Teodoro Petkoff:
the talk-of-the-town Minister
enezuelan political stories have always been rich.
There is something common to all them: they are quite quickly forgotten þperhaps
because they are so abundant. As the anecdote goes on, the leader of Movimiento al
Socialismo, Teodoro Petkoff, became Minister of Planning because, just like that, he
told the President that the talk-of-the-town was that no Minister or public officer dared
tell him the truth nor the real economic situation, the relations with the IMF etc. -Since
you are telling me the truth, I want you to be my Minister of Planning, seems to have
been the Head of State's answer. "Se non Š vero, Š ben trovato" as the Italians
say
The truth is that, for a few weeks, Teodoro Petkoff has been Venezuela's
Minister of Planning and has given an unexpected image to President Caldera's static
and undecided administration. With fax and words not been free of some degree of
arrogance, a new an different period has begun in economic policy, already reviewed
by Venezuela Analítica in "Better late than never: The President took a step
forward.
Teodoro Petkoff's appointment has not gone unnoticed both domestically as
internationally. In Paris the weekly Libération, with the usual sense of superiority
shown in their approaches to Latin American issues, gave Petkoff's political profile,
from his days as a Communist , through his dissidence, his breaking away and the
creation of Movimiento al Socialismo, twenty years ago an up to what they ironically call
his final conversion to market economics. TIME called him a "Guerrilla Marketeer"
and gave the Socialist leader's personal and political story. Not a single one of those
stories has bothered Petkoff, first, because they are true and, second, because the
Minister strongly defends his right to change and to update his views. He thus repeats,
as Deng Tsiao-Ping, that it does not matter if the cat is black or gray as long as it catches
mice.
As TIME and Libération do, The Economist writes on the measures adopted
by President Caldera's government, calling them "Venezuela's economic U turn". The
Economist points out that it took two years of hard experience and a lot of outside
orthodox pressure to undermine his resistance, referring to the Presidents position
opposing measure acceptable to the IMF. The Economist wonders if we are dealing
with the same Caldera who, two years ago, said that his "letter of intent was with
Venezuelan people".
The article refers to the surprising changes in government leadership, such as the
appointment of Teodoro Petkoff as Minister of Planning They call him a solid sixty
year-old who praises the merits of shock orthodox reforms and they add that he reached
those views the hard way: "Mr. Petkoff was a socialist senator and presidential
candidate, and long before an extreme left guerrilla." They say also that the new
Minister of Planning is strongly criticized by the extreme left, calling him a "savage
capitalism" convert, while Caracas columnists compare him to Brazilian Fernando
Henrique Cardoso and Argentinean Domingo Cavallo.
At a Fede Europa forum, with more than 500 representatives of economic
sectors, Minister Petkoff ratified quite emphatically his commitment to go deep, with
no turning back, into the economic and financial restructuring program initiated by the
government; most specially, he criticized problems that must be dealt with, such as the
crisis of the judiciary, and the abusive conduct of labor union and school teachers'
bureaucracies claiming privileges that are no longer compatible with Venezuela's
financial standing.
In that same forum, Petkoff took the liberty of defining the expectations created
by reforms and the reaction to them as a benevolent neutrality. We believe that there
is more and less of that. Public opinion forced the government to take these measures
and requires þas Venezuela Analítica expressed it alreadyþ not only that government
maintains its coherence, but that it shapes up a general economic recovery plan to meet
its commitment to implement a rigorous, austere budget balancing policy that may save
the country from the havoc of inflation.
It is not a matter of benevolent neutrality. We are dealing with something
deeper. We don't know if we may call it mistrusting solidarity, playing with the
Minister's words. We believe that we are, to be honest, in the presence of an evident
fact: we all wish and need the government's success. Good judgment must win against
all odds and economic restructuring must be total. Who cares if its most visible and also
most resolved executor is TIME's "Guerrilla Marketeer". The Minister is aware of the
role he has accepted and he expressed it clearly to the US magazine when he said:: "I
assure you that I 'm facing the hardest challenge of my life".
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