It seems that chavista pollsters must be reading the numbers right and that is sending Chavez into a flurry of activity so as to appear to do something about it, trying desperately to dispel the reality that in ten years he has done near zilch to plan the energetic future of the country. Along the way his true egotistical self shows plenty opportunities to show off, while he accumulates dangerous lapsus brutis.
It all started into his now customary cabinet meeting live on TV, and sometimes even on cadena. You need to understand first that a live cabinet meeting is not a working reunion: ministers spend several hours listening to Chavez rants, leavened occasionally by the scolding to one of their lot. The scolded idiot nods with his or her head, sure that he will handsomely rewarded for allowing the beloved leader humiliate him in public.
The cabinet reunion as usual was extremely useful for the well being of the country: Chavez explained to us that we needed to take only three minutes showers, that we had no need for hot water, and that he was creating a new ministry for electricity. You can see it for yourself in several Youtube videos, in particular this one below. As a bonus you get the lapsus bruti of an unhinged Chavez admitting that that his socialism of the XXI century is nothing else than disguised communism.
But apparently this was not enough. TV luminaries interpreted this scene justly as a mockery of the people, so Chavez had to change his discourse and find someone to blame for the power outages. Today in his Alo Presidente it was the Sambil Malls that consume too much electricity. They have been ordered to install their own electricity generation system because Chavez was going to cut their electricity supply.
What?
First of all, why blame the Sambil who actually offers a useful social function as being the only entertainment center for the masses, where rich and poor can go to walk around in a safe and cool AC space and eat some cheap junk food instead of daring the contaminated streets, where they can risk reckless drivers and out of control criminals! Why not close instead some of the government agency that produce nothing but hot air?
Second the biggest Sambil of them all is the one in Caracas. It was inaugurated, if memory does not fail me, in 1998. And certainly until at least 3 years ago there was no electrical outages that could be blamed on the mall.....
But you have to admire the bravado of Chavez, pointing at the Sambil windmills! He could not take down Colombia, he will take down the Sambils! Our hero!!!!!
Meanwhile, he, the socialist president of the masses is attacking the trade unions of the electrical sector who are claiming their due. He pretends that since we are in crisis they should put on hold their grievances. Eh? Is it their fault that Chavez has not invested in the electric sector? Are they to be blamed in the same breath as the Sambil? Oh, Lord! Give me strength!
But of course Chavez has never been a manager and he certainly cannot understand what the private sector knows very well: without motivated workers, you are not going to accomplish much.
If he is not a manager, that does not seem to have reached his mind and he also decided that he will be the national diet director. In addition of taking now the right to decide who can buy electricity and who cannot, Chavez also told us that we are getting fat, that now 14% of the people are obese. I suppose that for once, knowing that soon he will not be able to buy all the food he needs to buy he needs to have more folks eat less. Wise man, ain't he? Also, the less people eat the less use for a refrigerator and so more Watts saved!!!! Brilliant!
But there were other gems today. One was that the Colombian defense minister was accused of being a "retardado", that is, vulgarly, a retard. Except that in Venezuelan Spanish it should be "retrasado" instead of "retardado", a word that does not exist here but is used in Cuba. Decide by yourself whether this is yet another lapsus brutus.
That is our Chavez, in a single day battling all fronts, Sambil overconsumption, obesity, rice production in Apure, drug trafficking, murders on the border, Colombia, restless trade unions, and what not!!!! All of course with equal resounding success! I feel soooo safe!
-The end-