Dear nightly dwellers, after a Christmas full of presents and too much goodies (the pannettone was too good, simply), here I am again. We are leaving an interesting year (for me it was), 2009 will be a year full of suspense and hickups, as a good friend of mine put it. Well, besides a world financial crisis, to which I may add yet another conflagration in the scorched Middle East (will they never learn???), we are facing an exciting year.
Chavez has changed from being a local revolutionary leader to Grinch, the guy who stole Christmas. He has managed to violate an unwritten law in Venezuela, and that is to let its people, rich or poor, celebrate their Christmas IN PEACE with hallacas, pan de jamón, dulce de lechosa, pannettone and of course many more goodies full of carbs and lethal to that figure you worked on all of 2008. He doesn´t want to be president for ever, he keeps on repeating with an oh so slight irony - only till 2021 and maybe 2030, by which, if the Lord may be so gracious as to keep this president in good health, he might be over 75 years old by then. So he needs the applauding from "the people",and he will do so by pushing through a constitutional amendment which will make it possible to rerun a president - who else but Chavez, read the small print - as many times as you like. Good stuff of course, provided the candidate in question is an able, well-spoken ruler.
The only thing that has made many many Venezuelans weary and even angry, is that he kept on droning about this heart wish of his every day through the December month, disturbing the pre-Christmas celebrations with revolutionary verbal violence, and apparently had to be convinced at the last moment not to intrude into the Christmas celebrations with his long monologues about his unimitable revolution and his Humble Self on national TV and radio. But still, after the customary Christmas messages from the presidential palace, together with the all-too-accustomed anti-Western haranguing and even some free additional insults directed at the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Chavez restarted his campaign, and for the first time Christmas songs or gaitas are being sung in his honor on state TV and radio. Now, where have we seen this before? Communist China, North Korea, fascist Italy, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany..... no wonder there wasn´t any real Christmas spirit on the Caracas streets, as the Red Grinch again had stolen Christmas from the people.
2009 will be an exciting year indeed. To you all.... a happy new year, and hope to see you all next week.
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