The power couple goes unscathed

This is just a little addendum to the previous post. There is one question which answer would be most interesting. We did see some "punishment" meted out with the new cabinet, in particular the exit of Rodriguez and Lara which are appointed to bear the official brunt of losing the December 2 referendum.

Yet, two of the characters that have failed Chavez the most through 2007 kept their jobs. I am talking about the Maduro-Flores couple.

Nicolas Maduro, foreign minister for about a year, has presided over many of the missteps that Chavez took in foreign policy through 2007. We can have a short list that will include failing to warn Chavez of the international consequences of closing RCTV. We could also include the inability to find a parade to the "porque no te callas" of the Spanish King. But the top of the list should surely be the FARC-hostage fiasco. For me, a scientist, his most loathsome moment was to say that the DNA testing on the putative Emmanuel would not be recognized by Venezuela since no Venezuelan was present during the tests. That is, Maduro (and Chavez) placed himself above the Colombian judicial system, risible considering how notably unreliable the Venezuelan judicial system is. Much more condemnable, they placed themselves about the putative family of the putative Emmanuel, who after all are the one with the last word on that subject. And along the way Maduro showed that he knew shit about how science works.

Then again, what could you expect from a failed subway union leader.

His sentimental companion, Cilia Flores, apparently a most cheated chair of the National Assembly, also kept her job. Yet, she is the one who shepherded the constitutional reform project. She is the one that presided to the mockery of public debate that took place. She is the one who implied whenever she could that the opposition basically had nothing to discuss in the "reforma" since any chavista mob scene had more legitimacy than any qualm that the opposition tried vainly to present to the Assembly.

But that is not all: she is the one who engineered (not alone for sure but she led the effort) the sudden addition of 36 articles to the "reforma". The arrogance exhibited then and the incredible argument that these 36 additional changes came "from the people" probably did more than anything to make the Referendum of December 2 fail. And about her record on the normal job of presiding the National Assembly? She was a vain, arrogant and unproductive chair, only concerned about keeping the herd in line and doing any character assassination that was needed against any possible defector, as PODEMOS felt in a particular crude way.

These two people, huge failures in their charges retained their offices and all of their privileges. How come? In any normal country they would have been thrown out without even deserving a head line in a newspaper. I suspect it is because every night they write to Chavez a memo that probably looks like this.

Dear beloved comandante president

As you instructed me yesterday I did today according to your most enlightened orders the following:.....

Please, if I forgot anything or if I did not follow your instructions to the letter let me know so as to make all the necessary amends. I will gladly welcome any criticism from you, any punishment that you might grant me.

Grovelingly yours, Patria Socialismo o Muerte.

Under chavismo your job tenure is linked infinitely more to your unquestioning loyalty, to your ability to cavort in the gutter than to any result or personal ability.