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Please ...shut up!
by Thanos Kalamidas
2007-11-12 07:43:44 |
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In the end it took a …king to say exactly what I have wanted to say for long a long time now. Let me make this a bit clearer: an Iberia-American summit took place last week in Santiago, Chile, and the often-interrupting Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez somehow forced King Juan Carlos of Spain to say, "Why don’t you shut up?"
I have wanted to say these exact words for over two years now, ever since Mr. Chavez started overdoing it, having an opinion on anything small or big, being ready to share his opinion with all of us and demanding them to become headlines. I do agree, even if I’m not sure for his motives, that Mr. Chavez has done a lot of good. First for Venezuela by paying nearly all of the country’s loans and then to the whole of South America; to quote a friend, nowadays it is cheaper to buy a litre of oil in Brazil than a litre of water. Fine and I’m very happy for him, for Venezuela and for the long suffering South America.
But the man doesn’t want to just shut up. Ok, fine, God Bless Chavez and all that, but he must somehow stop bragging and thinking that from one day to the next he became the saviour of South America, the savoir of the whole world, the man with all the answers. Can't he understand that in this way he’s losing every right to talk and every sense to be accepted and understand?
Most likely he thinks of himself as the new Che, the big revolutionary that will free the poor countries from capitalism. Perhaps he is. The thing is that with his behaviour what you can see is another South American dictator and populist trying to buy the love of his people and most likely clearing his way at the same time from any opponent using personal armies and paramilitary groups.
The man has become friend, mentor, father and I don’t know what else, with the Peruvian president Morales, comrade with Castro whom despite what he has become is still a romantic revolutionary for many, even that’s fine in the cynical George W. Bush era; however, starting a brotherhood with the religious dictators of Iran and needing the bravos and applause of the North Korean dictator is just …too much. On top of all of that, there is morning television and chat shows where the president just talks and talks, which makes it easy to say, "Please, just shut your mouth!"
The reason for King Juan’s explosion was the comment Chavez made over the former Spanish prime minister calling him a fascist, before adding in the end that “fascists are not human. A snake is more human.” Mr. Zapatero, the present Spanish prime minister to the summit, answered that, "Former President Aznar was democratically-elected by the Spanish people and was a legitimate representative of the Spanish people." Chavez didn’t want to calm down, on the contrary, and repeatedly tried to interrupt, despite his microphone being turned off, so in the end the King leaned forward and said, "Why don't you shut up?"
Oh man, how I wanted to have said that and have said it two years ago, and again twice when Chavez visited UN, and again in the South American summit, and again and again… The man has lost the last few years of reason to his arguments because of only one reason: he didn’t know when to just shut up!
Ovi_magazine Thanos_Kalamidas Venezuela Spain |
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