Posted on 06/01/2002 2:23:07 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Testifying about an anti-government march that ended in bloodshed and the botched coup that followed it, a combative Hugo Chavez claimed both were part of a premeditated and violent attempt to oust him from Venezuela's presidential palace.
"I ask the nation: Is it a peaceful expression of democracy to march to the palace to depose the president?" Chavez said in dramatic testimony before a congressional panel investigating the coup that unseated him for less than 48 turbulent hours in mid-April.
"There was nothing peaceful about it," he said.
At times clutching a tiny copy of the constitution, at others a cross, the outspoken Chavez called his opponents "Nazis," asserted that "media laboratories" are plotting his downfall and said security forces are investigating another conspiracy to end his rule.
After months of brewing unrest in Venezuela, shots were fired on protesters at an April 11 anti-government rally - by far the largest in recent history - when demonstrators confronted security forces and Chavez supporters near the presidential palace. Seventeen people were killed and hundreds were injured.
Saying they were angered by the violence, rebel military officers arrested Chavez on April 12 and installed business leader Pedro Carmona as interim president. Chavez was restored to power April 14 after Carmona dissolved many of Venezuela's democratic institutions, triggering a popular rebellion. Dozens of people died during the turmoil.
Opposition leaders accuse Chavez's supporters of firing on peaceful demonstrators at the April 11 march. Chavez angrily insisted Friday that opposition thugs and police shot at peaceful pro-government supporters - by his count, about 50,000 - who surrounded the Miraflores presidential palace. He showed video clips in an effort to back up his claim.
Testifying for the first time about the coup, Chavez declared that his "Nazi" opponents had called for an anti-Chavez demonstration at the headquarters of Venezuela's state oil company, several miles from the palace, but then incited the crowd to march to the palace. He claimed that the organizers knew the march would end in bloodshed.
Chavez denied accusations by rebel officers that he ordered security forces to fire on the march. Dissident soldiers have testified that they refused to follow Chavez's orders to deploy troops against civilians.
Chavez also contended that most of Venezuela's news media - with which the populist leader has long sparred_ contributed to the violence by encouraging people to attend the demonstration. Without the media's help, he said, the coup would have been impossible.
Chavez showed video clips of opposition leaders, including labor leader Carlos Ortega, exhorting the crowd to "March on Miraflores!" He also showed advertisements broadcast by private television stations urging citizens to attend the protest.
"Who paid for these ads?" he asked.
Ortega has testified that he did not encourage demonstrators to go to the palace. "It was an independent decision by 1 million people to go there," Ortega said. "The crime was the ambush of the peaceful march."
Chavez's testimony was certain to broaden a gaping divide in Venezuela, an oil-rich but poverty-stricken nation whose streets already are filled with rumors of a second coup attempt.
Chavez, a left-leaning populist who is friendly with Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites), is popular among Venezuela's poor majority but is widely disliked by business leaders and the upper and middle classes.
Citing the country's polarization, the United States is urging the Organization of American States to mediate between Chavez and his opponents.
Facing rebellion charges, Carmona received diplomatic asylum in Colombia and flew there Wednesday, saying he feared for his life. On Friday, Chavez called Carmona a "fugitive" and a "prisoner."
Well they weren't exactly so democratic, per se.
**** There was no immediate response from the high command or Carmona, who was sworn in late Friday after his supporters issued a declaration accusing Chavez of violating democratic norms and human rights. Carmona dissolved the formerly Chavez-controlled congress, Supreme Court, attorney general's and comptroller's offices, and he declared a 1999 Constitution sponsored by Chavez null and void. Venezuela will return to a bicameral legislature under the previous constitution, he said. Carmona also suspended 48 laws decreed by Chavez in November that generally increased the state's role in the economy.
………. A 35-member advisory council was appointed to oversee the transition, and an interim Cabinet of politicians previously allied with the opposition was announced. Carmona promised an end to anti-Chavez strikes that had severely cut oil production by Venezuela, the third biggest supplier to the United States and the world's fourth biggest oil exporter. "Everyone will feel that there exists plenty of freedom, pluralism and respect for the state of law," the mild-mannered 60-year-old Carmona said. He urged Venezuelans to help him restore stability to the struggling economy.
Generals said Chavez, 47, was forced to resign by his military high command overnight after his civilian supporters opened fire on protesters in an 150,000-strong anti-Chavez march on Thursday. At least 14 people were killed and 240 wounded.*** Source: Venezuela's Power Shift Condemned Hugo Chavez - Venezuela
But he was the one who approved Carmona's exit from the Colombian embassy and flight to Colombia.
Ex-Interim President Wants Fair Trial Fri May 31, 2002 - 8:57 PM ET - By VANESSA ARRINGTON, AP [Full Text] BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A businessman who served as Venezuela's president for two days after a coup that temporarily ousted President Hugo Chavez said Friday that he came to Colombia because he believed he couldn't get a fair trial in his homeland.
"The process against me was manipulated politically," Pedro Carmona said in his first public statement since he was granted asylum in Colombia. "I was sentenced without a trial for the crime of rebellion, and was the only citizen blamed."
A court ordered Carmona jailed pending trial on rebellion charges last week but he slipped away from house arrest and took refuge in the Colombian ambassador's house. If convicted, he faced a possible 20-year prison sentence.
Carmona said he fled to Colombia "not to elude justice or my responsibilities, but to guarantee my rights to defend myself, in liberty."
His stay in Colombia may be short. His lawyer, Juan Martin Echeverria, said his client will likely move to a third country.
Though Chavez allowed Carmona to leave Wednesday, he labeled him a fugitive of Venezuelan law. Carmona arrived in Bogota in a small Colombian air force plane, accompanied by Colombia's ambassador to Venezuela, German Bula. He was greeted and led away by civilian and military officials.
The new foreign minister in Venezuela and former ambassador to Colombia, Roy Chaderton, said Thursday that his government was disgusted by the greeting given to Carmona in Colombia.
Colombia was one of the few Latin American nations to applaud Chavez's ouster, calling Carmona a "good friend." Venezuela and Colombia had sparred over allegations that the left-leaning Chavez supports Colombian rebels - charges Chavez denies.
As president of Venezuela's largest business association, Carmona led two general strikes to protest Chavez's economic policies. The second strike snowballed into the April 12 coup and he was installed as interim president.
He denies conspiring to overthrow the government in Venezuela, a top foreign supplier of crude to the United States. He said that he believed generals who told him Chavez had resigned.
"I was called on to fill the power vacuum and form a provisional government, a challenge that I assumed despite the risks," he said.
As interim president, Carmona immediately dissolved Congress, tossed out the constitution and called for general elections within a year, provoking civilian and military protests that swept Chavez back into power April 14. Dozens died during rioting and protests. [End]
The new leader, Pedro Carmona Estanga, 60, head of Venezuela's most powerful business group, was installed today as president of an interim government that succeeded President Hugo Chávez, who was forced to resign early today.
Mr. Carmona promised "freedom, pluralism and respect for the state of law" and said general elections would be called within a year.
"It is not a responsibility I have sought," Mr. Carmona, dressed in a sport jacket and casual shirt, told a quickly improvised news conference early this morning. "And I want to tell the country that all the actions I took as a representative of civil society were never done with the goal of reaching this position."
Mr. Carmona was tapped by military officers and leaders of the anti-Chávez movement to take the helm after he had been leading the opposition. Since last summer, Mr. Carmona has headed Fedecámaras, an association of leading businesses. Mr. Chávez's left-leaning economic policies and autocratic style antagonized much of the business class.
Mr. Carmona could not be more different from Mr. Chávez. Although Mr. Chávez cherished attention from the news media and world leaders, Mr. Carmona has never been comfortable in the limelight. Mr. Chávez sought power, even starting a failed coup in 1992, when he was an army colonel, before winning office in an election in 1998.
"This has never been his aspiration," said Rafael Sandrea, a friend who is in Mr. Carmona's business group. "He fell into it because of the circumstances."
Mr. Carmona, experts said, is a level-headed manager who is also known as a conciliator. He was chosen to head Fedecámaras as someone who could negotiate with Mr. Chávez. One of Mr. Carmona's unusual achievements was forging an alliance with the one million-member Venezuelan Workers Confederation, the largest labor group.
"He's a guy who's looking for compromises and solutions that everyone can work with," said Robert Bottome, editor of Veneconomía, a business newsletter here. "He has the style of personality that is exactly right for this moment."
As protests mounted, Mr. Carmona became the most prominent spokesman for the anti-Chávez cause. Slight and meek, he often appeared sitting behind a desk, reading a statement or giving a precise response to the reporters' microphones that surrounded his baldish head.
He would sometimes seem overwhelmed, but he always managed to remain calm. Yet as efforts to prod the government to negotiate failed, Mr. Carmona became ever more steadfast in his pronouncements against Mr. Chávez.
Mr. Carmona was born on June 6, 1941, in Barquisimeto, 155 miles southwest of Caracas. He has been married 25 years and has one child.
An economist educated at Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas and in Belgium, he headed a large petrochemical company, Venoco, that processes automotive oils. A major stockholder in the company, Mr. Carmona resigned as its president last summer to run Fedecámaras.
Mr. Carmona, an avid flier, is known in Caracas business society as a taskmaster who has worked hard to get where he is.
"Carmona is not a mega-industrialist in his own right," a political consultant, Eric Ekvall, said. "Carmona is a man who's always worked in and been involved in the business sector, but always as a manager. He's not one of the landed elite, with his own fortune, his own bank."
His supporters hope that his negotiating abilities will help him mend the wide gulf between Mr. Chávez's supporters, mostly poor Venezuelans, and the middle and upper classes that strongly backed the turnover.
Mr. Carmona will have to work hard. Many of the poorest people will see him as part of the "squalid oligarchy" that Mr. Chávez derided.
"There are still 15 to 20 percent of the people who think Chávez is god," Mr. Bottome said, "and the biggest challenge between now and Christmas is for this transition government to be able to respond to their needs." [End]
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