What if there were a government receiving 47 percent of its total revenue from oil exports, then set up four educational missions in adult literacy, primary school, high school equivalency and university; brought doctors to live in poor neighborhoods and villages to provide free easily accessible healthcare; set up missions for job training, food subsidies and soup kitchens; lowered the poverty rate by nine percent; and cut the unemployment rate in half within three years.

What if this government has repeatedly expressed the ambitions of its marginalized society as confirmed by internationally observed elections three times in eight years, and did so despite failed attempts of opposition parties to delegitimize the results by boycotting national assembly elections in 2005.

What if this government has survived the monstrous amounts of foreign money introduced to finance coup attempts, management strikes, bribes of about $350 a month to “low income” voters to support opposition candidates, and now efforts to destabilize the nation by prying away its oil-rich area to form an “autonomous” state. (Anyone recall how and why Panama, once a region of Colombia, is now a nation?)

There is such a government. It provided heating oil at cost to landlords of low income apartment houses in cities in the U.S. northeast during the harsh winter of 2005. It offered massive help to FEMA during the hurricane disasters of 2005. That help was rebuffed.

That government is Venezuela. Its president is Hugo Chavez. The government owns the CITGO oil company. I buy CITGO!

Cyril Greig

Oak Harbor