Caracazo, cont.
Bless your heart, YouTube. Now we can all see RCTV’s historic newscast from February 27th, 1989:
The bit of this video that fascinates me starts at 1:50, when they interview Miranda Governor, Angel Zambrano. He was from the last batch of presidentially-appointed governors, before direct elections for state and local office were introduced, and the guy clearly had no clue what was going on. He thought he could handle it by sitting down to negotiate with the bus drivers. No ground game. No knowledge of the local leaders. No grasp of the inner dynamics of the communities.
Why? He was a paracaidista, having been appointed Governor only a few weeks back.
Think about now. You think a guy like Carlos Ocariz, or even Tarek William Saab (to not make this a chavista vs. opposition issue), who have spent years in the trenches getting to know local leaders, communities, and – ahem – campaigning for their votes…think these guys would have been caught with their pants down in a similar situation the way Zambrano, Izaguirre, CAP and the others were?
One of the extra benefits of descentralization, I guess…
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