Teodoro Petkoff (born Maracaibo-Venezuela, January 3, 1932 ) is a Venezuelan politician, ex-guerrillero, journalist and economist.
Biography
Bachelor in Economy from Central University of Venezuela (UCV). He is one of the most outstanding leader of the Venezuelan Left. He was member of the student resistance against the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, being imprisoned in several occasions. He was a partisan in the command Douglas Bravo against the government of Rómulo Betancourt. Later, he entered in the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). In 1971, Petkoff left the PCV to found, along with other dissidents of pro-Soviet trend, the Movement towards Socialism (MAS). He was congressmen and presidential candidate twice.
In the second government of Rafael Caldera (1993-1998) he was Minister of the Central Office of Coordination and Planning (Cordiplan), because MAS was in coalition with the Christian Democratic party Convergence of Caldera, joint with other left parties as the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and the MEP, and others center-right parties as the National Movement of Integration.
From CORDIPLAN, Petkoff managed the Venezuela Agenda, a political program to reduce the size of the public administration, to reduce the inflation and to control the devaluation of the currency. It also includes social programs to improve the feeding and the children-mother services for the poorest.
In 1998 Petkoff left the MAS because he was against the MAS support of Hugo Chavez candidature ([1]). He stopped the political world and get involved in journalism working as a director of El Mundo. Afterward, he founded his own newspaper called (in Spanish Tal Cual). The Tal Cual has been a furious critic of both the chavism and the pro-coup sector of the opposition.
Petkoff has written several political books. In 2005 he published The Two Left (Las dos izquierdas, Alfadil Editor, Hogueras Collection) where he analyze the resurgence of the new left governments in Latin America. Teodoro remarks a difference between the governments of Lula, Kirchner, and Lagos, for example. In contrast with the goverments of Chavez and Castro. The main ideas can be read in an article published in the journal New Society (Nueva Sociedad, in Spanish Las dos izquierdas).
Some intellectual sectors, political ex-militants, academy men and women, and other citizens are asking him to be presidential candidate in the next elections Venezuelan_presidential_election,_2006. Petkoff said that he is evaluating the option, as long as many other capable Venezuelans are willing to take part in a national project.