An international, interpersonal spat exploded this week at a summit in Chile between monarchs, prime ministers and presidents and may transform into a major political crisis afflicting business and diplomatic relations between Venezuela and Spain. While the current Spanish Prime Minister was defending his predecessor's legitimacy as a democratically-elected representative of the people in the face of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' dehumanizing ad hominem attacks, President Chavez continued to interrupt the Prime Minister as he was speaking. At this point another member of the Spanish delegation, King Juan Carlos of Spain, leaned toward his microphone and urged Chavez to "shut up" and allow his Prime Minister to speak without undue interruption. Unfortunately, the King perhaps did not understand just how personally President Chavez takes things. Had the King known how insulted Chavez would feel by this comment, he no doubt would have rephrased the request for Chavez to essentially stuff a sock in it while the Prime Minister had the floor.
"[The king] disrespected me, and he was laid bare before the world in his arrogance and also his impotence," Mr. Chavez told a news conference on Tuesday, before adding: "We don't want this to become a political crisis."*
This statement reveals not only a sharp contradiction but also a dangerous brand of egotism brandished by President Chavez. The contradiction shows up in Chavez' description of King Juan Carlos as a man who is not only arrogant, a pardonable offense, but who is "impotent." Aside from any sexual insinuations, making fun of the reduced power afforded to a legacy monarch (one who is locked into a primarily secular scheme of government) is nothing less than an attempt to embarrass and demean. Simply put, Chavez opted to trade tit for tat with his statement. That Chavez chose to include such a slur in his lightly-veiled request for a formal apology merely demonstrates a lack of statesmanlike poise and self-control. Furthermore, Chavez damages his own reputation as a national leader by preferring to ruin Spanish-Venezuelan relations in toto, to smash like an angry infant all the economic, emotional and relationship-based commerce that has developed between the two countries for decades rather than accept anything less than a full formal apology (devoid of any Chavez-style embedded insults) from Spain for having rightly scolded him for his extremely rude interruptions during the summit in Chile. It is as if Chavez has adopted the attitude of a fictional soap opera egomaniac and has opted to spurn all reasonable and diplomatic approaches in order to exact the full measure of revenge capable of satisfying his pride, at any and all cost to everyone and everything under his control and influence. Unless Chavez' behavior here is tactically designed to appeal strongly to the heart-strings of a strongly-emotional segment of his political constituency back home, there is no other reasonable explanation capable of defending his conduct as a national leader in this instance.
*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7094148.stm
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