Acid from Cuba

VenEconomy:

Acid from Cuba
From the Editors of VenEconomy

Those who thought that the unexpected suspension of last Sunday's Aló
Presidente would bring a brief respite from the anxiety generated by
Chávez's habitual Sunday announcements were mistaken.

Instead, the state-owned Venezolana de Televisión broadcast an interview
with Hugo Chávez from Cuba in which he dropped three bombshells whose
repercussions are impossible to predict.

The first had to do with his alleged reason for visiting Cuba: the
preparations for celebrating the first decade since the signing of the
bilateral Cooperation Agreement between Venezuela and Cuba. So it was
that he announced that the "comprehensive" Cuba-Venezuela agreement
would be extended for another ten years. This agreement has permitted
the draining off of Venezuela's resources in order to shore up the
Castro regime but has brought no benefits for Venezuela; it has not even
managed to keep the hundreds of Barrio Adentro primary medical care
modules open and running, a program that promised health care for the
poorest sectors of the population.

The second bombshell had to do with his real reason for traveling to
Cuba: the case of Walid Makled, the alleged drug trafficker captured in
Colombia for whom warrants for extradition have been issued by Venezuela
and the United States and who is telling what he knows about alleged
ties between top Venezuelan Government officials and international drug
trafficking networks.

Chávez "revealed" from Cuba that the Colombian President, Juan Manuel
Santos, had assured him in a "private conversation" that Makled would be
extradited to Venezuela and not to the United States. VenEconomy doubts
that Santos could have made any such promise. In Colombia, unlike what
happens in Venezuela, the branches of government enjoy full
independence, and President Santos, unlike Chávez, does not control the
decisions handed down by the Supreme Court. Even the Colombian
magistrates will have to carefully consider many aspects before taking a
final decision, among them the fact that the extradition treaty between
the United States and Colombia was revoked by Colombia's Supreme Court,
although, so far, that has not prevented the extradition of drug
traffickers to the United States.

Chávez's statements regarding the Makled case revealed the true cause of
his fears: that Makled's revelations before an independent court could
result in him and his protégés being tried by "an international criminal
court or in Venezuela being included among the states that support drug
trafficking and terrorism."

The third bombshell was dropped with the idea of continuing to instill
fear in Venezuelan businessmen. Talking about the recent expropriations,
he said they were no such thing. They were, he claimed,
"transpropriations," a figure that does not exist in Venezuelan law, and
stated that "we cannot pay them." "Who are we going to pay, crooks?" And
gave the order to apply the "acid of the law" to businessmen.

Unfortunately, while the President was making a display of barbarism
from Cuba, prison officers at Los Teques Women's Prison, despicably and
viciously, poured the "acid" of his dictatorship on the mother and
sister of Judge María de Lourdes Afuini, today sentenced to a term in
prison by Chávez's "justice."

VenEconomy has been a leading provider of consultancy on financial,
political and economic data in Venezuela since 1982."

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