Posted on 02/20/2003 12:39:26 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela - Opponents of President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday more than 4.4 million Venezuelans had petitioned for a constitutional amendment to cut Chavez's term in power from six to four years.
Organizers said they had counted and verified 3.7 million signatures collected in a nationwide petition drive on Feb. 2. These were added to another 719,000 signatures supporting the initiative already gathered.
Under the constitution, organizers need signatures from 15 percent, or about 1.8 million, of the country's 12 million registered voters, to force a referendum on the amendment. This would then clear the way for general elections later this year.
"This process is unstoppable," said Jesus Torrealba, an opposition leader who praised the results.
Another proposal to oust Chavez - a recall vote on his presidency - needs to be backed by 20 percent of the electorate, or about 2.4 million voters. Organizers said they collected 3.2 million signatures for this initiative.
The recall vote could be held in August, or halfway through Chavez's term.
Both the amendment and the recall vote were proposed by former U.S. president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter as a means of ending a bitter political stalemate between Chavez and a coalition of opposition groups.
Carter urged both sides to hammer out an agreement on one of the two proposals at peace talks sponsored by the Organization of American States.
The signatures have not yet been officially validated by the National Electoral Council. Its board members were stripped of their election-organizing powers by the supreme court last month and the National Assembly is working on choosing a new council.
Organizers of the drive also said they collected millions of signatures from people refusing to recognize Chavez as president. Signatures also supported the overturn of a package of left-wing economic laws drafted by Chavez's government, while others showed support for striking workers at the state oil company.
Chavez was first elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000 after rewriting the constitution. His term expires early in 2007, but the former paratrooper often jokes that he will stay in power until 2021.
Venezuelan Army Pfc. First Class, Darwin Arguello, left, Air Force Airman 1st Class, Felix Pinto, center, and Navy Ens. Angel Salas seen in undated a handout file photo. The bodies of Arguello, Pinto and Salas who had called for 'civic disobedience' against President Hugo Chavez's government have been found with their hands tied and faces wrapped with tape, police forensic experts said Tuesday.(AP Photo/HO)
***6) Lack of check and balances in the government: this is a result of most of the public powers and institutions being elected by Chavez at his will. These include the Supreme Court judges (Tribunal Supremo de Justicia), the Secretary of Justice (Fiscal General), People's Defense Attorney (Defensor del Pueblo), and members of Congress (Asamblea Nacional). Moreover, when government officials speak out against the Administration for reporting undeniably unethical, patently wrong, or lavishly corrupt behaviour, they are quickly replaced and are subject to a national campaign to tarnish their reputations. Specific examples of the lack of sovereign institutions include: …………. *** What is really happening in Venezuela?
The three dead men pictured above, have joined so many others killed by Chavez. There will be more.
Isabel Heras, mother of Felix Pinto, one of the three slain Venezuelan dissident military officers, talks to a journalist at Plaza Altamira in Caracas, February 19, 2003. Three military officers and a female activist opposed to President Hugo Chavez were killed execution-style after being kidnapped, bound and gagged, police said on February 18. REUTERS/Jorge Silva REUTERS
REAL soon.
Arab advisers now are reinforcing a sizable contingent of Cubans in efforts to reorganize Venezuela's security services, assimilate its industries based on totalitarian models and repress a popular opposition movement. "What happens in Venezuela may affect how you fight a war in Iraq," Gen. James Hill of U.S. Southern Command is reported recently to have told his colleague at U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks.
"Chavez is planning to coordinate an anti-American strategy with terrorist states," says Venezuela's former ambassador to Libya, Julio Cesar Pineda, who reveals correspondence between the Venezuelan president and Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi about the need to "solidify" ties between liberation movements in the Middle East and Latin America and use oil as an economic weapon.
Exhorting his countrymen to return to their "Arab roots," Chavez has paid state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran and signed a series of mutual-cooperation treaties with the rogue governments whose operatives now are flooding into Venezuela. There they can blend into an ethnic Arab community estimated at half-a-million.
Last Jan. 10, 18 Libyan technicians flying in from Tripoli via Frankfurt, Germany, were received at the Caracas airport by Ali Ahmed, head of Libya's "Commission" in Venezuela. He was accompanied by the parliamentary whip of the ruling Venezuelan Revolutionary Movement (MVR), Cilia Flores. Nicolas Maduro and Juan Baruto, two other bosses of the MVR party militias (the Circulos Bolivarianos) who had paid an extended visit to Tripoli in 2000, also were on hand to smooth the way for the Libyans coming off Lufthansa Flight 534.
The Libyan agents were identified as: Alsudik Alghariy, Elmabruk Najjar, Koaled Adun, Zeguera Adel, Sherif Nagib, Abubaker Benelfgh, Nabiel Bentahir, Abdulfat Enbia, Waldi Majrab, Amhamed Elkum, Abdulgha Nashnush, Mohamed Romia, Abdurao Shwich, Abdulnass Elghanud, Ezzedin Barhmi, Abdulssa Seleni, Hassan Gwile and Mhemmed Besha.
The high level of security provided for the Libyans' arrival was intended to avoid the havoc of previous days when the entry of Iraqi and Iranian groups touched off a riot. As word of the landing of 20 Iranians had spread through Simón Bolívar International Airport on Jan. 8, crowds of infuriated travelers banged counters and cigarette urns and chanted "Get out! Get out!" to protest what many Venezuelans perceive as foreign interference in their country's affairs.
…………. Meanwhile, Iraqi VIPs, moving under the protection of Chavez's secret police -- the Department of Intelligence Security and Prevention (DISIP) -- came to the attention of Venezuela's regular military when government agents tried to use air-force planes to fly five of Saddam Hussein's agents into the interior of the country. Military pilots requested special clearances before allowing the Iraqis onto the C-130s.
Military sources also report that the recently arrived group of Libyans is billeted at the Macuto Sheraton Hotel in La Guaira, which they share with Cuban commandos who have been conducting strike-breaking operations around the nation's oil ports. Local units of the National Guard, the branch of the Venezuelan armed forces responsible for internal security, were reported to be refusing government orders to repress strikers.
According to Capt. Jose Ballabes of the merchant-marine union, the Cubans improvised floating concentration camps on board oil tankers, threatening officers and crews to get them to move the paralyzed vessels. When the Venezuelans still resisted, "such methods as sleep deprivation, often used against political dissidents in Cuba, are being systematically employed against our people," says Ballabes.
Sources in Venezuela's merchant navy name two of the Cuban agents on the tankers as Arturo Escobar and Carlos Valdez, who were presented as "presidential advisers" operating with DISIP. Venezuela's internal-security organization now is reported to be controlled by a command cell of undercover officers from Fidel Castro's military-intelligence service. Venezuelan sources say the Cuban operatives also run a computerized war room inside Chavez's presidential palace, Miraflores. It is in this war room that the repressive policies now afflicting the country have been planned, according to serving officers in the Venezuelan army, navy and national guard consulted by Insight.
The Libyans, like the Cubans, are specialists in military intelligence and security, but are described as computer specialists brought in to operate and reprogram crashed systems at the oil refineries, according to industry sources.
"The West must expect deepening relations between Venezuela and Islamic states," says professor Elie Habalian, a specialist in petroleum economics and a consultant to PDVSA President Ali Rodriguez Araque, who is identified by Venezuelan military sources as a one-time communist guerrilla chief. Aided by Cuban intelligence and Islamic workers, the government has managed to get oil production back up to 34 percent, a level sufficient to supply basic domestic needs. "It's a war between two models," continues Habalian, "one seeking total control over oil policy and the liberal international policy represented by PDVSA's previous management" effectively eliminated by the government, which has ordered the mass dismissal of 7,000 oil-company employees.
Interfacing of Venezuela's oil industry with the radical state systems also facilitates plans for a possible oil embargo against the United States in the event the military assault on Iraq is prolonged. While international oil experts consider such a scenario unlikely due to Venezuela's desperate need for export earnings, Venezuelan opposition leaders fear that Chavez could take advantage of a conflagration in the gulf to consolidate his dictatorship with the support of Cuban and Arab agents already in place.
"Chavez has violated the constitution on 34 counts and is moving to nationalize banking," says a leading member of Venezuela's business community. "He has packed the high courts with his judges, neutralized the army and turned the national assembly into a rubber-stamp parliament. All that's left to do is shut down the independent media and decapitate the opposition." According to this source, Chavez is most likely to move when world attention is fixed on Iraq.
……….. Undercover police officers report that the group has ties to a Hezbollah financial network operating from the Caribbean island of Margarita under Mohammed al Din, an important Chavez backer and a close friend of hard-line MVR deputy Adel el Zabayar Samara, a key link between Islam and Latin America's radical left.
The Caracas cell is involved in recruiting Venezuelan Arabs for terrorist indoctrination and military training at isolated camps in the country's interior and on islands off the coast, according to intelligence officers who claim that members of al-Qaeda are hiding out in Margarita. They say these members include Diab Fattah, who was deported from the United States for his possible connections with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Four Venezuelan officers investigating terrorist activities on the resort island were killed in 2001 when Chavez moved to dissolve DISIP Section 11, which had targeted radical Arabs. ***
Long past time for Chavez to take his stolen millions and retire to a beach front mansion in Cuba or France. The problem is that Chavez is greedy and wants to steal billions!!! Oh and that would billions in dollars, not the worthless bolivars he gives the long suffering Venezuelans.
Armed Men Capture Venezuela Strike Leader*** CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Armed men, apparently from the Venezuela state security police, on Thursday captured a business chief who led a strike against President Hugo Chavez after a judge ordered him and a union boss arrested for rebellion, opposition leaders said.
Eight heavily armed men grabbed Carlos Fernandez at a restaurant in eastern Caracas early and fired shots in the air to keep back protesters before bundling him into a car, witnesses and opposition representatives said.
Foes of Chavez quickly condemned the order to detain Fernandez, the head of the Fedecamaras business chamber, as intimidation by the leftist leader they accuse of wielding power like a dictator.
"This is one more demonstration of intimidation," said opposition negotiator Rafael Alfonzo. "This is completely outside of the law," he said.
A judge told state television that Fernandez and union chief Carlos Ortega, who spearheaded the two-month opposition strike started in December to try and oust Chavez, were ordered detained for civilian rebellion, sabotage and other charges.
An official from the security police could not immediately confirm that officers from the agency were involved in the incident.***
Thanks Jimmy Carter, you worm.
Venezuela's Tyrant Hugo Chavez Must Go*** That opportunity came - and went - just over eight months ago, on a date that today resonates to every Venezuelan, April 11, 2002. On that day, Chavez's thugs fired on a 150,000-strong opposition rally, killing 19 people and injuring over 100. Popular anger over the killings prompted military leaders to demand Chavez to step down to avoid further bloodshed. Chavez resigned, but loyalists reinstated him two days later - after the governments of the United States and every Latin American nation refused to recognize a transitional government led by Pedro Carmona, the former president of Fedecamaras, the country's largest business association. The hemisphere's governments (several Latin American leaders were gathered at a summit in Costa Rica at the time) argued that the overthrow of Chavez constituted an extralegal transfer of power that violated Venezuela's constitution. And this week, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher urged a "peaceful, democratic, constitutional and electoral solution." But the problem is that Venezuela has no rule of law to undermine!
Chavez's "constitution" is a farce instituted by Chavez himself in December 1999, a year after he was elected, to extend his hold on power. Chavez supporters, who controlled 121 of 131 National Assembly seats, rammed the document through the legislature. It was later approved in a national referendum in which over half of the electorate stayed away from the polls. The new "constitution" dissolved the senate, extended the president's term from five to six years, gave greater power to the military, tightened state control over the oil industry, and limited the central bank's autonomy.
The document includes a "truthful information" press provision. It also allows the president to run for a second term, so Chavez can stay in power "legally" for up to 13 years. What happens at the end of the 13 years? No one knows, but it's important to remember that Chavez has tried to take power by force before, staging two failed coups in 1992.
Chavez's contempt for the rule of law is astounding. In the ongoing general strike, he has sent out troops to seize private gasoline-delivery trucks and ordered military commanders to ignore court orders to return the trucks to their owners. He has also seized control of the Caracas police department and defied a court order to return the department to the city's mayor's control. "A country where the judicial system is not autonomous and must submit to the executive is not democratic," said strike leader Carlos Ortega, president of the country's largest labor federation. "Listen well, Venezuela and the world: There is no democracy here."
There is little doubt how most Venezuelans feel about Chavez: They hate him, and for good reason. Many of his former supporters now consider him a dictator. His approval ratings have fallen to around 30 percent from a high of 80 early in his regime. His statist policies have brought the country to the brink of ruin. During Chavez's tenure, the Venezuelan economy has taken and nosedive -- GDP shrank by 7.1 percent just in the first half of this year -- and continues its descent. Meanwhile, his government has been selling 53,000 barrels of oil to Cuba a day at bargain-basement prices.***
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.