Thursday, November 27, 2008

Patrick J. O'Donoghue's news and views from Venezuela -- November 27, 2008

VHeadline News Editor Patrick J. O'Donoghue reports:

Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev is in Caracas for a short visit to strengthen the strategic alliance between Russia and Venezuela. The protocol reception ceremony in Miraflores Palace was transmitted on national TV and radio. Medvedev is the first Russian president to visit Venezuela where he will spend two days and is expected with President Chavez to visit part of the Russian fleet currently engaged in joint exercises with the Venezuelan Navy. The Russian President arrived in Venezuela from Brazil where he met with President Lula Da Silva.

Speaking at Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) summit in Caracas, President Chavez has criticized the Inter American Development Bank (IADB), which, he says, has become an instrument of political pressure designed by the Empire to impose conditions on loaning countries. Chavez insists that a new bank should be created to help poorer countries. Chavez also told participants that the hegemony of the dollar must come to an end. The G-20 summit in Washington, he insists, did not question the dollar's dominance or the irresponsible policy of government after government in the United States.

At the III ALBA summit in Caracas, President Chavez has announced that the new common currency of countries belonging to the Bolivarian Alternative to the Americas (ALBA) will be called Sucre. At the summit, the leaders of member countries and non-member Ecuador decided to create a currency zone called the Unified System of Regional Compensation using the Spanish acronym, which comes out as Sucre, tying in nicely with the name of the great Liberator of the Americas, Antonio de Sucre. The special presidential commission will start working on the project and Venezuela has already appointed Economy & Finances Minister, Ali Rodriguez as its representative. Venezuela has announced its intention to place $500,000 towards getting the common currency project up and running.

It has been confirmed that the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has won 11 of the 13 mayor's offices comprising Carabobo State. The party has also obtained nine seats of 15 in the State Legislative Council. Speaking at a press conference, National Assembly (AN) president, Cilia Flores boasts that although the opposition won the state governorship, it did not win the State and she highlights the recovery of State Capital, Valencia mayor's office with Edgar Parra's victory.

Writing in the Teretere community newspaper, Jose M. Milano blames the loss of the heavily-populated Petare district of Sucre municipality on the former PSUV mayor whose administration was " negative" and who was basically hand-picked nepotically by his father, Jose Vicente Rangel, then Executive Vice President. Petare, Milano reminds us, consists of 5 parishes of 149 barrios that represent 78% of the Sucre municipality. With pro-government officials running around like headless chickens trying to justify the defeat, the writer suggests that another reason for the defeat lies in gains made by the opposition through its Network of Barrios project, which, he claims, invested a great sum of money to solve small and local problems as a bargaining tool for leadership recognition and privileges. Milano believes that it helped turn part of the population against what he dubs " sectarian, triumphalist and arrogant" public officials. The government reacted too late, he adds, and the impulse given to social programs in a short period of 7 months before the elections was not enough. The opposition's victory in Petare at least has channeled it in to the democratic fold, the community reporter concludes, and should be a lesson of humility for the government that even though it is in power, there is nothing more "dangerous than a united and desperate minority."

Patrick J. O'Donoghue
patrick.vheadline@gmail.com

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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.

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