We Needed a Moral Example!

Last week, while I was checking my Twitter messages, I saw the famous bribery video. My first thought was: “Now they’ll come out and deny it, nothing will happen, and it’ll all be forgotten in a few days.” That is what we have been used to for a long time.

Well, within minutes I read on Twitter that the candidate Capriles had suspended the man in the video from his campaign team. I jumped out of my chair, thinking this couldn’t be true, and turned on the television to watch the candidate’s statements live.

These are some of the things Henrique Capriles said: “For me the most important thing is ethics, morality. There has to be transparency and we must be honest… They were wrong about me; whoever is involved in that has no place with me in this project!… I am going to build a project without the vices of the present or the past, and nobody is going to take me off that path!”

Well, what can I tell you? I could hardly contain the joy that came over me at that moment. For the first time in many, many years I saw someone with power in his hands, in this country, Venezuela!, saying he would not allow corruption. What’s more, he didn’t just say it; he acted immediately and relentlessly.

And shall I confess something? Deep down I felt a little sorry for the other man, because I later thought: what if that video was staged? But Capriles knew what he was doing; it’s a pity the other man thinks it’s normal to accept money just like that.

Really, I’m happy! I’m happy because for years I have seen and heard how in this country being honest is a joke. I’m telling you exactly how it is! Here, whoever doesn’t pay a kickback, whoever doesn’t make money overnight, whoever doesn’t peddle influence and so on, is a complete fool!

And in recent years we have “got used” to seeing the highest authorities reward those who commit acts of corruption or serious incompetence.

Well, Capriles showed us that for him (who could become the next president of the Republic) corruption is unacceptable. And I was even more convinced of this when he quoted his beloved grandmother, who told him: “Remember that the most important thing you have in life is your Name, that people respect you for your Name, for your example.”

So yes, I’m happy! Happy because for a long time I hadn’t seen a politician talk about how important a person’s Name, their integrity, is. A person who has a Name has truly earned it through work, effort, service, sweat and tears! You normally won’t see people with a good Name with lots of material goods, but they will be remembered in the History of the Great when they die.

Because they knew how to live with the highest dignity (which includes values like honesty, strength of character, hard work, sobriety and so on) and serving others. Because people with a good Name normally live to serve and not to be served. Just ask Dr. Convit, who turned 99 last week and is still working in the same laboratory he has worked in for decades.

So yes, I think at last we Venezuelans are hearing something different from politicians, something we thought had vanished from the map of Venezuela: we are hearing and seeing a moral example. How much we needed this!

I hope that with this lesson ALL politicians (and non-politicians too) understand that dirtying their Name with corruption is one of the worst things they can do in their lives, because it greatly diminishes the Greatness of what they could be, not only for the society they live in but also before God.