Venezuela's Walesa?

Investor's Business Daily ^ | 16 August 2006 | Editorial Staff

[Kitten Festival]

Latin America: Donald Rumsfeld once observed that Venezuelans had a way of fixing political problems on their own, with no need of U.S. intervention. The dramatic prison break of a union boss may be the first sign.

Carlos Ortega's escape Sunday from a Venezuelan maximum security military prison must have sent a shiver through the tyrannical leftist regime of President Hugo Chavez.

The tough union boss had crossed Chavez before and was serving a 16-year sentence for leading a vast oil-worker strike in 2002-03.

Like Lech Walesa of Poland, Ortega called for independent union leadership at Venezuela's state oil company against Chavez's efforts to politicize it. Ortega wanted more than just independence, though. After Chavez tried to void a union election, Ortega aimed to force Chavez completely from power.

During the two-month strike, Venezuelan oil output stopped, world oil prices spiked and the U.S. learned to get along without Venezuelan crude with a little help from added Saudi output.

Chavez fought back with ferocity against Ortega's striking CTV union, securing oil shipments from Brazil to break the strike. Then he fired 18,000 striking oil engineers, managers and workers. He confiscated their voluntary pension plans, put them on a no-work blacklist and vindictively read their names off on his TV show.

But Chavez reserved his worst wrath for Ortega. The CTV union boss was captured after about a year on the lam. Then he was sentenced to a long prison term — inside Venezuela's highest security military prison, where Chavez hoped he'd be forgotten.

Although Ortega is not a fresh face on the political scene, and probably not comparable to a classic democracy leader like Vaclav Havel, he's significant because he's different from Chavez's other foes. His bold prison escape was unexpected, and illegal.

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Ortega's prison break scares Chavez for...

[Thunder90]

Viva la Reagan Revolution. Use Ronald Reagan's technique to defeat these commies near (Venezuela, cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico) and afar (China, Russia).

[Gator101]

I must admit that I am not well versed on Chavez and Venezuela so I didn't know about this.

So, the liberal's hero likes to imprison people for striking...very interesting. I will now endeavor to be more up to speed on this.