deputy Tirso Silva who
yesterday made the incredibly democratic proposal that the new Law of
Medicine should include the fact that recently graduated medicine students
should be banned from emigrating.

Incredible, no? What should we call it? Temporary slavery? Should
the Constitution be changed for this?

This guy obviously does not even think that the fact that
recent graduates in Government hospitals make Bs. 1,800 a month (US$ 857 at the
official rate of exchange or half that at the parallel rate), barely above
twice the minimum salary and ten times less than Deputies like him, has
anything to do with it. Add inhuman conditions at hospitals, lack of supplies
and crazy hours and of course they want to leave the country for God’s sake!

Funny that he does not recall that these same doctors were
ignored when the Barrio Adentro project was created in order to use the more
ideologically sound Cuban doctors. It is only now that friend Raul has pulled
the doctors back to Cuba that they worry about Venezuelan doctors that want to
emigrate.

How cynical can you be!

—But the prize in doublespeak is won by the Minister of
Finance Rafael Isea who said
today that the Government has no plan to modify the current foreign
exchange control system, as has been reported in many places including this
blog. Instead, he said, the Government plans to sell a dollar bond to importers
in exchange for Bolivars, directed specifically to the corporate sector.

Ahhh! That’s very clear: Chavez does not want to devalue,
but money is short. Thus, you sell a bond in US$ to importers so that they can
buy the same dollars they used to buy at Bs. 2.15 per $ at a higher rate, but there is
no plan to change the exchange rate. Very clear!

Sounds to me like he does not want his boss to know what he
is doing, but he is doing what the boss, Hugo Chavez, does not want, partially devaluing
the currency.

Which takes us back to the beginning, if Chavez does not
understand what his people are doing to him, maybe Reuters is right in
publishing the picture anyway. He is the boss after all, thus he deserves it
more than the underlings.