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Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Venezuelan President ... insensitive or cynical?

VenEconomy: One of President Chavez' strengths during these 12 long years in power has been his ability to connect with the population, rich and poor, town dwellers and country folk, men and women alike.

On March 30, he announced from Montevideo that Venezuela (read Chavez) had donated US$10 million to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Montevideo.

This is a slap in the face for the nurses from several of the country's states who have been on hunger strike outside the Embassy of Brazil since March 23 in protest at the low wages paid health workers in the public health system, the deplorable state of the public hospitals, and the Ministry of Health's inadequate budget.

This donation is also an affront to the students who held a 30-day hunger strike, with successful results, to protest at the strangling of the autonomous universities whose budgets today are less than five years ago in current bolivars, as if the President were totally unaware that in Venezuela there is spiraling inflation.

Medicine and university, two birds with one stone.

There are two possible interpretations to this donation by President Chavez. One is that he has simply become totally insensitive to his people's needs and concerns; that he no longer understands, neither is he aware of their desires and sufferings.

Donating US$10 million at a time when there are clear budgetary restrictions is, of itself, an offense for those who are waiting desperately for the government to release the funds for building homes, repairing power stations, fixing roads and freeways or attending to any other of the many needs that have been ignored over the past ten years. But the fact that those US$10 million have been donated precisely to a medical faculty goes beyond being offensive, for some analysts, it is proof that the President is losing his cool.

Then there are others who think that what the President is saying goes something like this:

Gentlemen, No one's going to twist my arm. I have other priorities that do not include giving the nurses substantial salary increases, much less the survival of the autonomous universities, which are constantly putting stumbling blocks in the way of the Revolution.

In other words, the President, a communicator par excellence, has sent a message.

Regardless of which interpretation is the right one, the fact is that this donation, sadly, bodes ill for the Venezuelan people.

On Sunday, Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro tried to repair the damage and, among other things, said that the donation was made five years ago so that Venezuelan students could study at the Universidad de Montevideo. From what he said it would seem that there have been two donations for equal amounts, one in 2005 and the other last week.

Explanations like that, far from clarifying the situation, simply muddy the waters still further.

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