Venezuelan President Changes Flag

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a left-wing populist who isn’t running his country very well, has decided to employ misdirection to bamboozle the public. This week-end, he unveiled a changed flag for the country. His opponents held a protest against the change, and presto! No one spent anytime wondering why GDP is up 8.3% this year but unemployment is stuck around 12%, nor why rising oil prices have not brought about a decline in national indebtedness.

The flag changes weren’t apparent at the World Baseball Classic, where Venezuela just lost to Cuba. The changes hadn’t made it to the fans watching in Puerto Rico. And besides, sporting enthusiast often make their own flags, and who can be bothered with the fiddly bits up in the corner. How many Americans make a flag with 50 stars accurately spaced? Venezuelans are no different: horizontal yellow stripe up top, then blue, then red, seven stars and forget the crest in the upper left corner, time to cheer for the guys.

The president at least went to the trouble of getting the backing by the National Assembly, ignoring the fact that legislatures are really bad at art. The Associated Press said, “The flag proposed by President Hugo Chavez features a white horse galloping left instead of right, an additional star, a bow and arrow representing Venezuela’s indigenous people and a machete to represent the labor of workers, among other changes.” That should make it easier to watch the country's oil wealth get wasted.

The horse going left rather than right seems a nod to President Chavez’s own politics. Before the norteamericanos start laughing at the childishness, they might wish to examine their own Department of the Interior’s seal. The buffalo there looked left until James Watt served as Secretary of the Interior under Mr. Reagan; it now faces right. (Perhaps such animals should look forward – except that would put the backside in the viewer’s face; well, that might be appropriate anyway).

The bow and arrow and machete are not as silly as East Germany’s hammer and engineer’s compass. But then, East Germany had the decency to go out of business a while ago. Meanwhile, the eighth star is to represent Guayana, a province in the east that stayed loyal to Spain but eventually joined independent Venezuela. Fair enough.

Naturally, the Venezuelan government can do whatever it wants with the flag (and the money and all the other stuff that has the crest on it). Venezuelans even cared enough to protest for and against. One might have been more impressed with the regime, however, if Mr. Chavez’s presidential sash worn for the new flag’s unveiling hadn’t borne the old crest. That’s President Chavez in a nutshell -- just can't execute despite decent instincts.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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