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April 15, 2002 Monterrey Money Grabber Exposed by Fred Gedrich Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President, protégé of Fidel Castro and anointed representative of the G-77's 133 developing countries at the UN Financing for Development Conference a Monterrey, Mexico several weeks ago suffered, the indignity, last week, of being temporarily removed from office and pilloried by the liberal news media in the United States for gross deficiencies as a leader. Just a few weeks earlier, Mr. Chavez addressed the Conference Plenary, sanctimoniously calling on "wealthy" countries to "comply" with the UN's foreign aid target of 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product. He created considerable anti-American sentiment when the United States decided not to fork over $70 billion annually for this dubious UN cause – even though the United States is already the most generous country in the world. In describing Mr. Chavez's three-year tenure in office, The Washington Post stated on April 13, 2002, that "Mr. Chavez seriously compromised the integrity of democratic institutions such as Congress and the courts. And unfortunately for the poor, who make up 80 percent of the population of an oil-rich country, Mr. Chavez was a terrible leader. His senseless mix of populist and socialist decrees seriously damaged the economy and galvanized opposition from businesses, media and the middle class, while his courting of Fidel Castro, Colombia's Marxist guerrillas and Saddam Hussein made him a pariah both in Latin America and in Washington …." By promoting a failed Marxist ideology and cavorting with some of the most infamous terrorists in the world, Mr. Chavez does the poor in his country and several billion more worldwide a great disservice – and epitomizes everything wrong with the Monterrey money grabbers and the United Nations. Without offending the animals, he is truly a wolf in sheep's clothing. Fred Gedrich is a senior policy analyst for Freedom Alliance. (www.freedomalliance.org)
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