Democracy of the poor
Our democracy has led to many frustrations among Venezuelan citizens. The far too great expectations of our population as to the recently created democracy, in the sixties, have faded out already. According to studies by the "Pensamiento y Acción Foundation" under "Democratic Culture in Venezuela", our democracy holds too large insatisfaction levels: "only 1 of those surveyed for this study said he was somehow satisfied or quite satisfied with democracy as it stands in the country”. The same study showed that 3 out of 4 are quite or somehow unsatisfied with the current democracy. reviewing these studies with more detail, the results are much more worrisome, because they prove that citizen insatisfaction reaches too high levels when we observe the contrast between the extreme positions: this is, 4% of our people are very satisfied with our current democracy, while 30% are very unsatisfied. Also, 20% of those surveyed said they were somehow satisfied, while 41% responded that they were somehow unsatisfied. One even finds how serious is this situation of our democracy at the institutional level when, through our analysis, 3 of each 1 citizen unsatisfied with our democracy admit that "another kind of government" other than democracy would be preferable.

Additionally, this foundation's surveys show that the origin of the Venezuelan citizen's insatisfaction with this democracy lies mainly on the overflow of corruption and on the bad administration of the country's resources it has permitted. We thus see that unemployment and poverty are sinking the Venezuelan citizen (51% of those surveyed) and the great majority (76% of those surveyed) perceive that corruption -protected by our democratic system- is the great poverty generating pump… and this huge majority of citizens unsatisfied with democracy as we have lived it is right! According to the last UN studies, recently published by El Universal, the average Venezuelan shows life quality levels lower than those he had before this democracy. And this deterioration in our quality of life turns out being unforgivable for our citizens if we consider that during these years of democracy our country received tens of billions of dollars (or the equivalent to 18 times the amount of the Marshall Plan used to rebuild Europe after World War Two, the most destructive war suffered by mankind).

Venezuela: a country with a story of political, yet not economic, transformations
We dare to say that Venezuela, from the economic point of view, is a benumbed country with citizens who have hardly evolved in economic terms throughout history. Without fear of oversimplifying. we could even say that the different political systems and the leader having shaped them through the years, have done it by supporting themselves on that great insatisfaction, on that sour taste that the Venezuelan private sector's leaders of the nineteenth century have left on the Venezuelan people.

Although our political institutions have experienced notable advances since the time of independence, from the economic standpoint it seems that not a single leaf has moved. Certainly, from the political point of view democracy does represent a great advance when compared to dictatorships and chieftains. However, democracy has failed to turn into transformation and sustainable improvement in the common Venezuelan's quality of life. Even if we could say that without democracy it is impossible to make it possible that any improvement in the common citizen's standards of well being may be sustainable, one must recognize also that with democracy, little or nothing has been advanced yet in this direction.

The pending challenge for our democracy: to improve the common citizen's quality of life.
There have been many economic trials made during these 37 years of democracy: exchange, price and rate of interest controls, subsidies, protections and loans to producers and consumers; nationalization of companies and also the opposing privatization, price liberation and freeing of exchange and credit markets, Government decentralization (without citizen privatization), etc. Nothing has worked! (See charts #1 and #2).

With the exception of President Betancourt's constitutional term (where there was less intervention of the economy by the State and greater control of public spending), almost all the other constitutional terms since then have impoverished us (if we take into account the indebtedness created and the nationalizations made).

Today's Venezuelan Agenda does not escape from this regressive and prejudicial tendency for the common citizen: there is more Government indebtedness, there are more taxes in a more strongly State-run economy, charity given away instead of providing jobs to the people, loans and advantages for a group of businessmen placed above the others and State reforms are being postponed (see chart #3 and #4). Postponed, —as it was during the Great Turn of former president Pérez— is the passing of State owned companies to our country's citizens; not to privileged private sector groups but to the people! All these economic trials of the democratic country have been without people participation and there is little difference in them with the programs of the Monagas, Guzmán-Blanco, Gómez and many other leaders of the past that were rather aimed at benefitting a few at the expense of the great majorities of our nation. The common denominator of almost all these economic projects has been that of distributing benefits in order to create a political clientele and not to create wealth through the majorities. Our country's economic evolution —throughout our history— has never borne our citizens in mind.

Something has been missing in our economic history and that is the rule of private property and respect for the individual's merit as a seed for progress. And something has been overabundant in the same history: the excess of equalitarialism among citizens, something that has led to usurpation of citizen functions by Government and its public officers. The Venezuelan Agenda does not attack these historic faults, it make them deeper. It starts from wrong premises and reaches wrong solutions also (see chart # 5). People are looking for employment opportunities not for charity.

The great national challenge
During the coming months we look forward to cooperating with the country in providing better understanding and proposing concrete actions on how to have the Venezuelan common citizen —impoverished after so many years of economic mistakes— participating more actively in the creation of wealth, as a businessman, as a professional manager and as a worker, to break away from the colllectivist and bureaucratic where we are currently stuck.

Venezuela's great challenge is how to transfer the huge resources held by Government directly to the Venezuelan people (a population lacking sufficient business spirit and an adequate professional formation to compete with other countries) inn order that it becomes the great promoter of its development. Inspired by the fact that these country's citizens are the only who ought to and may decide directly which are the best alternatives to procure the foreign technologies and the capitals required to boost the development of our Government held corporations. We require another diagnose for our problems and, accordingly, another Venezuelan Agenda (see charts #6, #7 and #8).

As in other developed countries, we Venezuelan citizens should stop suffering the abuse of leaving in the hands of more incumbent public officers the negotiation of our country's great riches with foreign investors. Government held companies, schools and hospital should pass to the hands of private citizens of our country (chart #8) so that it is to us Venezuelan citizens to negotiate the incorporation of foreign partners who may make a more competitive country for us. As an example, the Venezuelan government did not have to visit the United States' president nor any public officer of that country to buy CITGO, nor did the Japanese investors have to meet president Clinton to buy New York's Rockefeller Center (an icon of North American society). As in other developed countries, we Venezuelans do not have to endure any longer the abuse of passively watching the foreign investors as they go through the Miraflores Presidential Palace's checkpoint to negotiate special concessions —not available to local investors— so that the business transaction keep being set up by the executive and the resulting wealth may be used to finance Government, taking away development opportunities from this country's citizens.

We must profit from the Czech Republic's experience, from that of Bolivia and many other formerly communist nations, and try to create the citizen participation funds —the transfer of State—owned companies' equity to the people— correcting these societies' less profitable experiences. Self privatization and the assigning to the people of State-owned companies' shares are the only tools being able to overcome the excuses now being lived by the country. If president Caldera's government repeats the citizen crime committed by president Pérez —in the Great Turn program, of privatizing and transferring resources directly from public officers to transnational corporations, with the aggravating circumstance of keeping the industry's monopolistic nature and of using the resources resulting from these privatizations for the benefit of public officers and not of the people— Venezuela will hold to its historic rhythm of being one among the countries with the worst distribution of wealth, where its citizens shall always be second rate ones. In these societies where citizens are not allowed to participate with equal opportunities in the creation of wealth it will never be possible to create a nation under the rule of law, to avoid corruption, and to incorporate human creativity in the national wealth producing processes. And as in the 1996 Olympiad, Venezuela will keep being a country with nothing to offer to the other citizens of the world. A country being devoured by its selfish elite.