To
be rich is bad, Chávez says. To be poor is
worse, says common sense. When a lot of wealth on
one side goes hand-in-hand with a lot of poverty on
the other side of a society, there is an inequality
that cries out to God.
There
exists an enormous injustice that, logically, is merciless
with the poor, but not with the rich. That is what
is happening in our country today.
The
difference between those who earn more and those who
have less has gotten even wider in these seven years.
The abyss that separates the richest from the poorest
has become immeasurable.
We
have the worst income distribution in all of Latin
America. Social inequality has deepened under the
“beautiful revolution” that today, incidentally,
turns seven, seven years of a great failure that coincides
with those of the highest revenues this country has
ever known.
Not
even the “beauty salon” that the National
Institute of Statistics has become, can hide this
awful reality.
The
Mission Scholarship, equivalent to half of the minimum
wage (about Bs. 220,000), without a doubt has improved
the relative income of the poorest because, for those
who don't have anything, it's still a help.
But
the legal and illegal business transacted today, thanks
to oil prosperity, has increased to astronomical proportions
the already high revenues of the richest, now including
a new layer of Bolivarian (yes, thanks to the bolivar)
multimillionaires.
The
growing inequality blocks equal opportunities. The
rich and the poor don’t start from the same
gate in the race of life.
The
poor must come from much further behind, and their
disadvantaged condition gives them fewer years of
schooling, much less preparation and fewer skills
for employment, less ability to enjoy the intangible
benefits of life, worse nutrition, and it places them
in living conditions that are, in themselves, a negation
of civilized life.
The
opportunities for a child living in Carapita (a poor
sector of Caracas) are not the same as for one that
lives in La Castellana (a rich sector of Caracas).
This
government's great failure is that in seven years
it has made the country even more unequal than the
one it found, in which the opportunities are even
less for the humblest and most forsaken.
To
build a country of equality and justice, people need
decent jobs, adequate education and dependable social
security.
It
requires creating decent jobs, and encouraging employment-generating
investment, instead of destroying (opportunities),
as has occurred for the past seven years.
It
requires top quality educators, a commitment to preschool
and primary education, and programs that ensure no
child is left behind. Our street children are a terrible
testimony to failure.
Everyone
should have social security that guarantees decent
and equitable retirement pensions. The government
is seven years overdue with social protection, a despicable
failure of a government that speaks of social advance.
Seven
years were more than enough to have advanced in all
these aspects. Other countries have achieved it. We
have regressed.
Failure
is the name of the game.
Teodoro
Petkoff
is the editor of Venezuela's newspaper TalCual, a
former Planning Minister in the Venezuelan and presidential
candidate. Petroleumworld
not necessarily share these views.
