Jacqueline Faría


Jacqueline Faría is a Venezuelan politician. She was the head of the state mobile phone company Movilnet Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, and head of Caracas' water company, Hidrocapital. She is a hydraulic civil engineer by profession.

Career

After the election of Antonio Ledezma as Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas, the Venezuelan National Assembly passed a Capital District Law on April 30, 2009 that transferred most functions, funding, and personnel to the control of Jacqueline Faría, an official directly appointed by Hugo Chavez. A legal challenge was filed and a request was filed with the National Electoral Council to hold a referendum, but these did not stop the transfer. Opponents of Chavez described the move as a deliberate negation of the popular vote, while supporters described the political and budgetary reorganization as an "act of justice" for Libertador Bolivarian Municipality, the largest and poorest of the five municipalities making up Caracas.
In 2009 Faría was also for a time President of the state telephone company CANTV.

Controversy

After the Mother of All Marches on 19 April 2017, where opposition protesters had to leap into the sewage-filled Guaire River in Caracas in order to flee barrages of tear gas, a Twitter user asked Faría where the $14 billion supposedly invested into the Guaire River went, with the Faría stating "They were completely invested, but ask your people who had a tasteful bath!" As the 2017 Venezuelan protests intensified, demonstrators began using "Puputovs", a play on words of Molotov Cocktail, with glass devices filled with excrement being thrown at authorities after Faría mocked protesters who had to crawl through the Guaire River.