Monday, January 09, 2006
Audacity without bound
Sometimes its just hard to believe the stuff that comes out of some of the opposition's leaders mouths. It really is.
Take this for example. Gerardo Blyde, an opposition leader and former assembly person from the opposition party Primero Justicia, said today "The government has to reimburse everyone affected by the Viaduct I closure". This apparently includes both private individuals as well as businsesses. So according to Blyde the Venezuelan government should be reimbursing American Airlines because their passengers have been inconvienced and all the folks in eastern Caracas who couldn't make it to the beach this weekend (and no I don't mean to the beach in Vargas, they wouldn't be caught dead there, I mean those who couldn't catch their flights to Los Roques).
So some land slides down a valley and takes out a bridge and the government is supposed to reimburse everyone for that. Yet when the Venezuelan opposition led a strike that cost the country billions, no one said anything about reimbursement. I know people who lost their jobs, who chopped up wood furniture to be able to cook because there was no gasoline, taxi drivers who lost weeks worth of fares they could ill afford to lose, and on and on. Where is their reimbursement, Mr. Blyde? Why doesn't Primero Justicia raise some money to reimburse them? If the people who led that strike just re-patriated some of what they have in Miami I'm sure they could make good on that damage.
Blyde may try to evade responsibility saying the strike was private whereas with the Viaduct it is the government that is responsible. But that isn't true. Blyde was in the Assembly when the strike occured so he was a public servant. Shouldn't he and other opposition elected officials be held responsible for the damage they did in supporting the strike? Plus, the strikers at PDVSA are in effect government employees so why can't they be held responsible?
Whats more, not only were those public officials responsible for far more damage than the Viaduct is causing they did it INTENTIONALY. They tried to destroy the economy. They tried to make people lose their jobs. They tried to shut down all transport. They tried to make the markets run out of food. They tried to make it so people couldn't cook their own meals. All of that was intentional, not the unintended consequence of an honest mistake or even just plain incompetance. They were doing everything in their power to bring Venezuela and its people, particularly poor people who support Chavez, to their knees. So Mr. Blyde, if people, and more specifically government officials, should respond for the damage they cause I think you should be one of the first people to start ponying up some money.
The stupidity of Gerardo Blyde is really emblematic of the problems of the opposition. They just can't help themselves. Here the country is faced with a difficult situation which is adminittadly the fault of the current administration. Instead of just saying they think this shows the current government is inefficient or incomompetant and therefore undeserving of the public's support they have to go way over the top and spout this kind of non-sense. And then they wonder why no-one accept an extremist fringe listens to them anymore.
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Take this for example. Gerardo Blyde, an opposition leader and former assembly person from the opposition party Primero Justicia, said today "The government has to reimburse everyone affected by the Viaduct I closure". This apparently includes both private individuals as well as businsesses. So according to Blyde the Venezuelan government should be reimbursing American Airlines because their passengers have been inconvienced and all the folks in eastern Caracas who couldn't make it to the beach this weekend (and no I don't mean to the beach in Vargas, they wouldn't be caught dead there, I mean those who couldn't catch their flights to Los Roques).
So some land slides down a valley and takes out a bridge and the government is supposed to reimburse everyone for that. Yet when the Venezuelan opposition led a strike that cost the country billions, no one said anything about reimbursement. I know people who lost their jobs, who chopped up wood furniture to be able to cook because there was no gasoline, taxi drivers who lost weeks worth of fares they could ill afford to lose, and on and on. Where is their reimbursement, Mr. Blyde? Why doesn't Primero Justicia raise some money to reimburse them? If the people who led that strike just re-patriated some of what they have in Miami I'm sure they could make good on that damage.
Blyde may try to evade responsibility saying the strike was private whereas with the Viaduct it is the government that is responsible. But that isn't true. Blyde was in the Assembly when the strike occured so he was a public servant. Shouldn't he and other opposition elected officials be held responsible for the damage they did in supporting the strike? Plus, the strikers at PDVSA are in effect government employees so why can't they be held responsible?
Whats more, not only were those public officials responsible for far more damage than the Viaduct is causing they did it INTENTIONALY. They tried to destroy the economy. They tried to make people lose their jobs. They tried to shut down all transport. They tried to make the markets run out of food. They tried to make it so people couldn't cook their own meals. All of that was intentional, not the unintended consequence of an honest mistake or even just plain incompetance. They were doing everything in their power to bring Venezuela and its people, particularly poor people who support Chavez, to their knees. So Mr. Blyde, if people, and more specifically government officials, should respond for the damage they cause I think you should be one of the first people to start ponying up some money.
The stupidity of Gerardo Blyde is really emblematic of the problems of the opposition. They just can't help themselves. Here the country is faced with a difficult situation which is adminittadly the fault of the current administration. Instead of just saying they think this shows the current government is inefficient or incomompetant and therefore undeserving of the public's support they have to go way over the top and spout this kind of non-sense. And then they wonder why no-one accept an extremist fringe listens to them anymore.
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