The Devil's Excrement

Chavez and Judge Aponte^2 in better times for both

The Government continues to try to distance itself from the Aponte^2 case and make it go away, but it is finding it hard to do and the more things are said, the worse it seems to become. This is the type of issue that Chavez would have coordinated rather well a couple of years back, but his absence and attention to other matters, is now noticable when things like this happen.

The initial reaction seems to have been to depict Aponte^2 as some sort of opposition crook, when Aponte^2 had sterling revolutionary credentials, down to the military uniform he left behind, his unorthodox path to the Supreme Court and the many honors and Presidential hugs he received.

And Chavez may argue that the revolution got rid of Aponte^2, but it really didn’t. Aponte^2’s relationship to Makled has been hanging in the air for a couple of years and all that the revolutionary Government really did was to get rid of him as a member of the Supreme Court, using the seldom convened Moral Council to impeach him.

But the process simply ended there. The General Prosecutor did not charge him with crimes. There was no order to stop him from leaving the country. The DEA did not help Aponte^2 escape like some Government spokesmen want us to believe, he just left.

And Chavez tried to disregard the news as not being very important, calling Aponte^2 a “criminal”, which he is, but it was a criminal that Chavez personally brought to the highest levels of Venezuela’s Supreme Court because he was a loyal former revolutionary and, even more importantly, a former military officer, loyal to the very end. Aponte^2 was really a creature of the revolution, like so many around.

And Chavez really screwed up when he brought up the case of Antonini and Maletagate. This flagrant case was never investigated in Venezuela and the record in the US trial shows that the Head of Intelligence told Antonini that Chavez personally had authorized paying him to keep him silenced.

And Chavez somehow tried to make a parallel between the two cases, saying Antonini was also a crook. Yes, another special purpose crook, made and created for and by the revolution.

But if there is a mystery in all this, is that the only person that attended the supposed meetings at the Presidential Palace on Fridays that has spoken out was Vice President Jaua, who did not address the issue, but simply spoke to disqualify Aponte^2. But we have yet to hear from either the President of the Venezuelan Supreme Court or the General Prosecutor, both of which Aponte^ 2 accused of participating in these meetings. Could it be because they want to make sure Aponte^2 shows no proof of this, as has been reported in the media he will or did?

In fact, the Government would have been better off making noise, calling for a full investigation, instead of calling for a silly proclamation by the Assembly “rejecting” Aponte^s statements or bringing up some vaporous accusation that two opposition Governors have been laundering money.

The circus is not working, because the crooks were created by the owner of the circus, Hugo Chavez, but everyone knows they worked for the circus and they would have never gotten there on their own merits. They had none.