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VenEconomy: The “revolution's” investments

In these times of revolutionary dictatorship, the powers that be have been brazenly inverting constitutional rules, in particular with a view to restricting people's freedoms and citizen rights or to expanding the arbitrariness and licentiousness of those in government.

One area where these inversions have been happening most persistently is in the right to information, despite the fact that this right is guaranteed under the Constitution and cannot be suppressed, not even if a state of emergency is declared.

The gradual erasure of this right is being achieved via a contradictory system of laws that imposes endless legal obligations on the citizen that erode his privacy far beyond any constitutional duty, while the government is being protected behind a wall of silence and secrets concerning key national issues where transparency and information should prevail.

Today it is practically impossible to know whether an official figure is accurate or has been touched up. All, or practically all, information is filtered, manipulated, delayed, or hidden from the general public; from the real figure of victims who die at the hands of criminals every weekend to the real number of barrels produced or exported by PDVSA. The deterioration in information sources even affects the erstwhile reliable figures issued by the Central Bank of Venezuela and the National Statistics Institute. In present day Venezuela, it is even a crime to report the exchange rate on the unofficial market.

Now, on top of all those laws, decrees, and regulations that restrict access to information regarding the public sector, they have created the Situational Analysis Center (CESNA) (Presidential Decree 7,454, published in Gaceta Oficial dated June 1, 2010).

Henceforth the CESNA will permanently compile, process, and analyze all the information coming from State institutions and society “on any aspect of national interest.” Even more worrying is the fact that this center will be able to declare “reserved, classified or for restricted circulation” any information, fact or circumstance it processes or of which it has knowledge.

There are several aspects of this creation of a center for collecting and filtering official information that put the proper functioning of the State and citizen rights in jeopardy. One is that sifting information that should be freely available to the general public -so that it can perform its responsibilities as a social watchdog so loudly proclaimed by the government- will result in greater inefficiency by the State and more corruption and impunity.

Moreover, it further inhibits the free exercising of journalism and the public's right to truthful, timely information.

It just so happens that the creation of this center of censorship was announced right after the breaking of a scandal over containers with food products that had been left to rot, when the true state of public health is starting to come to light, and, above all, because the government is finding it impossible to cover up the financial crisis that is ruining the public coffers.

VenEconomy has been a Venezuela's leading specialized publisher on financial, political and economic data since 1982. VenEconomy's Points of View on the issues of the day, as seen by VenEconomy during the last week. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.

Editor's Note: This commentary was originally published by Veneconomy , June 08, 2010. Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest of our readers

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Petroleumworld News 06/09/2010

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