The regime installed in 1999 believed that dismantling the institutional counterweight mechanisms typical of democracy and the rule of law would only serve to secure power, enrich the rulers and their circle of relatives, and nullify the opposition’s ability to denounce . He was wrong. Now it is paying the consequences of having colonized the Judiciary, the Comptroller’s Office and all the supervision mechanisms, placing in those instances equerries whose only mission was to take the reins of organizations subordinated to the will of Miraflores.
The discovery of the corruption schemes in Pdvsa-Sunacrip, led by Tareck el Aissami, in the CVG and, more recently, in Cartones de Venezuela, revealed that these cliques –protected by the absence of supervision– seized such a large volume of money that left the central government without resources to finance the ordinary expenses of the same companies and of the State.
In the case of Pdvsa, between the fortune that the mafia took over and the accounts receivable (different sources estimate that the figure reaches more than 21,000 million dollars), due to contracts without legal support, which do not serve to sustain the collection of the crude delivered in the international market, the Executive ran out of money to increase the salaries of workers in all sectors, raise the miserable income of retirees and pensioners, and spend on social programs in the pre-election year, among other things necessary expenditures. Such has been the scale of the fraudulent businesses, that the rot is also affecting Nicolás Maduro and his team.
The assault on PDVSA –the main supplier of foreign currency entering the nation- and on CVG can only be explained by the reduction to a minimum of the role of the Comptroller General of the Republic and the Comptrollership Commission of the National Assembly, and the annulment from PDVSA’s internal comptrollers, who for decades had zealously supervised the company’s operations. Where was Controller Elvis Amoroso for all these years? What was the AN Comptrollership Commission doing throughout this period, despite the denunciations of different experts in the oil field? Why hasn’t the comptroller been questioned in a public session? Why haven’t the internal comptrollers of PDVSA appeared before the AN? Why does none of these instances give a detailed and precise explanation to public opinion about what happened? If PDVSA belongs to everyone, if we are all shareholders of that firm, the least that we Venezuelans should know in great detail is what happened there during these years in which the company was fleeced by a criminal group, without the organs of the oil State designed to prevent theft will act to prevent it.
The indolence and irresponsibility of the regime has been of such magnitude that some technicians, workers and trade unionists who dared to expose corruption, were accused of being spies, fomenting hatred, being agents of the opposition and imperialism, acting as enemies of the revolution and traitors to the country. The young Alfredo Chirinos, who was also tortured and imprisoned for more than five years, was the victim of cruel treatment for having had the courage to expose the irregularities that were being committed in his work area at PDVSA.
I think it is very good that the government has begun the purge process that it is carrying out and that it dismantles the complex and intricate networks of corruption that have appropriated the State, PDVSA, the CVG and other State instances. This prophylactic work should be applauded. There are already eighty detainees. However, more must be demanded of a regime that has governed for almost a quarter of a century. The fight against the gears that generate and multiply corruption cannot be limited to persecuting and imprisoning criminals who appropriate public property and legitimize capital; or to pass bills and settle scores with internal rival factions.
What has happened with corruption since 1999, starting with the Bolívar Plan 2000, is the inevitable result of having submitted the Judiciary and the controlling bodies to the presidency of the Republic, annulling the autonomy of the AN, turning it into a monocolor forum, silencing the voice of the independent media, and persecute political parties, unions, unions, federations and private individuals, who reveal corruption in its different forms.
Tareck el Aissami and his comrades have been mortally wounded. Other outlaws enriched with money whose true owners are Venezuelans have fallen along with them. From this stage we must jump to the recovery of democracy, the Republic and the rule of law. Venezuela needs to have a State in which institutional and social counterweights operate. The different branches of Public Power must balance each other and monitor each other, in accordance with the classic republican principles of Montesquieu. And society, through its multiple organizations and media, must supervise the action of the State, and demand accountability from the leaders, without any of these healthy actions entailing the danger of being harassed, disqualified or imprisoned.
We must put an end to the power scheme based on corruption. Maduro is not the person capable of promoting that change.
@trinomarquezc