Teodoro Petkoff

Teodoro Petkoff
Teodoro Petkoff
Minister of the Central Office of Coordination and Planning (Cordiplan)
	In office; 1996–1999
Personal details
Born	Teodoro Petkoff Malec; 3 January 1932; MAS
Residence	Caracas
Alma mater	Central University of Venezuela
Profession	Politician, Journalist

Teodoro Petkoff Malec (Spanish pronunciation:

Movement Toward Socialism party after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Petkoff was elected as senator and ran for the presidency twice in the 1980s, being defeated both times. As Minister of Planning, he oversaw President Rafael Caldera's adoption of liberalization economic policies in the mid-1990s.^[1] He was a prominent critic of President Hugo Chávez and was a candidate to run against him in the 2006 presidential election until he dropped out four months before the vote to support Manuel Rosales. Petkoff launched the newspaper Tal Cual

in 2000 and remained its editor until his death in 2018.

Life and career

Early years

His father was a

Bachelor degree in Economics from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) where he also served as a professor for 14 years. In the 1950s he was member of the student resistance against the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez and was imprisoned on several occasions. In the 1960s, along with his brother Luben Petkoff he was a guerrilla fighter under the command of Douglas Bravo against the government of Rómulo Betancourt. Later, he joined the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV).^[2]

In 1971, Petkoff left the PCV to found, along with other dissidents, the

1988 presidential election.^[2]

Minister of Rafael Caldera

In the second government of

neo-liberal government program for reducing the size of the public administration, controlling inflation and stopping the currency devaluation, while administering social programs aimed at improving the population's nutritional health and providing "children-mother" services for the poorest.^[2]

Opponent of Hugo Chávez

In 1998, Petkoff left the MAS because he was against its support of

coup attempt against Chávez.^[2]

Petkoff wrote several political books. In 2005 he published The Two Lefts (Las dos izquierdas, Alfadil Editor, Hogueras Collection) where he analyzed the

Ricardo Lagos, compared to the governments of Chávez and Castro, which he characterises as similar. The main ideas can be read in an article published in the journal New Society (Nueva Sociedad) in Spanish.^[3]^[2]

On 21 April 2006, after rumours indicating that a number of intellectuals and middle-class liberal activists had asked him to run in the

Zulia State, for the presidency.^[2]

In July 2008 the

Bonapartist democracy of sorts, a one-of-a-kind 'dictatorship.' He aims to make the armed forces the institutional base of his power."^[4]

In an October 2012 interview, Petkoff noted that while Venezuela under Chávez retained certain democratic institutions, such as political parties and the electoral process, he described other aspects of democracy, such as "the full exercise of freedom of expression," as being "very beleaguered" under Chávez. He said that "Chávez has more fascist than socialist elements, unless we speak of Stalinism: the cult of violence and death, contempt for opponents, singing to the past, and so on."^[5]