Monsignor Ubaldo Santana, archbishop of Maracaibo, the capital city of western Zulia state in Venezuela, gave an interview to El Universal, a rabid capitalist and pro-imperialist propaganda outlet, in which he talked about his political, ideological and "moral" prejudices.

About the upcoming referendum of a constitutional amendment in Venezuela to remove term limits on elected public officials, Santana, during the interview, says:

"It is worrisome. We, bishops, are very concerned about it, and if we are to say a word, then we will try that it will be not a political position, but a moral position that helps our people to assess what we are going through and where we are going. It is not easy, because, as everything is polarized and everything is construed from the political view, then, the Church's action has been interpreted in this context. We must pay attention to this topic, but I will not say how we will address it. However, I would like, as the chair of the Venezuelan Bishops' Conference (CEV), to say a guiding word."

What a pile of hogwash pours out of this monsignor.

While he "worries," Monsignor Ubaldo Santana conveniently or opportunistically ignores Article 72 of the Venezuelan Constitution which gives the Venezuelan people the power and right ... by petition ... to remove from office or keep in office any elected official at almost any time the people want. This power and right was in fact exercised by the people in August 2004.

Article 72 of the Venezuelan Constitution reads:

"All magistrates and other offices filled by popular vote are subject to revocation. Once half of the term of office to which an official* has been elected has elapsed, a number of voters constituting at least 20% of the voters registered in the pertinent circumscription [that is, the district -- national, provincial, parish municipality] may extend a petition for the calling of a referendum to revoke such official's mandate."

So, the indefinite reelection of officials is properly checked and balanced by the power and right of the people to indefinitely remove officials, a power which no other people in the western hemisphere possess.

The thing that "worries," Monsignor Ubaldo Santana is the growing amount of power that the people of Venezuela exercise over the presidency of their state (and perhaps how that power affects the church?). Presently, the people only have to power to put the president in power and to kick him out of office. The people don't have the power to keep a president in office as long as they want him there. If the constitutional amendment passes on Feb. 15, the people will get this additional power over the presidency. The bourgeoisie and other reactionaries heavily depend on presidential term limits for their next big shot to launch their disgusting counter-revolution, a repeat of the violent bourgeois dictatorship established in April 2002 that lasted two days. 

Santana, this expert on divine beings, wants to present his bourgeois political position as a "moral position." Thank God, he hasn't yet decided to present his so-called "moral position" as a divine position like his political and ideological idol, George W. Bush.
In 2003, Bush testified "God instructed me to attack Iraq. And I did what God told me."

Evidently, Santana believes it is immoral for the people of Venezuela to exercise so much power over the officials who are supposed to serve the people.

On the experiences of countries that don't have term limits on their heads of government, like for example, the UK and many other parliamentary democracies, the Santana cravenly equivocates as follows:

"I think we are facing a huge shortage from political sectors. It seems to me that they are not meeting the needs of information and people's education. Political sectors should educate about the political evolution of Venezuela and of the countries where such proposals have been made. It is not our job. I think there is a gap here, a serious oversight."

The Maracaibo expert on divine beings ... that is, as such unearthly beings are revealed and discussed in Jewish mythology ... suggests that the Venezuelan people are ignorant about the questions of the propriety and expediency of term limits on elected public officials and the removal of these term limits. He says the political forces, both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary, have failed to informed the people about these questions. He wisely ... but on the sly ... recommends that the people look at the history of Venezuela as well as the experience of other countries. He promises that he will NOT enlighten the people on these matters. [Perhaps, his "moral position" prevents him.] He sighs almost in despair that the political forces in Venezuela have left this "gap" in the body politic.

When asked about what the government should do, the divine expert, who refuses to do anything about "gap," says:

"The situation of the poorest and downtrodden should be addressed, because in 2012 they will be poorer and more forsaken; because we will have no more the wealth we had in the early years of the current government, and this means fewer gifts and increasing poverty. We will face the need to reeducate people, who are used to put out their hand and receive and enjoy benefits effortlessly. We need to empower the people to earn their living."

Here, the expert on divinity seems to dwell in another world, for during the last 10 years, the revolutionary government has done more for the "the poorest and downtrodden" in health care, education, nutrition, housing, wages, and by other social programs in lieu of wages than the Catholic experts of divinity and their capitalist allies have done in over 200 years. During the last 10 years, Venezuela has experienced a truly unprecedented redistribution of the national income to "address the situation of the poorest and downtrodden."

And who. in the main, treads and trod down on the "poorest?" It is and has been, of course, the capitalist millionaires who are main allies and the dearest friends of the sanctimonious experts on Nazarene divinity for whom Santana speaks.

Santana ignores revolutionary accomplishments because what has been done during last 10 years has been chiefly for the people of Venezuela, not for the privileged of Venezuela ... the latter, a stratum of society to which Santana ["His Excellency"] belongs.

Perhaps, this stab in the back of the revolutionary government specifically on account of the extraordinary good it has done in health care, education, nutrition, housing, and wages expresses the content of Santana's self-described "moral position."  Santana laments that the revolutionary government has not completely cleaned up in 10 years the horrifying mess that took over 200 years for Catholic experts on Nazarene divinity and their capitalist allies to produce in Venezuela. It is true that the "divine" and bourgeois mess handed down after over 200 years of capitalist oppression and exploitation hasn't been completely cleaned up, but the Venezuelan revolutionaries have made and are making great progress in doing so. And if the malignant hypocrites, the clerical brethren of Santana, with all of their professed "divinity" and "morality" would only pause for just one hour in stabbing revolutionaries in back to procure applause from Washington imperialists, much more can be done. 

"This means fewer gifts," this expert on divinity forecasts.

Since when has the refusal to disturb the ownership of the people of Venezuela over their natural and other resources been a "gift?" Who is this giver that Santana is talking about? Who does Santana believe own the natural and other resources of Venezuela so that this mysterious "owner" can "give" to the people of Venezuela what is already theirs?

Of course, Santana has in mind the vile Venezuelan bourgeoisie and their savage US imperialist allies.

"We need to empower the people to earn their living," Santana urges.

But can "we" empower people to earn if "we" steal from them what they earn and what belongs to them as their birthright?

Can "we" empower people to earn if "we" give most or all of what they earn to Washington imperialists?

When asked by El Universal ... "Did we miss the chance to get out of poverty?" ... the pious Santana replies: 

"History will tell. It is still very early to come to a judgment. I think we can always rectify any errors. Forming a judgment about what happened is not important. The past will not be shackles that tie and lead us to the deepest abyss."

What in the world or in the other world is Santana talking about?

Not knowing exactly what, if anything, the archbishop of Maracaibo has in mind, revolutionaries and humanists can, in general or in abstraction, agree with his reply here.

The key to the matter is which "past" this expert on divine beings is talking about -- either the "past" of over 200 years of bourgeois rule with Catholic complicity or the "past" of the last 10 years during which the people of Venezuela  rose in glory, proclaiming to themselves and to the world "This is our country and we alone shall rule."

Then El Universal asked Santana "What will be the priority issues under your three-year management?"

"We need to continue working to prevent the country from tearing; to prevent polarization and crisis from widening the existing gap. Seemingly, when politicians launch their projects, they focus on their own and lose their perspective on other things. We have lately witnessed that the political field takes precedence over other issues concerning the country layout. While the political field is relevant, social, ethical, cultural and educational matters are important as well."

So, this gentleman of the cloth wants to reconcile the class struggle.

Isn't that sweet of him?

Will this "prevention of polarization" result from the abandonment of the profit-loving class struggle of the bourgeoisie against the working class or from the abandonment of the self-preserving class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie?

Or, perhaps, this gentleman, with his divine connections, wishes to moderate ... in a transcending  fashion ... the positions of both sides of the polarity.

To attain any of these three alternatives, the pious gentleman must specify what degree of profit the bourgeoisie cannot exceed and what degree of poverty the working class cannot be subjected.
The gentleman is too cowardly to make either specification, because his bourgeois and imperialist allies will never tolerate either specification.

"In your keynote speech at the CEV [the creme de la creme of Santana's religious organization] meeting, you also expressed concern about insecurity. Will you deal with this matter?" El Universal finally asked.

"Absolutely. Not only are we interested in armed violence, but social violence. We will have to ascertain what we can do to diminish the rate of violence, aggressiveness, mistreatment among Venezuelans. We do not purport to take up responsibilities that are not for us. We need to remind the appropriate authorities of their duties. However, we do think that we can do a lot in this field. For instance, we will need to get more involved in the issue of violence in prisons.

"We will need to take active part in pacification of gangs and antisocial groups. We need to develop social reinsertion programs. There is also the issue of dissemination of values. We need to ascertain how to recover our profile in official education, formal and informal education, to instill values."

The use of death squads to further the objectives of imperial US foreign policy has been an institution over many decades in many countries -- Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Jamaica, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, Haiti, and elsewhere.

Monsignor Ubaldo Santana, archbishop of Maracaibo, pretends he doesn't know about the filthy operations of the US college of torture and genocide, the infamous and utterly despicable "School of the Americas," formerly in the Panama Canal Zone, now at the Ft. Benning, Georgia, where human beings are turned in bloodthirsty savages and barbarians, trained and paid to organize others to prey murderously on their own people to advance the imperial ambitions of the bourgeois regime in Washington and the ambitions of contemptible US quislings abroad.

Santana wallows in his fraudulent innocence. He is no Oscar Romero. Santana is unfit to rub oil or water on Romero's feet.

But the heroic and glorious Venezuelan proletariat, in keeping with its superlative ethics, has an answer for all of these immoral and bestial  degenerates in US imperialist-trained and financed death squads who try to intimidate it.

CONCLUSION

Santana tries to round up the Nazarene masses to oppose the amendment. He doesn't want to be too open about what he's up to; perhaps because many Nazarenes are also solid revolutionaries who will, if pissed off, dump Catholic experts of divine beings and jump over into other Nazarene sects, including the Moonies, if Santana gave himself away. So, Santana says just enough to convey his reactionary political point of view on the amendment to the Nazarene masses, a viewpoint which he manipulatively calls "morality."

The other snivelings of Santana in the El Universal interview aim to discredit Hugo Chavez and make it deceptively appear to Nazarenes that Chavez doesn't deserve another term based on past performance. Santana is slightly more open about this aspect of his sneaky political propaganda.

Perhaps the best way for the revolution to counter Santana's sly tactics is emphasize the powerful checks and balances that lie in Article 72 of the Constitution which vests in the people with power to kick out of office all elected officials in Venezuela -- whether they are good, bad, corrupt, or incorruptible. So far, however, Article 72 has not been used by revolutionaries up to its extraordinary potentiality.

Another counter to Santana's tactics is emphasis on the increase of power that the people will exercise over the state if the amendment passes and the incontestable fact that an increase in the amount of power exercised by the people always strengthens democratic institutions.  So far, revolutionaries have made better use of this argument than the more powerful Article 72 thing.

As to the prognosis for the Feb. 15 referendum, the amendment should pass by at least 500,000 votes despite the attempts of the Nazarene experts on divine beings and others to misdirect the electorate.

The key factor will be the performance of the National Electoral Council, whose president, Tibisay Lucena, has a head that seems to be getting bigger and bigger by the day. Lucena recently declared that the Council's performance in the Nov. 23 regional elections was "excellent" which of course was not the case on the technical side in many of the proletarian districts of the country. "Excellent" was in fact the case throughout Venezuela on the democratic side of election since the Nov. 23 were free and fair. More alarming is the Lucena's latest boast that her performance on Feb. 15 will be "faultless." Evidently, mere "excellence" no longer gratifies Lucena; so, now, she reaches out for "faultlessness," the highest degree of excellence. One wonders how she can rise so quickly from mere "excellence" to "faultlessness" between Nov. 23 and Feb 15. The problem that Lucena and her top administrators at the Council face or, more correctly, refuse to face is the increasing penetration of the middle and lower levels of the administrative apparatus of the Council by vote-suppressing scum and slime beholden to the opposition intent on making the voting experience as painful and as exasperating as possible for the workers and the poor.

Instead of bragging, Lucena should deliver not only a free and fair election which is no mean feat, but also a well administered one [especially in the poor districts] since these are two different criteria. 

Lucena, on the one hand, speaks about a technical problem which she calls "exclusion" and which she describes as "minimal." It is not "minimal." It is a part of what is called abstention or, more correctly, apparent abstention.

On the other hand, we recognize that, to some degree, Lucena indeed faces the problem of "exclusion" when she bravely insists ...  contrary to the publicly expressed wishes of the "exclusionary" slime in the opposition ... that the right of citizens to vote continues after 4:00 PM on election day if the citizens are in line at the polls at four. We hope on Feb. 15 she doesn't abandon her brave position on this aspect of "exclusion." But the point is what is her performance relative to "exclusion"  before four o'clock on election day?

© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com

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*Read Arthur Shaw's bio and his essays on Axis of Logic