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VHeadline.com commentarist Elio Cequea writes: Letter to US Senator Richard Lugar Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations:

United States Senate
Senator Richard Lugar
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations

Your Excellency, I have read your commentary about Venezuela published on Sunday, October 31, 2004 in the Miami Herald. www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=23421 The title of the article grabbed my attention. I thought that “We need a new approach to Venezuela” was an essay proposing “a new approach” from the US government towards my country.

After I read it, I could not help but to be disappointed.

With all due respect Sir, your commentary is packed with unfounded information and unsubstantiated opinions. It concerns me that a man in your position, capable of influencing international policies affecting the lives of people, does not have the facts straight.

If you give me few minutes of your valuable time, I will share with you the reasons why I think so. I will not question your motivation to write what you wrote. It is not my intention to question the integrity of a high ranking US Senator. On the other hand though, I believe it is my given right to express my disagreement with opinions and ideas that might have a direct negative effect in the lives of the Venezuelan people.

First of all, in a period if six years the President of Venezuela has received not three but four separate electoral mandates. They are four including the results of the regional elections of this past October 31. The uprising you said the President outmaneuvered was not a “popular” one. Popular was the one that brought him back to the presidency after some rebellious military officials forced him temporarily out of office.

I agree that the 63-day oil strike was devastating for the Venezuelan economy. However, the strike was not a nation wide strike as you indicate. Most of the iron and steel industry in the South, for example, was kept running. The media did a good job making it larger than it really was.

Senator Lugar, it is true that the poor consider Hugo Chavez their champion. You mention it as if this was somebody's sin. I will give you one reason why the poor consider him a champion: Barrio Adentro. This is a program that provides free health care for the people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

How can this be considered a sin?

With regards to Chavez' record of authoritarianism, it is very easy for political foes to see the support that the Venezuelan President has as totalitarianism. Let me put it this way. Let's sit and watch President Bush turning into a “dictator” just because he has the majority in the US Senate and the US House of Representatives! He could also end up naming a couple of Supreme Court judges that, as you say, “would concentrate more power in his own hands.”

Do you see my point? It is all about democracy. Senator, how comes that using political power that was obtained democratically can be considered authoritarianism?

Has Chavez roughed up political opponents, trampled human and civil rights or, has he let the judicial power performed its duty?

The fact is that the Venezuelan judiciary has just ordered complete freedom for the dissident retired General Carlos Alfonzo Martinez. Dissident Mayor Capriles Radonsky has also been freed by orders of the Venezuelan Supreme Court. These are just two examples. Are these signs of totalitarianism?

The Boston Police killed a Boston Red Sox fan when the victory celebration got out of hands and turned into a public disorder…

Was that unnecessary violence against the protestors?

Yes, it was! Even so, I have not seen one person blaming it directly on George W. Bush. The protests that occurred in Venezuela are far from being spontaneous acts consequence of a celebration gone wild. They were planned to intentionally disrupt the Venezuelan government. Once a riot is on, Senator, the ensuing violence is in all cases “unnecessary.”

The media in Venezuela attacks the President every single day, 24 hours a day. They have no limitations in the type of “information” they put out. Venezuela has been accused of harboring Al-Qaeda cells in the island of Margarita. This is an island about 100% populated and only 357 square miles in size. It is one-fourth the size of the state of Rhode Island! Having the right to write this “news” is what some people consider “freedom” of expression. If you fight them, then they accuse you of “throttling” it.

In your commentary, you repeat some of the lines the Venezuelan opposition has used against our President. You repeat them without stating a single supporting argument:

“Chavez uses swelling oil revenues to mask his economic mismanagement.”

“ His misguided populist economics have increased the ranks of the very poor and cut the incomes of nearly everyone else.”

Economic mismanagement?

Misguided populist economics?

Increased the ranks of the very poor?

 
Cut the incomes of nearly everyone?

Senator, where are the arguments supporting these claims?

For your information, the oil that goes to Cuba is not for free. There is an agreement between the two countries. It is the same agreement signed with some of the Central American countries: cheap oil in exchange for goods and services. Cuba's goods and services to Venezuela are sport trainers and doctors for the poor, just to mention a couple of them.

Assuming that oil was free … doesn't a country have the right to decide how to manage its resources?

I do not know if Chavez is encouraging Bolivia to reopen a centuries-old border dispute with Chile. I know though that the government of Venezuela is not providing comfort to the rebels fighting the government of Colombia. You do not sound so sure of that either. You refer to it as “allegedly providing comfort to rebels.”

Senator, it is not fair to condemn somebody based on unconfirmed “allegations.”

I do not see the problem with our President fueling dreams of a pan-hemispheric oil cartel if that will help Venezuela and other countries to break out from that never-ending road towards development.

I heard about his proposal for a state-sponsored regional TV network. I think that is a wonderful idea. You stated that this would enable him to broadcast his “authoritarian” propaganda. Is that what CNN does for the US?

There is an Arab Network in Virginia, Al Hurra or “the free one,” directed to the Middle East region. Did your government spend all that money just to be able to broadcast the Super Bowl to the Arab people?

Senator, this is the era of communication.

Those who control the media can control the population if so they desire. I see as very positive the media not being controlled by an individual or by any particular government. That is the most sacred principle of democracy. The US has its “propaganda” machine already in place. Why not let others have theirs and let the people decide?

You mentioned in your commentary that Hugo Chavez “stimulates” anti-Americanism. More exactly, Senator, it is not so much anti-Americanism what he refers to as it is to anti-interventionism. As you perfectly know, the US has a long history of intervention in Central America, South America and other parts of the world. These interventions, for the most part, have taken place only to protect US interests. These interventions are the ones that stimulate anti-Americanism or anti-interventionism, either way you want to call it. The Iraqis call it both ways.

This brings me to the sticky topic of the “allege” US intervention in Venezuela through the support of NGOs. Senator Lugar, I agree with my President. Since you think that those are false accusations, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and will assume that you just do not know some facts.

Indeed, there were irregularities in the presidential referendum process. To mention just one, the Venezuelan Electoral Council eliminated almost 300,000 signatures that were submitted as part of the referendum petition. Sumate, one of the “democratic” organizations sponsored by the NED, agreed in writing that that many signatures were actually illegal. What makes this interesting is that they (Sumate) were the collectors and checkers and keepers of the signatures. They also kept them until they were transferred to the official electoral authorities.

Do you think, Senator, that they “missed” 300,000 illegal signatures? This does not include more than 10,000 dead people who managed to sign the petition twice.

Sumate is an organization that indeed has promoted voter participation. The problem is that they have done so only in favor of the Venezuelan opposition. They run campaigns in favor of the opposition “SI” option to remove the President. They have operated as an ordinary and terrestrial political party. Imaging the Republican Party receiving money from a foreign organization that is promoting the removal of George W, Bush from the presidency.

Of course it would be illegal!

You referred to the Venezuelan President as “hardly an exemplary democrat.” With all due respect Senator, if having nine national elections in six years are not signs of democracy to you, I would like you to tell me what part of the picture I am missing. It is not Chavez' fault that the opposition has not produced a viable alternate candidate or a vote-winning governing plan.

I do not understand why the Venezuelan government, and not the people in the opposition, is seen as a threat to the regional stability. Based on what has actually happened, the actions of the opposition are the ones that have threatened and disrupted the political stability of Venezuela. The opposition was the force behind the oil strike that put at risk not only the US economy but also its national security.

Senator, what do you call “regional stability” anyway?

It is nothing but one of those “punch lines” politicians and the media love to play with. “Iraq is a free country.” The “democracy” in Afghanistan is also “stable.”

The Venezuelan President is not the only one who thinks that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a CIA front. Many people share this belief. I could not help to think about Chile and Salvador Allende when you indicate referring to Venezuela that the US needs a “muscular engagement” with a clear agenda to promote democratic values and the constructive interests of Venezuelan and American citizens. Muscular engagement is not “a new approach.” This is the same approach that has been used in the past in other countries.

Let's not deny it. The US interests in Venezuela are clear. And, yes, the US needs a new approach towards Venezuela. This is a great opportunity to establish true cooperation between an economic power and the government of a developing country that has the genuine desire to help improve the standard of living of its people. As you put it in your commentary, the US “should adopt a stance that is practical and consistent and responds constructively to Chavez's actions.”

Just be careful about what you consider practical, constructive, stability and democratic.

Think about Iraq and about what your government has done over there: unpractical, destructive, unstable and very far from democratic.

Because freedom, Senator, should not be forced upon people.

They should be able to get it on their own.

Elio Cequea
mailto:elio@vheadline.com

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