“The regime is losing its bases of support in all the country”

When talking about to the student hunger strike, Cova notices that no historical movement of meaning has insurgido planificadamente or with future perspective (Cheo Pacheco)

If somebody typically has a Venezuelan way to use ideas, to crumble subjects and to apply the pedagogy to the analysis of the social and political subjects, that is Antonio Cova. Not in vain it has dedicated his life to university education in the UCAB and the UCV, where its figure and its verb, between illustrated and colloquial, do not happen unnoticed between the students. Now it is dedicated, among others educational activities, to a seminary on the landslide of the socialist revolutions, subject that it develops on the march and in the light of the second emergencia of the student movement during two years.

-Was not too steep the aim from the strike of hunger carried out by the college students, taking into account that the government yielded so quickly to first of the exigencies caused that it? - The forceful and ferocious measurement against a young student, whose unique crime was to participate in a march of the Venezuelan democratic movement, register in the strategy of the regime to generate a lesson. The idea is to make a nonexcessive damage in sensible and very concrete zones so that the reaction is manageable. That was persecuted with the halting of Julio Rivas, but it happens that students of the interior, basically of the east of the country, on the base of the experience of Antonio Ledezma, initiate a hunger strike in the same site in which made the mayor and that generates a reaction national in chain. But the regime did not anticipate such phenomenon and therefore it either did not find the way to react before a fact without precedents. - A stranger and a group of students of the interior catch the wick of the protest. - Between oil unemployment and this moment there is a change of 180 degrees. Unlike that one time, when the protest was located in Caracas, now the reaction in zones as the oil regions of east, the zone of the iron and the Eastern Coast of the Lake, are the algid points of the malaise. There, unlike Caracas, there is no way to avoid the problems created by the government. Only that is in Caracas and not in the interior where a political fact as the hunger strike generates a great national and international impact. For that reason, suddenly, the situation explodes to him to a government in the hands. -It cannot happen that spontaneous movements like this one, without political conduction, medium and long vision to terms and defined objectives good beyond the conjuncture, are possible to be diluting because, after all, politicians are not divided? - There has been no historical movement of meaning that has planned it everything or with a perspective of future. Imagínate to the French Level State, in 1789, when they say to him that the voting that would be in the General States would be discriminated (a vote of the nobility, another one of the clergy and the one of them). Immediately they were rebelled before the trap because they were going to be in minority before the union of the clergy and the nobility. They went in tumult until a playground of ball and there they swore that they would not return until the voting form changed. The 19 of April of 1810 were not something planned either, arose at the moment because all movement of great changes in history always begins like spontaneous phenomena. - According to that it is evident that the episode of the hunger strike ties with the student insurgency of May of the 2007. - We are the same actors. Some were removed from the way, a side and the other. But the thickness of those who acts in this drama that is being developed we are the same. The democratic movement cannot avoid the approval of the Law of Education, but do it inoperative and not apply it. Of the same form everybody knows that the one was not control court 37 that released to the young person Rivas but Chávez, before the pressure of the public opinion and to avoid that the things were entangled to him. - You talk about to nonconventional forms of fight like the passive resistance or the civil disobedience. Implies that the discarding of the electoral route? - The electoral route can be a resistance form. The case of the electoral fraud in Iran has put of relief the true nature of the regime headed by Ahmadinejad. Here Chávez cannot be given the luxury of which the National Assembly is illegal and for that reason it needs elections for which already it is in campaign. - It can gain and them, if we rely on the results of the elections celebrated in Fedepetrol. - It could, but it is not the same assembly where you have the overwhelming majority to another where your majority is endeble. - The other is that it loses the majority. He would be the arranged one to accept it? - People do not realize that, as Heraclitus said, we never bathed in the same river. So that Chávez can make what it gives him desire in the 2010 must be a Chávez much more fortified. People say: “as much march and as much protest and follow the man there”. That is truth, but it forgets to add to him: “and we also”. The Chávez of now is not the glorious Chávez of past times. The one of now has bet beyond its forces and of their resources. Always memory the 28 of December of the 2006, when it sent the threat to eliminate to RCTV. It would never have brought forth the student movement but for that stupidity. It interpreted that its triumph of the 6 of December was a vote by the socialism when, in fact, was it by manguangua, real and the scholarships. Regime no longer has the same force and if it is thinking that by to have placed falderos dogs in the oil union it is going to stop the agitation in PDVSA, does not know how it is east country and it does not have idea than it is the human nature. That is going to follow because the reasons for the agitation spring from the structure and horrible operation of the contemporary Pdvsa. - The problem is that the protests are broken ties with others. There is no a movement that only agglutinates, expresses and canalizes all the national displeasure in one. - That is the Venezuelan outcry and for that reason I ask myself if the moment will not have arrived for becoming another exposition. Venezuela is a country much more unified than we imagined. This is not Spain with the Catalan world, Gallego, the canary, the Basque etc… What you say is truth, but in all the regions there is displeasure and that says to us that Chávez is losing base of support in the country, that is winning enemy as it never had them before. And if you lose bases of sustenation (that is prepared people to go to the battle) when all their weakness appears a serious movement is evident. That happens in Zulia, Guayana, in Táchira, Merida, in center of the country, in east. _Usted said already it: “when it appears a serious movement”. - When tenth that is no way to obtain that the opposition has a single direction, a single project, a single head, is because we are putting all the weight of the movement in enclenques started off conforms that it. What it gives force him all this is the powerful civil society that is behind: in the street, the schools, the universities, the churches, the conversatorios. The regime will have much taken care of with the universities, in spite of all the laws that approve, whose objective is to bother and but nothing because he is conscious that it cannot impose a project. If it made the reaction it would be of such ferocity that although it would know how the thing began, could not anticipate how it finishes. We will see if the regime can guarantee its force at the time of the great confrontations. - People, mainly of opposition, do not watch therefore the things and are more pessimistic, - people say that great confrontations come, that are going to eliminate the private property and to turn the churches into another thing because it thinks that the government can do and leave windy and that it is not thus necessarily. We have seen or it recoil with the liberation of the Rivas young person, with the law toad or the frustrated attempt of the Public prosecutor to establish a control mechanism of means. Now, the government does not recoil because in him he prevails brings back to consciousness democratic and the prudence, but because they are forcing it the circumstances. I do not believe that inclined people to Chávez have seen with good eyes the comparison that did of Bolivar with the pathetic personage of Khadafi. Bolivar never got to install a carp in a hotel five stars. Chávez is forcing the things. It demonstrates and it when one dares to bring to the worse thing of Africa. The regime must go with enormous well-taken care of not going of the yellow ray. The problem is that it will not know it but once The Hague cruzado. - And then already it will be too much behind schedule. - And then it will not be able to do nothing. So far it is obtaining a massive vaccination against everything what represents or proposes. Of there the affection by the battered regime of Micheletti in many parts of the continent. Only because it is against him. I to only ask the Venezuelans much patience him because the fight is long. Also I ask to him that they are preparations because at any time this collapses. Later the total reconstruction will come from the country. rgiusti@el universal.com