RETROSPECTIVE Further Thoughts, Comments & Reactions to Papers

 

From time to time, it is good to look back at what one has said and written, the context in which it developed, reactions, comments and consequences. Here are a number of selected highlights.

SANTO TOMAS I have to open this paper with the by now well-publicised case of Gerardo Rocha, founder and president of the Santo Tomas educational institutions, who last week suffered severe burns after organising and taking part in the premeditated murder of an old man who supposedly was involved with his current partner.

In my over 37 years working career as an analyst, few things if any have given me as much pleasure for shouting: "I TOLD YOU SO" about the demise of that fake psychopath. We Levantines have a special flair to weed out such characters, and in my case I also learned about crooks and psychopaths in Chile the hard way since my arrival. Having been conned by nephews of ministers and various associations of retired government and military circles, and living opposite a psychopath who for some reason is untouchable to justice, I have the exact temperature of the place.

About Rocha and Santo Tomas, I had other sources too, and for the past

decade have been warning in writing and orally about staying away from

him and all his works. Vox Clamanti in Deserto. Mr Rocha was the

plague everyone loved to be infected by. The educational authorities

gave him permission to open a university when he himself does not have

a proper high education degree (as far as I know, that is illegal). He

was called as witness to congressional committees, was a co-founder of

the Chilean chapter of Transparency (that figures…), a director of

chambers of commerce. He made a point of cornering visiting

personalities for ceremonies at his university, with the active

complicity of most of the diplomatic corps (who hide away their

visiting ministers and admirals from others who give them free weekly

advice, but are ready to involve them with crooks and

murderers..bravo!!). The only person with whom he was correctly

photographed was his fellow "desgraciado" Mr Jose Maria Aznar. Nothing

was sacred. Though his institution is named after a father of the

Church whose achievements included insulting Islam, he negotiated an

agreement with Morocco to open a seat of learning there (Morocco's

king, in case you did not know, is called Mohammed).

The Mercurio of last Saturday made a point of adding salt to the wound

by showing him photographed in company of the heads of Investigaciones

& Carabineros, the two highest law-enforcement officers in the land,

and with senate president Eduardo Frei on a trip to Asia. I am sure

there must be a photograph of him with Mrs. Bachelet somewhere.

Peripatetic (pathetic?) senator Nelson Avila has risen in his defence,

also involving fellow senator Fernando Flores in his support.

He hedged his bets on the Right too, getting close to the Opus Dei

(despite his dissolute private life), got involved with Joaquim Lavin

in his populist Banigualdad project, and got both CORFO and La Tercera

owner Alvaro Saieh to invest in his ventures (among other

businessmen).

There is hardly a Chilean or foreign institution based here not

affected by what is certainly the biggest scandal I have witnessed

since I arrived in Chile. It is interesting to see that several people

are using negation (most of them falsely), to claim they had nothing

to do with him. Others are in psychological denial, still insisting

that he is a "good man" and that he could never have done such a

thing. La Nacion referred to him as the former "tsar of education". I

think he was in fact the Raspoutine.

Already, some crucial evidence the investigators were about to seize

has been "stolen" from the car of Rocha's brother (what the hell it

was doing there, nobody bothered to ask). With so many powerful people

in his circles, two things can happen. Either he will die in hospital

with some help (a la Eduardo Frei senior), or he will survive and be

acquitted by the country's corrupt legal system under the excuse of

"temporary mental disorder". Hell, they might even organise a

"rehabilitation dinner" (desagravio) for him at Casapiedra (other

Chilean crooks and murderers have been so honoured).

There is another bent educational institution based in Chile, the SEK

Internacional, which runs schools and universities both here and

abroad. Its style and approach is different, but the character is the

same. You have been warned (again).

TOURISM Just after I sent out my update on travel and tourism in

Chile, someone wrote to El Mercurio telling of his experiences in

accompanying foreigners to board a cruise ship in Valparaiso. I had

singled my local harbour as the only one decently equipped for that

purpose, but it seems that I was uncharacteristically optimistic. You

have to check-in at the terminal on one end of the harbour and then

join your ship at the other end. Another reader of my papers reminded

me of a blatant omission. Though I have referred to the matter before,

I should have mentioned again the scarcity and minute size of paper

napkins in many Chilean restaurants. You have to decide in advance

which knee or breast you wish to protect against the Bolognese sauce,

because there just ain't the surface for both. Lastly, an insider

source in the Swiss secret service (you see how well connected this

newsletter is) picked up on my mention of Lichtenstein tourists in

Chile. Apparently, some years ago, a group of tourists from

Lichtenstein came over to climb some mountains (as if they were a

scarcity where they come from). They left their hire car with all

their belongings, passports etc.. at the bottom of the mountain (how

do you say "schmuck" in Lichtenstein patois? Not an easy question to

answer because even though it has only 25,000 inhabitants, they

actually have two ethnic groups there. Most are from a Germanic tribe

called "Alemanni"- how original- and speak their dialect, but they

also have immigrants from the Swiss Valais, who speak another variety)

.

Anyway, whether Alemanni or Walser, our alpinists had their car stolen

with all its contents, and the Swiss embassy (which looks after the

diplomatic affairs of its small neighbour) issued them with new

passports (after searching around the office to see where they had put

them).

SARKOZY AND SPAIN My twin assault of the present state of France and

Spain produced some interesting results. Nobody protested on my

cynicism about the sham value of Sarkozy. Events since then have

proved me 1000 % right, and my scepticism is now shared by a majority

of the French population as, in February alone, his popularity dropped

by 9 points to 38 %. The latest incident in which he gratuitously

insulted a citizen at a fair shows him like the small time "caid" from

the "bas-fonds" of Salonika that he is.

The criticism of Spain's "government by folklore" produced wider

comments, particularly as it was reproduced on a pan-European

multilingual website. There was the Catalan who really shone by

claiming his "country" was beyond criticism, because the very name

meant "country of God". I also found a blog about it among Spaniards

on a local website, which was fairly balanced between the pros and

cons (in fact the cons main criticism were some factual mistakes which

they claimed were in the text, such as which were exactly the Basque

provinces). I also received additional comments from people living or

having lived in Spain recently, who added even bigger horror stories

in terms of their experiences of the aspects I mentioned. Anyway, it

is something I had wanted to get off my chest for a long time, and now

it is done.

TRANSANTIAGO On January 19, 2007 over three weeks before the start of

Transantiago, I wrote in my paper "Civil Society & Empowerment": "The

forthcoming Transantiago coordinated public transport scheme is going

to be a disaster too". You cannot be more prescient than that. The

rest, as they say, is history. I knew that, because they were trying

to solve the wrong problem (there was nothing wrong with the routes),

were using a corrupt company (Sonda) for the computerised system, and

the whole thing was too sophisticatedly complicated for a developing

country whose population is not exactly a mass Mensa candidate.

PENSIONS My paper on the flaws of the Chilean pension system was a

great success. It was translated in Spanish and Armenian, and is on

websites on three continents. Once the dust had settled, I opened

another front by seeking out the names of the senior World Bank

officials responsible for hiring a Chilean team of consultants to

advise Armenia. I sent them a copy of my paper, also copying it to all

the various OECD officials who visited the country profusely in the

past 6 months. One World Bank official answered with a feeble defence

as to the consultant being "very experimented". He copied his own

message to other bank staff. This gave me a wider list of

destinataries when I answered with details about the real background

and value of the consultant. There was no reaction this time, but I am

sure it shook them. A somewhat sanitised version is also being

published today in a major international fortnightly insurance

newsletter based in London, of whose editorial panel I am a member.

THE EXCHANGE RATE In my constant criticism of the handling of the

peso exchange rate, I had missed out two important aspects. One I

subsequently amended, not least in a published letter in El Mercurio.

It refers to the loss in peso value of the budgetary "savings", of

which over 90 % is invested abroad in foreign currency. Calculated in

real pesos, each dollar saved abroad as of December 2006 is now worth

some 19 % less. If you had been "clever" and gotten into Euros, you

would still have lost 9 %. In Pounds sterling the loss would have been

over 18 %. I am therefore flabbergasted that the committee in charge

of managing these funds recently congratulated itself for having

obtained "a return of 10 %" in 2007. I wonder how they measure that,

or do they use the same New Age arithmetic textbook than ministerial

macroeconomic adviser Luis Felipe Cespedes (the guy who tried to

convince me that + 8.7 was a negative number)?

In a blog discussion of my letter on the Mercurio's website, someone

added the other dimension I overlooked. Those who live on remittances

sent by relatives abroad are also suffering, because in most cases the

sender cannot increase the amount remitted, to compensate for the

lower exchange rate.

ENERGY I cannot remember how many times I warned not just about

energy shortages, but the fact that the LNG plants being built (now up

to two different projects) will provide gas at a much higher price,

none of which is being disclosed to the public. It seems I was once

again erring on the side of caution. Chile is currently paying some U$

4 to 5 per million BTU to Argentina. The price of LNG is at least in

the U$ 9 to 10 range. However, due to the world supply and demand

situation, the situation could be much worse. In a late February press

interview, the chairman of the Centre for Liquified Natural Gas, which

is a producers' association, estimated that the price could be as high

as U$ 19.

As if this were not bad enough, public opinion is also being misled on

the supposed "improvement" in Argentine gas supplies this year. There

is nothing of the sort.

On the contrary. The supply situation in Argentina is getting more

critical by the day. According to Chile's minister of Agriculture, the

country is said to be experiencing the worst drought in a century, and

no rain is expected for the next 3 months (according to her at least),

and 144 municipalities have been declared in agricultural emergency.

GAGGING THE MEDIA Though the radio is still pretty open, every

single printed press organ of any importance (bar some struggling

marginal publications) have either disappeared or been gagged by

takeover in the past decade.

The government has now moved to the web-based critical press. I

mentioned sometime ago the virtual death of the website

www.granvalparaiso.cl. There are moves afoot to lean on the two other

remaining internet media. I suppose once they achieve that goal, Armen

Kouyoumdjian will be next. To the extent that virtually nobody backs

their support for me with concrete reciprocity (beyond the occasional

lunch or cocktail invitation, none of which pay my bills), you would

have participated in the cull.

THE VILLEGAS BOOK I bought the book "Muerte a los latinos" by

columnist and broadcaster Fernando Villegas thinking it was a

light-hearted novel on the tribulations of a Chilean post-graduate

student in Miami. It turned out to be a seminal work on the Latin

character and the psychological pillars of regional underdevelopment.

Villegas, who graduated in sociology, has written a readable textbook

worthy of being a compulsory read for many university courses. I

reproduce below (in my translation) part of a paragraph which I think

is fundamental in understanding how Latin America works (in fact, why

it does not). Published October 2007 by Random House Mondadori.

"In Latin America, speeches, words and talk in all its expressions

tend to replace action, any action. Words are not the preamble, or the

verbal agreement necessary to carry out with others any concrete task,

but in fact substitute that same goal. Words replace action. Whispered

insults replace vengeance. Promises which will never be accomplished

replace commitments. Verses of passionate poetry replace loyalty.

Complaints about what the world is doing to us take the place of moves

to change it or change ourselves.

Programmes to end poverty replace measures to overcome it. Fiery

speeches denouncing injustice take the place of whatever action is

needed to achieve justice. Calls and meetings replace real agreements

and joint action. And paradoxically, as words replace action and

reality, they end up acquiring some sort of reality."

How true. Just to give one example among thousands, and return to

something I mentioned before. On two occasions (end 2006 and 2007),

the Chilean government announced with great panache the granting of

discounts on electricity bills and the distribution of energy-saving

light bulbs to low-income families. On both occasions, as far as I can

make out from my enquiries, neither discounts nor light bulbs were

ever given. Chile used to be run by Pinochet. It is now run by

Pinocchio.

FOR FILM BUFFS It is difficult to catch quality classical films in

their original versions in Chile, but there is an unsuspected source

worth exploiting. The Chamber of Deputies' cable TV channel often

broadcasts such films to fill-in time in-between repeats of sterile

committee meetings. Last week alone I caught two classics of Soviet

cinema : Serguei Bondarchuk's The Fate of Man, and Grigori Chukhrai's

Ballad of a Soldier, both released in 1959. There are Spanish

subtitles.

HUEVADA DE LA SEMANA Did you know that 2008 was the International

Year of Languages? The Chilean Association of Greenhouses (actually it

has an official English name, the ANDES NURSERY ASSOCIATION or ANA)

decided to give a French flavour to a new variety of nectarines they

were launching. To start with, they formally gave the fruit a registered French name: "Magique". That was not all, they held a launch event in Paine last February 20, which they advertised with a half-page insert in El Mercurio's agricultural supplement published on February 18. In it, they described in French (well, sort of) what the fruit was like. The phrase said: "Magique, Une fruits exceptionnelle". I know that the punch line is lost on non-French speakers, but there it is. I wrote to the organisation behind the advertisement. In good Chilean fashion, they did not even bother to acknowledge.

One yearns for a campaign similar to that just started in Venezuela,

to discourage the use of foreign words and expressions in commercials

and business circles.