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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Zuloaga, A Wanted Man |
| 2010-06-24 |
| There is nothing surprising about the arrest warrant in Venezuela for Guillermo Zuloaga, principal shareholder and president of Globovision, the country's lone independent TV station. What is surprising is that Hugo Chavez has taken this long to make a move that those who follow Globovision's heroic resistance against the autocrat have long expected. Ever since Chavez took RCTV, Venezuela's oldest station, off the open airwaves in 2007, Globovision knew it was next in line. But despite a dizzying array of judicial charges and acts of intimidation, Zuloaga's media outlet maintained its investigative reporting and commentary. Even when the government falsely accused Zuloaga, who also owns two car dealerships, of hoarding vehicles with the purpose of raising their prices, Globovision's president kept up the fight. Meanwhile, other critics -- mayors, governors, intellectuals, business people -- were arrested or forced to flee the country. The latest was Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, former governor of Zulia province, who spent time in jail for saying that his country had become a haven for drug traffickers. But somehow Chavez figured that a definitive move against Zuloaga, whose brief detention last March triggered international protests, was not in his interest. This has now changed. Zuloaga is a wanted man; the government wants to eliminate the last bastion of freedom in broadcast journalism. There is always something rational about the timing of Chavez's moves against key opponents. What the Zuloaga arrest warrant reveals is the real extent of the country's crisis three months before legislative elections that will give the opposition a presence in Congress for the first time in years (it abstained from participation in the last legislative elections). Corruption scandals reached their apex recently when 30,000 tons of rotting imported food were discovered in the warehouses of various government-owned enterprises. Venezuela, a country that suffers from chronic shortages due to price controls, imports 70 percent of its food. It is a cruel irony that, due to official corruption, the government, which routinely accuses private retailers of hoarding food for speculation, should be denying the most basic products to people dependent on a government aid program. It has cost Chavez, whose popularity has dropped to 48 percent. |
| Posted by:Fred |