When Chavez closed RCTV and unwillingly launched the student movement to the streets, there was a crass attempt at discrediting them: it was the trap set up at the National Assembly (N.A.). The sequence of events is now well known. The dissenting students which were all but summoned to the National Assembly gave a written speech and refused to repeat it endlessly, preferring to leave the sleazed up National Assembly building, requiring protection from a lynch mob.
Chavista propaganda went into high gear.
The students were called cowards for leaving the hall; were ridiculed for not taking that opportunity to expose their ideas fully; were ridiculed for having said a speech supposedly written from some advertising agency; and what not. Of course, chavismo who cherish endless repetition from its leader, who enthralls itself in constant stream of vacuity could not appreciate how complete and to the point was the speech read by Douglas Barrios. Even less could they understand that a consensus speech is always typed and read. Chavismo cannot understand that because it has renounced all critical thinking and as it drinks as nectar Chavez vulgar improvisations. But the worst attacks, the one constantly repeated is about that ad agency helping the students, and that they are paid by the Empire or subject to some sort of such arrangement.
That the walkout of the students paid handsomely on the political front has only served to increase the strident chavista attack as it despaired from finding adequate ideas to reply.
Unfortunately for chavismo, the only card that they thought they were holding has finished to fade. After that memorable N.A. session, some of these chavista students were promoted as the true voice of Venezuela youth, the birth of the intellectual future of the revolution.
Well, there is nothing of the sort, truth always comes up eventually.
It was first shown that many of these students had already active social security accounts, which means that they might be students but they already working. Nothing wrong with that of course, except that they were working in government agencies, and politicized ones at that.
But the press kept digging. For example Tal Cual published that in fact the students that were talking to defend the bolivarian revolution were selected in a casting call at the Vice President office. That is, when the dissenting students hit the streets someone had the idea of creating a public show at the N.A. and quickly sought through the different political agencies of the government a few presentable "students" to select. That means that NO ONE of the pro Chavez student was the representative of any significant student body supporting Chavez. None of them was, for example, the president of the UBV student council. Across the aisle, in the dissenting camp, all of the students are elected, named, voted on, selected in reunions by their fellow students. But of course in chavismo the only thing that matters is to be designed by the divine finger of the autocrat or the people he has designed, in this case Jorge Rodriguez, the vice president who has quite a track record on fudged elections anyway.
But it gets better. Today Tal Cual publishes another pearl. Apparently some of the pro Chavez students that hit prime time in that so called historical session of the N.A. are wined, dined and hosted in some Caracas hotel while all their travel expenses to make the rounds of chavista cells are fully paid by the state. They must have racked quite a few frequent flier miles at Conviasa.
No need to stress that the dissenting student take the metro like any other citizen and probably buy some hot dog at the local "perro calientero". And have the pro Chavez students reached any breakthrough? So far nothing. All the talk about a student power and a huge student assembly is so far just that, talk.
But at least, for the time being the pro Chavez student are adding a new meaning to the term work study.
-The end-