Posted on 02/12/2003 1:03:25 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela's government told its foes Tuesday an agreement on early elections would be "impossible" if they insisted on demanding the reinstatement of 10,000 state oil company workers fired for taking part in an opposition strike.
Leftist President Hugo Chavez has sacked more than a quarter of the work force of the state-run Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, whose 10-week walkout has plunged the world's No. 5 oil exporter into an economic crisis.
The PDVSA rebels walked off the job on Dec. 2 to try to force the populist leader to hold early elections. The strike was lifted in non-oil sectors more than a week ago.
The government says oil production is slowly being restored and is now approaching 2 million barrels per day, two-thirds of pre-strike levels. The oil strikers put output at 1.45 million bpd, compared to 150,000 bpd when the strike was at its peak.
Still, the drop in export revenues has forced Chavez's administration to introduce tough foreign exchange and price controls to try to avert financial collapse or debt default.
Opposition leaders, who want Chavez to agree to a vote on or before Aug. 19, demand that the dismissed PDVSA executives and employees be allowed to return to their posts as part of any electoral deal with the government.
"This is a point of honor for us," said Luis Manuel Esculpi of the opposition coalition Democratic Coordinator.
But government negotiators said no. "There will be no agreement if they make a condition out of something that is impossible," Nicolas Maduro, a member of the government's negotiating team, told Reuters.
The fate of the sacked state oil employees looms as a major obstacle to the negotiations. The talks began in November and are being brokered by Organization of American States Secretary General Cesar Gaviria and backed by the United States, Brazil and four other nations.
POLITICAL VENDETTA?
Opponents of Chavez accuse him of ruling like a dictator and of trying to install Cuba-style communism. They say he is waging a political vendetta against the PDVSA strikers.
"Sacking 10,000 people smacks of revenge," Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the daily newspaper TalCual, wrote in an editorial.
Chavez, who was first elected in 1998 and survived a brief coup last year, has called the oil strikers "terrorists" and demanded that they be jailed for what he called their "sabotage" of the oil industry.
The opposition called on the government Monday to choose between two options proposed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who is assisting the talks.
One option is for a constitutional amendment to shorten Chavez's rule and call early elections. The other is for a binding referendum on Chavez's rule on Aug. 19, midway through his current term which is due to last until early 2007.
The government did not reject the options outright but did say it had no interest in shortening Chavez's term.
Maduro said that before any elections could be held, the country's National Assembly must first appoint a new electoral body to oversee such a poll. The existing National Electoral Council has been disqualified after the Supreme Court upheld a government complaint accusing it of political bias.
To trigger a binding recall referendum on Chavez, the opposition needs the signatures of 20 percent of Venezuela's nearly 12 million voters.
The government says this process will have to be carried out under the supervision of the new electoral authority, which, along with the Supreme Court, will also have to rule on whether the referendum can in fact be held on Aug 19.
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***Strictly adhering to the rules of the Venezuelan Constitutition for calling a referendum, the opposition and the electoral authorities - known by its Spanish initials CNE - had scheduled a vote for February 2. Chavez, doing everything in his power, was determined to stop it: From having his supporters shoot at the opposition, then sabotaging the electoral commission, not offering funding or army protection, an even ordering an unconstitutional decision in the Supreme Court -- a ruling which the head of the Supreme Court's electoral court called "a travesty" and "purely political". Supreme Court judge Alberto Martini Urdaneta publicly called for the Chavez-ordered ruling to be overturned, pointing out not just clear political bias, but also that the ruling violated basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and that it suspended the rights of the citizens to participate in free and democratic elections.[1]
To gain time, Chavez publicly declared that the current board of directors of the electoral commission, the CNE, "is not even qualified to oversee the vote of the ugliest cat on the corner," and that no election - says he - can go forward until all its members are replaced.[2]
" - This is troubling," says an international diplomat, "since the same board, with the same people, was qualified to oversee all the previous elections; those called by Chavez himself when he wanted to. But now their replacements are suddenly needed."
Chavez party deputees, a majority on the selection committee, have an absolute veto in picking the new members of the CNE board. They have announced that it will take them months to reach the decision, and that possibly the new board will not be installed until April 2003.
This will give Chavez some of the time he needs to intimidate the opposition into either not campaigning in the next election, or else at least campaigning a lot less. The death threats have already started, and so have the deaths. In a show of state sponsored violence, Chavez has armed organized groups of supporters who, led by locally elected party officials, attack pro-democracy activists. Amateur video abound of small groups of violent Chavez supporters shooting at much larger groups of opposition marchers, causing dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded in the last year.
If this is not enough to keep the opposition at home, money is. The opposition, a ragtag movement of volunteer grassroots groups, has no powerful source of funding. They are up against the the well-financed MVR party, backed with four years of oil billions and not observing the rules for campaign financing. Chavez, treating state coffers as a private piggy-bank, draws indiscriminately on governments funds for party use and for his own political campaigning.[3] - How To Steal An Election: Chavez Preparing Massive Vote Fraud for Q3/2003
He has to be removed by force. I have been saying that for the past 10 months. A lot of people act as if an elected president is untouchable and get all prissy when the coup option is brought up. "He must be voted out," they cry, "anything else is unthinkable!"
Let me let the over-civilized in on a little secret. The Founding Fathers thought it was a good idea. How else do you explain the second amendment?
Just shoot him. The longer this goes on with half measures the worse it is going to get.
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