Posted on 06/23/2003 11:24:15 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Outgunned by criminals, dodging bullets, stones and fireworks at protests, Caracas' Metropolitan Police are under fire from another enemy: the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Left-winger Chavez is threatening to take over control of the 9,000-strong autonomous force for the second time in seven months after officers used tear gas and shotgun pellets June 13 to disperse a violent stone-throwing mob of Chavez supporters.
The populist president regularly pillories the city police force, run by anti-Chavez mayor Alfredo Pena and known by its Spanish initials "PM," as a murderous, subversive band of coup plotters bent on trying to topple him.
Other regional units controlled by opposition state governors, who under the Constitution can run their own police forces, are also viewed by Chavez as hostile.
"If I have to take over these police again, I will. ... We, as the state, hold the monopoly of force," Chavez said recently.
Venezuela's police and security forces have been sucked into the political maelstrom over Chavez's rule that has kept the world's No. 5 oil exporter in turmoil for over a year.
Opponents of the soldier turned politician, first elected in 1998, have attempted a coup, a grueling two-month strike and waves of street protests to try to unseat him. They accuse him of amassing dictatorial powers in a bid to install a Cuban-style communist regime.
In this topsy-turvy world of polarized politics, Venezuela's police and security forces often appear to operate as rival armies instead of allies in preserving law and order.
'OUT OF CONTROL'
Chavez ordered the Metropolitan Police force to submit to military control last November. He accused Pena of running the force as a private army and blamed city officers for shooting dead several Chavez supporters during protests.
Opponents condemned this militarization of the force as a move by the president to neutralize hostile armed groups in the wake of an April 2002 coup that briefly toppled him.
The Supreme Court overturned the takeover five weeks later but the Caracas force is still "policed" by army detachments embedded in their stations. Police officers say their vehicles and heavy weapons have been confiscated, leaving them with only revolvers to confront heavily armed criminals.
"I think the initial move by the government may have been justified because the Metropolitan Police were a bit out of control and had weapons like heavy machine guns and even rocket launchers. But now the government may be going too far," one European diplomat observed.
Chavez's foes say that while he targets the Metropolitan Police, he uses the army, National Guard and DISIP security police to quell opposition protests and pursue political foes.
With the rival security forces all nervously eyeing each other instead of fighting lawbreakers, crime has increased by 30 percent in Caracas, already one of Latin America's most violent cities. Killings, kidnappings and robberies are rife.
"The people on the government side hate us, attack us, injure us and even kill us. ... The government is fighting us, but we are not fighting them," Caracas Metropolitan Police chief Lazaro Forero told Reuters.
Opponents of the firebrand president hail the Metropolitan officers as their only guarantee of protection against violent attacks by pro-Chavez mobs.
Forero denied his force acts as the "opposition police" and said that if his officers did not intervene to keep feuding government and opposition activists apart, there would be heavy bloodshed.
At least 50 people have been killed and several hundred injured in political violence over the past 14 months that has turned parts of Caracas and other Venezuelan cities into virtual war zones.
WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?
On June 13, Caracas city officers repelled a group of pro-Chavez militants who were threatening to attack an opposition rally in a poor east Caracas neighborhood.
As National Guard troops stood by and did nothing, the pro-Chavez demonstrators threw stones, bottles and firebombs at the police and destroyed a police post, demolishing its plaster walls with clubs and setting it on fire.
"This gives the impression that the National Guard unit was protecting the government supporters," Forero said.
But Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel had a different view: "The National Guard ... acted to protect a group of citizens who were being attacked by the Metropolitan Police," he told reporters.
Rangel said nine people were injured by police gunfire. Police spokesmen said their own officers came under fire and at least one was injured.
The government condemned the holding of the opposition march in a pro-Chavez zone as a provocation.
Doesn't look like they're being attacked by the Metro Police.
Supporters of President Hugo Chavez use a car part and hammer to destroy a metropolitan police station during clashes in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, June 13, 2003. Police and national guardsmen fought pitched street battles with supporters of Chavez who attempted to disrupt an opposition rally in a poor Caracas district. (AP Photo/Gregorio Marrero)
Crime increases primarily because the philosophy and rhetoric projected from the presidential palace effectively justifies theft and assault. Public morality should provide a philosophical barrier to crime, so that crime involves not only breaking the law, but also a violation of conscience. But Chavist populism places blame for misery always on others, the rich, the foreigner, the opposition, and this effectively removes the barriers of conscience.
This is why Venezuela has always had a problem with crime, and this is why it has grown dramatically worse under Chavez' rule. The kind of populism endemic to Venezuela effectively justifies crime, and under Chavez has become the national religion. Police are often seen as the enemy in countries where they suppress the rights of innocent citizens. In populist Venezuela they are the enemy if they defend the innocent.
Why would the Caracas Police want to force duck's bullets and politics? What did the ducks do wrong?
Venezuela is an improbable country to have fallen into this political abyss. It is vast, wealthy, relatively modern and cosmopolitan, with a strong private sector and a homogeneous mixed-race population with little history of conflict. Democracy was supposed to have prevented its decline into a failed state. Yet once President Chávez gained control over the government, his rule became exclusionary and profoundly undemocratic. Under Mr. Chávez, Venezuela is a powerful reminder that elections are necessary but not sufficient for democracy, and that even longstanding democracies can unravel overnight.A government's legitimacy flows not only from the ballot box but also from the way it conducts itself. Accountability and institutional restraints and balances are needed. The international community became adept at monitoring elections and ensuring their legitimacy in the 1990's. The Venezuelan experience illustrates the urgency of setting up equally effective mechanisms to validate a government's practices.
The often stealthy transgressions of Mr. Chávez have unleashed a powerful expression of what is perhaps the only trend of the 1990's still visible in Venezuela: civil society. In today's Venezuela millions of once politically indifferent citizens stage almost daily marches and rallies larger than those that forced the early resignations of other democratically presidents around the world. This is not a traditional opposition movement. It is an inchoate network of people from all social classes and walks of life, who are organized in loosely coordinated units and who do not have any other ambition than to stop a president who has made their country unlivable. Two out of three Venezuelans living under the poverty line oppose President Chávez, according to a Venezuelan survey released in January.***
How sad that America's government has been adopting this very attitude, slowly and surely, for about 75 years now.
Gunfire erupted in the center of Caracas when about 40 military police officers briefly overran the station and tried to force out a commander who a day earlier had arrested an army lieutenant, Caracas Metropolitan Police chief Lazaro Forero told Reuters by telephone.
"The metropolitan police faced off with them and rescued the commander," he said.
There were no immediate reports of injuries although four military officers were arrested, officials said. Local television showed images of an armored police van pockmarked with bullet holes.
It was not clear if the police had returned fire at the soldiers.
Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, has been rocked by political conflict for more than a year between Chavez and opponents who accuse him of amassing dictatorial power.
Friday's clash came seven months after President Hugo Chavez ordered the military to temporarily take over the metropolitan police run by anti-Chavez mayor Alfredo Pena.
Chavez, a former paratrooper who survived a coup in April last year, accuses his foes of using the police as a hostile paramilitary force.
Populist Chavez recently threatened to take over control of the 9,000-strong autonomous metropolitan force for the second time after they clashed with his radical supporters during a violent street protest.
Several rival police forces in the capital are run by municipal mayors -- both supporters and opponents of the president -- often leading to confusing law enforcement turf squabbles.
Chavez ordered the Metropolitan Police force to submit to military control last November. The Supreme Court overturned the takeover five weeks later but the Caracas force is still "policed" by army detachments in some of their major stations. [End]
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