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The 52nd anniversary of the fall of military dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, January 23, 2010, served as the excuse for democratic Venezuelans to organize a march of protest against socialist-fascist dictator Hugo Chavez. Venezuelan conditions have deteriorated rapidly in the last months: electrical blackouts, water shortages, scarce food supplies, rampant crime in the streets, corruption scandals involving Chavez’s close collaborators and relatives, devaluation of the currency. You name it and we got it.
Venezuela today is in chaos. There is no government in the correct sense of the word. Decisions are taken almost exclusively by Chavez himself. He is giving increasing indications of mental unbalance, as he insults his own minister and followers on his TV show. He is engaging in a series of confiscations and expropriations of foreign companies that serve no other purpose than to harass the U.S. and democratic governments that criticize his abusive manner of rule. He has taken over companies or assets of U.S., French, Colombian, and Argentinean, Spanish, Mexican and Swedish ownership and has rarely offered just and timely compensation. He has intensified his alliance with the terrorist Colombian guerrillas, FARC, with Hezbollah and Hamas and has become a major, almost only remaining ally of the Iranian regime.

The march today looked enormous. Chavez does not allow any aerial photographs to be taken of the opposition marches by members of the opposition, since he does not want the outside world to know the extent of the popular rejection he is suffering. With Goebel’s like audacity he always talks about the “hundred” of opposition marchers when these marchers are in the order of hundreds of thousands. My back of the envelope calculation, based on the width and length of the space occupied by the marchers is of the order of some 400,000 people. They were of all colors and social origin, not only middle class, which is the social class most heavily, damaged by Chavez racial and class hatred.

I would like to tell public opinion in the U.S., Canada and Europe that Chavez is not a popular president.

He is a fraud who is rejected by a significant portion of the Venezuelan population. Think twice before believing his propaganda, which costs us Venezuelans millions of dollars.

I would also like to say that Chavez is history. His “revolution” has stalled, his friends abroad are evaporating, his popular support is declining and political and social conditions in Venezuela are becoming critical. He might not last much longer

Gustavo Coronel is a 28 years oil industry veteran, a member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), author of several books. At the present Coronel is Petroleumworld associate editor and advisor on the opinion and editorial content of the site. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.

Editor's Note: This commentary was originally published by Humans Events, on 01/25/2010. Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest of our readers.

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