His name is still Hugo by Teodoro Petkoff
The night of his election almost seven years ago, in the euphoria of his victory, Hugo Chavez said that he would change his name if in three months there were street kids hanging around the streets of Venezuela. Last Sunday, six and a half years later, our esteemed President remembered his promise and said he would do something about it. Teodoro Petkoff takes him to task in today's Tal Cual Editorial, for failing to fulfill it and for not accepting the blame for his failure to do so:
His name is still Hugo by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual
At last Chavez remembered the first and least taken care of, of his promises: that of the street kids. He made it the same night of his electoral triumph, on December 6th. 1998.
Last Sunday the light bulb lit up in his brain, he admitted that he has this outstanding debt and launched another social program: Mission "Negra Hipolita" (1), with which, according to this outrageous seller of illusions, this time around he will do what he did not do for more than six years, to attend the dramatic situation of the thousands of abandoned children, homeless, without a school and with a future which can only be worse than their present. Of course, true to himself, not even one signal of self-criticism, not one reflection about the reasons for the tremendous failure that the offer to rescue those he called the "kids of the homeland", not one word of explanation. However, despite everything, one can not but wish that this time around he succeed.
Nevertheless, from a person that promised to change his own name if "in three months" he had not solved the problem, you would have expected that this task was going to be his first priority and that he would not take six years and a half in order to remember it. In that sense, you could have expected that he would have carefully and closely verified the works of the National Council for the rights of kids and adolescents. It has not been that way. A report from the National Comptroller, that Tal Cual commented yesterday, reveals that more than 70% of the budget in the years 2002, 2003 and 2004 was assigned to personnel and expenses to run it.
And run it they did! Expenses in entertainment and events without approval of the highest authority, unjustified use of cellular phones, absence of manual for administrative procedures, or for purchasing and documentation, of roles and accounting. Seventy million bolivars in foreign travel "without any evidence of invitation by either public or private organizations, nor an act through which the highest authority of the Council approved such expenses, nor the documentation that would justify it" (Clodosbaldo dixit (2)) Two hundred and ninety million in per diem to trips to the interior of Venezuela that do not have "sufficient documentation that would justify it" (Says Clodo). More than 400 million paid to supposed "advisors" of the institution, which the Comptroller's Office can not justify because such advisors have to be ad honorem. The payments were made "outside of legal precepts that regulate the workings of the Council" (adds the Comptroller's Office, that, nobody knows how resuscitated, perhaps because the institution subject of the investigation is a 'minor" one)
How could the solution of the drama of street kids not be a fiasco! Neither Chavez concerned himself with the problem, nor the Council for kids and adolescents did. Hopefully, for the good of the kids, that the "Negra Hipolita" will not face a similar future.
Hopefully she can be the nanny of so many kids victimized by misery-if it is true that Chavez, for once, will fulfill one of his promises.
(1) Simon Bolivar's nanny (2) Name of the Comptroller
8:36:50 PM comment [6]
Chavez expresses "devotion" to Peruvian Dictator
Our ignorant President today showed once again his true colors while visiting Peru. Clearly showing he has no clue what a democracy is, President Chavez was defending that Venezuela was a democracy and his Government was not autocratic and then proceeded to express his "devotion" for "my general" Juan Velasco, who was President of Peru from 1968 to 1975. Velasco not only reached power via a coup, but his Government was simply a Dictatorship, with censorhip, repression and persecution the rule of the day. In fact, the media was nationalized by this man that Chavez says he is so devoted to. Reminded by reporters of the bad memory left in Peruvians by Velasco's Government, Chavez even dared say that this was just a matter of opinion.
It takes one to know one.
7:54:18 PM comment [6]