Monday, April 02, 2007
Laws are for little people
This weekend another opposition rascal flew the coup. Fomerr Yaracuy state governor and ardent oppositionist, Eduardo Lapi, escaped from prison. Lapi was in jail awaiting trail on influence peddling and awarding contracts without competitive bids. The opposition maintained all along that Lapi was a political prisoner - presumably awarding government contracts to your pals is a fundemental human right.
Note how they bitch and moan that nothing is being done about corruption and then we the government does something they cry that they are being persecuted. Predictable.
Was Lapi guilty? Who knows. That is what trials are for. So unless he is captured and a trail held we’ll never know. Just speaking for myself the fact that he fled (a crime in and of itself) hardly gives me faith in his innocence.
I guess this shows it is still easy to bribe prison guards in Venezuela. And that would be one more act of corruption by Lapi and his enablers. But who is counting?
Needless to say the opposition is hardly bothered by his escape. In fact, they seem rather pleased. Interesting, given how they carry on about the rule of law. When it comes to the law Chavez’s government is to dot every “I” and cross every “T”. When a congresswomen said that the recent Supreme Court ruling exempting bonuses from being taxed should be ignored the opposition talking heads were besides themselves.
Yet when Lapi evades flouts the “rule of law” by fleeing, they say nothing. When Pedro Carmona fled to avoid the “rule of law” – they said nothing. When Carlos Ortega fled (twice!!) to avoid the “rule of law” they said nothing (and he even snuck back in the country and attended opposition rallies with no-one turning him in to the police!). Ortega’s sidekick during the oil strike, Carlos Fernandez, managed to get a judge to let him be released from jail to house arrest because of supposed health problems. Those health problems didn’t prevent him from promptly getting on a plane and flying to Miami where he has stayed ever since.
Time and time again the leaders of the opposition have flaunted justice and made a mockery of the “rule of law”. The New York hotel baroness Leona Helmsley once famously said that “taxes are for little people”. I think that pretty well sums up the oppositions attitude towards laws – they are for “little people”.
|
Note how they bitch and moan that nothing is being done about corruption and then we the government does something they cry that they are being persecuted. Predictable.
Was Lapi guilty? Who knows. That is what trials are for. So unless he is captured and a trail held we’ll never know. Just speaking for myself the fact that he fled (a crime in and of itself) hardly gives me faith in his innocence.
I guess this shows it is still easy to bribe prison guards in Venezuela. And that would be one more act of corruption by Lapi and his enablers. But who is counting?
Needless to say the opposition is hardly bothered by his escape. In fact, they seem rather pleased. Interesting, given how they carry on about the rule of law. When it comes to the law Chavez’s government is to dot every “I” and cross every “T”. When a congresswomen said that the recent Supreme Court ruling exempting bonuses from being taxed should be ignored the opposition talking heads were besides themselves.
Yet when Lapi evades flouts the “rule of law” by fleeing, they say nothing. When Pedro Carmona fled to avoid the “rule of law” – they said nothing. When Carlos Ortega fled (twice!!) to avoid the “rule of law” they said nothing (and he even snuck back in the country and attended opposition rallies with no-one turning him in to the police!). Ortega’s sidekick during the oil strike, Carlos Fernandez, managed to get a judge to let him be released from jail to house arrest because of supposed health problems. Those health problems didn’t prevent him from promptly getting on a plane and flying to Miami where he has stayed ever since.
Time and time again the leaders of the opposition have flaunted justice and made a mockery of the “rule of law”. The New York hotel baroness Leona Helmsley once famously said that “taxes are for little people”. I think that pretty well sums up the oppositions attitude towards laws – they are for “little people”.
|
