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Freedom at Midnigth Former President Pérez -as a matador- returns to the ring with cape, crotch and -maybe- estoc. Thursday the 19th. September will not just be another day in Venezuela's political annals. That day, as the clock strikes midnight, the former Venezuelan present will have served house arrest in his residence of "La Ahumada", following judgment in the trial for the 250 million bolivares of State security funds, for supporting a Central American government at times of crisis and when normality was just commencing in that turbulent country. The United States government has recently announced a similar measure for the benefit of Haiti's President. We assume that President Clinton will not be tried for such decision. We will not tell once more the complex and preposterous trial, nor the consequences it implied in the past, it implies now and will in the future for Venezuela. The fact is that Pérez will be back in the streets and once again will be a first magnitude political factor, notwithstanding the sympathies or enmities felt towards him. A personality such as his, essentially polemical, always lecturing on the divine and the human, unlashes inevitable currents of adherence and at the same time of rejection, in both cases well filled with emotion and passion. Friends who know him advise discretion, caution and balance. We believe his adversaries share the same concerns, hoping that the former President does not place them in critical situations. Pérez may be a stabilizing factor but he may also led to instability. Everything turns around respect for the rules of democratic game. If his adversaries were to try to reduce him once more, by means of judicial tricks or other malicious schemes, Pérez could become an unpredictable factor. Democratic legality would be at trial. With this, his adversaries would reveal only the fear they have of a Pérez fully enjoying his political rights. Pérez's situation with his old AD party appears to be the most sensible issue of his return to the street. Pérez will not let go as a leader. He seems marked by destiny: always on the scene with a leading role. The world may be too big, but is it not for former President Pérez. He wants to enter the debate or the confrontation with AD. His time may elapse at this. Pérez, evidently, wants to be the great elector of AD's 1998 presidential candidate, or if not another one not necessarily belonging to AD, if the party structure, now firmly controlled by those opposing him, do not let him. This is an extremely complex chess game: the situation may not be compared to that of Karpov or any other Russian master trying to win over knights or fools run by computers. Perhaps one should not think of chess in this case, since in a chess game all the pieces are on the board and in this game if it is a matter of cards under the sleeve, as it was already diagnosed by master Nicholas Machiavelli in 1513 -he had also been persecuted an disgraced. There is something one must say of Pérez, -although he is a front-line fighter and he frequently is intransigent- he is not a man of vengeance. He is respectful of legal order and a decided stay of democratic and institutional stability. He is convince of the need for economic modernization and of State reform. For all these reasons, he could play a most welcome role if he chooses to follow a constructive road and if his adversaries are more rational. All must think of Venezuela's priorities; they are much more compelling and urgent than the banality of precipitating the presidential debate, as an excuse to avoid facing what is vital and cannot endure an endless wait, nor he perverse use of justice as a lynching tool. Former President Pérez, as his friends tell, is not used to follow advise. However, he is now returning from a hard experience and the way how he accepted and assimilated it do make him respectable. If it were a matter of giving advise, we would think of these: prudence, moderation, caution. Discrete as we are and want to remain, we do not dare advise to be humble. |
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