March 05, 2014

Britain, if you had oil revenue power concentrated like in Venezuela, yours could be even more of a ‘malandro’, a hoodlum, nation.

Sir, I refer to 99.99% of what is currently written about Venezuela, like yours “Venezuela: the ‘malandro’ nation” March 5.

If you’d only taken time to really set yourself into the challenges of a country where over 98 percent of all its exports go into government coffers, you would not be writing about a “Hugo Chávez legacy” or the charmlessness of his successor, Nicolas Maduro.

You would probably be writing about the fact that no one, no matter how good intentions he has, no matter how charming he is, no matter how brilliant he might be, should, in the company of some few petrocrats and oilygarchs, have the right to wield such extraordinary powers.

And Andres Schipani titles his report “Venezuela´s poor wait for the revolution to deliver”, which only helps to promote the illusion of something waiting for them at the end of the rainbow. A much better title would be “Venezuela´s ever growing poor keep standing in the wrong line”

No Sir, let me assure you that if your Britain was set up as my Venezuela is, yours might be a much more ´malandro’ nation than mine… suffice to see what happened when some of your kings wielded too much power… and heads rolled!