A comparative look at Venezuela, Honduras

I have just returned from a few days of work in Honduras, which as everyone knows has been ravaged by Hurricane Mitch. During this trip I had the chance to jot down some observations about our own country.

On volunteerism: I saw young men and women of the Peace Corp arriving at the airport in Honduras, ready to cooperate as best they can by helping poor communities combat hunger, educate their children and fight AIDS among many other things. These young North Americans, all graduated, will work in a strange country for two years without remuneration of any sort and under immensely difficult circumstances given the comfort they leave behind at home.

In Venezuela, on the other hand, we have had to set aside a budget of Bs. 2.4 billion to entice our local “volunteers” to come forward to supervise what is to be an event of immense import for our country, i.e. the referendum calling for its own Constituent Assembly. When I think that our heroes of independence sacrificed their lives I can’t help but feel that it is a sad state of affairs when today we cannot even contemplate giving away one free day for our country.

On the evidence of crisis: I had the opportunity to visit many public offices in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in which I found that most officials had to work in truly uncomfortable conditions in any small space or cubby-hole they we able to find.

God knows it is not my purpose to compare a crisis such as the financial one we are going through in Venezuela with the type of emergency, misery and loss of human life that nature has saddled Honduras with. In spite of this, I cannot help observing that in Venezuela, in which the financial crisis also created economic conditions that in turn created hunger (much of it due to the mishandling of the situation), many of the public offices today work in brand new offices which were recuperated during and after the collapse of the banking system like the spoils of a war.

On information about the administration of government: I also had the chance of reviewing the Management Information System which allows Minister Manuel Zelaya Rosales, President of the Honduran Social Investment Fund (FIHS) to have exact information, day after day, about all the projects being undertaken by his office. According to the information I have, the portable computer carried by the Minister wherever he goes contains information on at least 1,000 projects, schools, bridges, etc. that are currently under construction. On top of this, there is historical information about over 5,000 finished projects. The cost of a similar system is not very high today. Since the capture of the original information occurs only once and the system serves multiple purposes such as control, accounting, statistics, etc., it also has the potential of providing great operational savings.

In contrast, I recently read in the local press in Venezuela that it is impossible to find actual and up to date information as to how many employees are on the public payroll today. Having seen how the FIHS system works in Honduras, the only thing I can think of is that this level of information should be absolutely obligatory in any democracy worth its salt. One of the principal innovations our Constituent Assembly should produce is the right to total and instantaneous information about our government, something technically quite feasible today.

On gasoline stations: One clear coincidence between the two countries is the existence of a great number of sparkling new gasoline stations that offer, one way or another, to satisfy the consumers’ other needs. It is difficult for me to understand and accept that countries such as ours, with unattended basic needs such as food, education, health, transportation, water, electricity, etc., can develop models of economic development which offer this type of infrastructure as “evidence” of their success and potential.

I can perfectly understand that some of the up-scale neighborhoods have luxury gasoline stations for those who can and wish to pay more for service. Nobody can convince me that the recent epidemic in investment in gasoline stations responds to local free market decisions. “Someone’s” hand is manipulating the market in the name of free markets, and that must and will be paid for. For the moment, it seems that PDVSA will have to pay a part of the requirements for subsidies it has itself created.