Excerpts of column "Runrunes" (Rumors) of Thursday, September 27

High

OH LULA! Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota would meet on Thursday in Caracas with   Venezuelan Vice-President and Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro and, if possible, with President Hugo Chávez. In addition to scheduling bilateral meetings, Patriota has been entrusted by former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with the task of smoothing things over. Formerly, Lula had strongly recommended Chávez to prepare his succession. The impatient patient did not warmly welcome such recommendation, for it seemed to him that his useful life had been set. The ex Brazilian president, who travels a lot, would like to stop in Venezuela to explain the caudillo what he really meant last October 17.

OH SCHEMEL! The president of pollster Hinterlaces hurled on state-run TV channel some warnings. "The political process led by Hugo Chávez has created counter-values among its followers, such as laziness, disrespect and chaos." While he clarified that "those counter-values are noted in a minority sector only, people feel that while the revolution has redeemed and benefited low-income sectors, it has also created some counter-values, for instance: conformism and mess." He said that "the caudillo's main challenge for this presidential term is solving two crucial problems: insecurity and unemployment" and that "another challenge is to go beyond the president's leadership and build the church, that is, leaderships in addition to that of Chávez." Incidentally, Schemel suggested the president to replace his speech "with another, newer wording in order to approach the middle class and include the private sector in the domestic project, instead of looking at them as foes." Um.

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Translated by Conchita Delgado