Briefly. The democratic touch first.
The main campus of Venezuela decided to hold today a protest march today to protest the education cuts which probably might not even cover payroll. This in a climate where other cuts that coudl be well undertaken are not done. I think in particular about the military spending of which we have not heard any significant decrease, or the checks to the leeches of our country, namely Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Argentina. Not to mention that significant funds could be freed for education and health if Chavez were willing to sell gas at cost.
Considering that today was a week day and that as usual all sorts of threats took place, the march was a great success. BBC Mundo has a long report without qualifying the attendance but there is a telling picture.
The fascist touch now.
In an unusual move the corresponding minister, Luis Acuña, had agreed to receive the president of the Venezuelan major universities. However the march was directed to stop at X point and send a committee of 8 representatives. They accepted of course and sent such committee led by UCV president, Cecilia Garcia Arocha. UCV is the largest and oldest Venezuelan university. So far so good. But when these poor 8 souls reached the offices of Acuña they were met by a minister surrounded by a high number of chavista students allow to carry all sorts of boards insulting the march outside. Insulting boards quickly joined with insulting language.
Of course, the 8 guys quickly realized that they were wasting their time and walked out, with strong declarations against an education minister who allows himself to be a instrument of division, and ignorance I will add. Garcia Arocha had no qualm calling the meeting "a trap".
But in the deserted UCV campus there was activity. A group of hooded thugs did capture UCV buses, apparently had themselves taken to the UCV main square, started shooting and burning the buses, before they eventually withdrew, guns in open sight. Globovision has even a video amateur by some of the personnel left in campus.
The reactions? The Minister of interior, Tareck El Aissami, blamed it all on the UCV authorities. Yeah, right, he probably had not seen the video yet... Besides, one would like to see El Assaimi equally worried about the crime wave that we all suffer in Venezuela except people like him who get all sorts of bodyguards at tax payer expenses.
While all these were taking place Chavez grabbed 35 more oil industry supplier, in a move that is simple robbery, the type of robbery that an interior minister in Venezuela would be well advised to investigate.
But is it all worth it? I doubt it as today 107 students of a "bolivarian" school were intoxicated by the snack served them that morning.
As good fascists chavistas have become, their only care is to preserve their power. The rest of the country is to be mocked, to be put in jail, to be robbed or to be left alone to stare death from crime or food poisoning. The people do have a choice for their fate, don't they?
-The end-