Sean Penn's flirts with totalitarian governments
I have great admiration for Sean Penn's accomplishments as an actor and hold his talented and versatile performances in high esteem. It is therefore difficult to accept that such a seemingly intelligent individual should fall victim to the rantings of a buffoon such as Hugo Chavez.
Perhaps Penn is keen on studying the more deviant aspects of Chavez' personality in order to cast himself as the leader of the "Bolivarian Revolution" in a future film production. Maybe he enjoys his appearances with Chavez and feels a need to identify with this hoodlum in order to maintain his "bad boy" image. What I simply refuse to believe, out of respect for the talents he has displayed in numerous films, is that Sean Penn endorses what is probably the most repressive, corrupt and inefficient regime south of Cuba.
Over 160 thousand people have lost their lives to an ever-increasing crime rate since Chavez came to power in Venezuela. The productive sector has been decimated by illegal confiscations and expropriations; the same can be said of once-productive farms throughout the country. Over 20,000 workers of PDVSA, the state-run oil company, were summarily fired from their jobs for disagreeing with Chavez's pro-Castro political views and many more have suffered professional apartheid for opposing Chavez' persistent attempts to turn Venezuela into another communist regime.
The Chavez administration has received over $1 trillion in oil revenues (from sales to the much-maligned "Empire", the U.S.) and, nearly 13 years later, Venezuelans lack adequate medical care as public hospitals have collapsed, do not receive a proper education as the school system in which failing students for their poor academic performance constitutes an act of "discrimination", thus fostering mediocrity, and entrepreneurs who do not toe the party line are subject of arbitrary and unpaid expropriation of their business and even their homes. Meanwhile, the country's infrastructure is falling to pieces and a new breed of wealthy corrupt government officials, aptly named "boliburgueses" (the Bolivarian bourgeoisie)has pilfered billions of dollars of the country's money.
The separation of power, a keystone to any democratic system, has been undermined and in today's Venezuelan political environment, both the Legislative and the Judiciary are but pawns to an all-powerful executive branch, which rules unchecked, unsupervised and exercising unmitigated repression over all dissenters. The National Assembly (Congress), the Supreme Court, The Attorney General's office and any entity designed to maintain the checks and balances among these powers are in the hands of corrupt officials who answer only to Chavez' whims and live in constant fear of losing their jobs or prerogatives.
In the midst of all this chaos, Mr. Penn prances in praising Chavez's "accomplishments" and "democratic" ideals. I believe it is time for him to see things for what they are and, in order to protect his own reputations, steer clear from Chavez's circle of friends, which include sinister characters such as Lukashenko, Ahmadinejad, Mugabe and the Castro brothers (now that his "buddies", Saddam Hussein and Moammar Khaddafi are out of the picture).