Teodoro Petkoff
Teodoro Petkoff Malec (born 3 January 1932 in Zulia State) is a Venezuelan politician, ex-guerrilla, journalist and economist. A former gurrilla, Petkoff began as a communist but gravitated towards neo-liberalism in the 1990s. He is a prominent critic of President Hugo Chávez, and ran against him in the December 2006 presidential elections but dropped out of the race in August to support Manuel Rosales, one of the supporters of the 2002 coup.
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Early years
His father was a Bulgarian emigrant and his mother was a Pole of Jewish origin. He received a Bachelor degree in Economics from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) where he also served as a professor for fourteen years. He was member of the student resistance against the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez and was imprisoned on several occasions. He was a guerrilla fighter under the command of Douglas Bravo against the government of Rómulo Betancourt. Later, he joined in the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV).
In 1971, Petkoff left the PCV to found, along with other dissidents of a pro-Soviet tendency, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). He was a member of Congress and twice an unsuccessful candidate for president.
Seeing Neoliberal Light
In the second government of Rafael Caldera (1993-1998), MAS was in coalition with the centrist party Convergence of Caldera, along with other left-wing parties such as the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and the MEP, and other right-wing parties as the National Movement of Integration. Petkoff served as Minister of the Central Office of Coordination and Planning (Cordiplan), directing the government's economic policies. From Cordiplan, Petkoff managed the Venezuela Agenda, a neo-liberal government program for reducing the size of the public administration, controlling inflation and stopping the currency devaluation. According to the New York Times, he 'created an austerity program that won backing from the International Monetary Fund...he surprised many leftists when as planning minister in the 1990's he supported opening Venezuela's oil industry to foreign investment, along with other reforms that pleased investors from the United States and Europe.' His efforts included 'plans to sell state-controlled companies to private investors'.[1]
Opponent of Hugo Chávez
In 1998 Petkoff left the MAS because he was against its support of Hugo Chávez's candidature (see[2]) in the 1998 Presidential election. He left the political world and became a journalist, working as a director of El Mundo. Afterward, he founded his own newspaper, Tal Cual.
On April 21, 2006, after rumours indicating that a number of intellectuals and middle-class liberal activists had asked him to run in the 2006 Presidential election, Teodoro Petkoff launched his campaign to be the next president of Venezuela. In a short televised message he explained his reasons and asked Venezuelans to follow his lead in the construction of what he described as a new, better Venezuela. On August 4, 2006, Petkoff dropped out of the presidential race. Five days after dropping out of the race, he endorsed Manuel Rosales, the current governor of Zulia, for the presidency.
Works
- "Checoslovaquia: El Socialismo como problema". (MonteÁvila:1969,1990) ISBN 980-01-0295-7
- "¿Socialismo para Venezuela?" (Editorial Domingo Fuentes:1970).
- "Razón y pasión del socialismo: el tema socialista en Venezuela" (Editorial Domingo Fuentes:1973)
- "Proceso a la izquierda: O de la falsa conducta revolucionaria." (Planeta:1976) ISBN 84-320-2509-7
- "Del optimismo de la voluntad: Escritos políticos" (Centauro:1987) ISBN 980-263-073-X
- "Por qué hago lo que hago" (Alfadil:1997) ISBN 980-354-050-5
- (with Raúl Huizzi) "Venezuela en la encrucijada" (Universidad de los Andes:1998) ISBN 980-11-0280-2
- "Una segunda opinión: La Venezuela de Chávez: un libro hablado con Ibsen Martínez y Elías Pino Iturrieta." (Grijalbo:2000) ISBN 980-293-211-6
- "Hugo Chávez, tal cual" (Catarata:2000) ISBN 84-8319-142-3
- "Las Dos Izquierdas" (Alfadil:2005) ISBN 980-354-170-6
Reference
- ^Simon Romero, A Former Guerrilla Reinvents Himself as a Candidate. New York Times (1 July 2006).
