President Hugo Chavez Frias pledges to fight corruption on US$700-a-month
President Hugo Chavez Frias has declared war on still rampant corruption five years after he won the Presidency of the Republic of Venezuela on a ticket to get rid of more than forty years of endemic corruption that saw multi millionaires made out of the pseudo-democratic politicians and businessmen who had pillaged the country since the fall of the last military dictatorship in the mid fifties.
Pledging a “fight to the death” against corruption, 50-year-old Chavez Frias has urged his loyal supporters to give up their material possessions and give everything to their country to pull it back from the brink of bankruptcy in which it was left by octogenarian President Dr. Rafael Caldera in 1998.
The President’s pledge came as anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International ranked Venezuela 114th in a survey of 146 countries suffering from serious levels of corruption.
Chavez has pulled no punches since winning a recall referendum in August, to accuse government ministers, army generals and many of his hangers-on of amassing to themselves a wealth which is well in excess of their government salaries.
Political opponents from among the disenfranchised political parties (Accion Democratica and the Christian Socialists) that corrupted Venezuela for nearly half a century has sniped at Chavez Frias social welfare and health programs for the poor as a “robo-lution” (robbery revolution) and in a reversal of their own roles in previous administrations are now claiming rampant corruption in the administration that replaced their own.
Chavez Frias supporters and independent observers of the Venezuelan domestic-political scene claim, however, that corruption was worse before Chavez took office in February 1999 and that Chavez has done much more than any previous President to ensure that oil wealth is distributed fairly to Venezuela’s 80% poor and not spirited away to corrupt politicians’ feather-bedded bank accounts in Florida et.al.
Chavez says: “Let’s fight to the death against corruption … I don’t have a house or a car, nor do I want one … when I leave this job I’ll sling my hammock somewhere. … I don’t have a farm or cattle.”