There exists an enormous injustice that, logically, is merciless with the poor, but not with the rich. That is what is happening in our country today.

The difference between those who earn more and those who have less has gotten even wider in these seven years. The abyss that separates the richest from the poorest has become immeasurable.

We have the worst income distribution in all of Latin America. Social inequality has deepened under the “beautiful revolution” that today, incidentally, turns seven, seven years of a great failure that coincides with those of the highest revenues this country has ever known.

Not even the “beauty salon” that the National Institute of Statistics has become, can hide this awful reality.

The Mission Scholarship, equivalent to half of the minimum wage (about Bs. 220,000), without a doubt has improved the relative income of the poorest because, for those who don't have anything, it's still a help.

But the legal and illegal business transacted today, thanks to oil prosperity, has increased to astronomical proportions the already high revenues of the richest, now including a new layer of Bolivarian (yes, thanks to the bolivar) multimillionaires.

The growing inequality blocks equal opportunities. The rich and the poor don’t start from the same gate in the race of life.

The poor must come from much further behind, and their disadvantaged condition gives them fewer years of schooling, much less preparation and fewer skills for employment, less ability to enjoy the intangible benefits of life, worse nutrition, and it places them in living conditions that are, in themselves, a negation of civilized life.

The opportunities for a child living in Carapita (a poor sector of Caracas) are not the same as for one that lives in La Castellana (a rich sector of Caracas).

This government's great failure is that in seven years it has made the country even more unequal than the one it found, in which the opportunities are even less for the humblest and most forsaken.

To build a country of equality and justice, people need decent jobs, adequate education and dependable social security.

It requires creating decent jobs, and encouraging employment-generating investment, instead of destroying (opportunities), as has occurred for the past seven years.

It requires top quality educators, a commitment to preschool and primary education, and programs that ensure no child is left behind. Our street children are a terrible testimony to failure.

Everyone should have social security that guarantees decent and equitable retirement pensions. The government is seven years overdue with social protection, a despicable failure of a government that speaks of social advance.

Seven years were more than enough to have advanced in all these aspects. Other countries have achieved it. We have regressed.

Failure is the name of the game.

The author is a former Planning Minister in the Venezuelan government.  This commentary was first printed in "Tal Cual," a Venezuelan newspaper, on February 2, 2006, and reprinted here with permission. Several Caribbean countries have joined in Venezuela's PetroCaribe initiative.