Teodoro Petkoff has considered the possibility of being a presidential candidate for the 1998 elections. His work as Minister of State Head of the Central Planning Office and the positive image he has reflected as a promoter of the Venezuelan Agenda, both at a domestic and international level, project him as the government's most important figure after President Caldera.

Teodoro's performance has enthused several of his closest friends and collaborators, who are meeting once a week with the Ministers in order to set up the general ground for his campaign.

Among Petkoff's positive elements one finds the fact that he is a known and respected political in financial, intellectual and political circles. On another hand he has been already his party's —Movimiento al Socialismo— candidate on two occasions, in 1983 and in 1988, and this sets him as the organization's most important leader.

During his political history, the Minister of Planning has had occasions to show his brilliant ability to analyze and a degree of sagacity placing him as most special personality in Venezuelan politics, based on his high intellectual level an professional upbringing. In the years 1965 and 1966, Teodoro Petkoff with other leading comrades of Venezuela's Communist Party, PCV —of which he was a member between 1949 and 1970— proposed that the party should leave the guerrilla armed road and prepare to return to legal political life, by means of the so called retreating thesis and of the democratic peace policy. To propose a change of this nature in the PCV's policy during those months implied the risk of losing the internal support of a majority that was in favor of going on with the armed movement. Time, however, proved that Petkoff was right and he became the main spokesman of this line of return to legality, since there was no longer any sense in armed struggle. Petkoff's position led to get in bad terms with Fidel Castro who kept assisting the PCV dissidents.

In 1969 and 1970, Petkoff brought the need for the PCV to break with the traditional Marxist thesis on Latin America and criticized the Soviet's and eastern countries' invasion of Czechoslovakia; this produced a deep crisis within the PCV that ended with the expulsion of Petkoff and other allied comrades in the party, in December 1970, and to the creation of Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS, in January 1971. Socialism for Venezuela? and Czechoslovakia: Socialism as a Problem set the basis for the heterodox thought characterizing MAS and making of it, since then, the country's third party and the fundamental reference for Venezuela's left. In 1976, Petkoff questioned the renewed presidential candidacy of José Vicente Rangel, an independent politician and journalist who had been the party's candidate in 1973, competing internally for the candidacy although he withdrew from the contest before the convention that was to nominate the candidate.

Rangel was the candidate of MAS in 1978, for the second time, but Petkoff's attempt destroyed any possibility of a good Rangel campaign.

In 1983 and in 1988, Petkoff was the MAS candidate for the presidential elections; on both occasions, however, the party's small ballot, electing senators and deputies, showed higher results than the candidate's big one. Petkoff was third on both occasions but only with 3% of all votes in 1983 and 2% in 1988. Summing up, he was not able to place himself as a likely successful presidential option.

In 1991, Petkoff was the first to hint the possibility of having Caldera as the MAS option, even before the February failed coup that strengthened the former president's chance. Petkoff became then the main MAS leader supporting this option. On this occasion he was more fortunate than in former elections, even those of 1992, when he ran for the office of Major of Caracas, getting the third place.

Caldera won the 1993 election and the majority of MAS acknowledged Petkoff's role in the campaign. However, it was a different party. The development of regional and local leaderships, the reacommodation of internal forces and Petkoff's support of a candidate coming from the new generations as Secretary General, Enrique Ochoa, who subsequently showed that he lacked the required leadership abilities, drew Petkoff away from the organization since 1994 until this year.

It is known, for instance, that even before he became a minister, friends of Petkoff insinuated that the should return to the party to end with internal disorder by means of a unique formula making of him Secretary General by acclamation and eventually the government's and both government parties' —Convergencia and MAS— presidential candidate. However Petkoff himself disregard this possibility arguing that he did not control the organization then.

President Caldera was right in appointing Petkoff to the Planning Office. As from that moment, Petkoff turned around the government's information policy and became the official spokesman. The work done, his contacts with sectors that never had accepted him as an interlocutor, his international promotion, do project him as a presidential pre-candidate for 1998. Against him is the fact that he has been already an unsuccessful candidate, that MAS' current leadership has no clear issue on the presidential candidacy, that there are other pre-candidates with sympathies within MAS, such as Irene Sáez, Carlos Tablante —his party comrade— and Henrique Salas. On another the government does not have a clear mind either as to whether it should favor its own candidacy or that of AD's official candidate, or if some of the government would support Eduardo Fernández if he were able to displace Irene Sáez as Copei's potential candidate. Within this frame, Petkoff is back in the picture. In the sixties he was among the first to support armed struggle and subsequently the thesis of retreating and of democratic peace.

In the seventies he was the first, within Venezuelan communism, to break with the Party, with the Soviet Union and with the world's communist movement. In the eighties he led MAS to a regional and local power position. In the nineties, he was a fundamental factor in Caldera's victory. On all these occasions, others got the benefit of his action. Will it now be his turn?…