Posted on 04/14/2002 4:01:40 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
LINKS to Hugo Chavez's "government" June 2001 - March 2002
I'm keeping track of Hugoland formally known as Venezuela. Please LINK any stories or add what you wish to this thread. The above LINK takes you to past articles posted before the new FR format. Below I'll add what I've catalogued since that LINK no longer could take posts.
(March 1, 2002)-- Venezuela's strongman faces widespread calls to step down
By Phil Gunson | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
[Full Text] CARACAS, VENEZUELA - The man who won Venezuelan hearts three years ago as a strongman who could deliver a better life to the masses is now facing them in the streets.
More than 20,000 people turned out this week calling for the resignation of President Hugo Chávez, while some 2,000 supporters marched in a rival demonstration of support. The demonstrations come after months of building discontent with a president who has managed to alienate the labor class, the media, business groups, the church, political parties, and the military.
Four military leaders have publicly called for his resignation.
In November, Chávez introduced 49 "revolutionary" decrees. The package of laws - affecting everything from land rights and fisheries to the oil industry - unified virtually the whole of organized society in a nationwide business and labor stoppage that paralyzed the country on Dec. 10.
The protests this week have a note of irony, because they started out as a commemoration called by President Chávez. In his eyes, Feb. 27 is a milestone of his so-called revolution - "the date on which the people awoke" in 1989. That is when thousands of rioters and looters took to the streets in protest of an IMF-backed austerity plan, in which the government hiked gas prices.
In what became known as the caracazo, or noisy protest, thousands of rioters and looters were met by Venezuelan military forces, and hundreds were killed. Three years later, Chávez and his military co-conspirators failed in an attempt to overthrow the government responsible for the massacre, that of President Carlos Andres Perez. Chávez was jailed for two years.
"But the elements that brought about the caracazo are still present in Venezuela," says lawyer Liliana Ortega, who for 13 years has led the fight for justice on behalf of the victims' relatives. "Poverty, corruption, impunity ... some of them are perhaps even more deeply ingrained than before."
Chávez's supporters consist of an inchoate mass of street traders, the unemployed, and those whom the old system had marginalized. This, to Chávez, is el pueblo - the people.
"But we are 'the people' too," protests teacher Luis Leonet. "We're not oligarchs like he says. The oligarchs are people like Chávez, people with power."
On Wednesday, Leonet joined a march led by the main labor confederation, the CTV, to protest what unions say is a series of antilabor measures, including one of the 49 decrees dealing with public-sector workers.
Chávez won't talk to the CTV, whose leaders, he says, are corrupt and illegitimate. So he refuses to negotiate the annual renewal of collective contracts with the confederation, holding up deals on pay and conditions for hundreds of thousands of union members like Leonet.
Across town on Wednesday, a progovernment march sought to demonstrate that the president's popularity was as high as ever.
"For the popular classes, Chávez is an idol," says marcher Pedro Gutierrez.
Pollster Luis Vicente Leon, of the Datanalisis organization, warns that marches are no measure of relative popularity. "There is a lot of discontent among ... the really poor," Leon says, adding that so far the protests are mainly among the middle class.
But the middle class can be a dangerous enemy. It includes the bulk of the armed forces, and the management of the state oil company, PDVSA.
This month, four uniformed officers, ranging from a National Guard captain to a rear-admiral and an Air Force general, called on the president to resign, while repudiating the idea of a military coup of Chávez, himself a former Army lieutenant-colonel.
But senior "institutionalist" officers "are under severe pressure from lower ranks frustrated at the lack of impact" that these acts have had, a source close to military dissidents says. In other words, a coup cannot be ruled out, although the United States publicly denounces the idea.
Meanwhile, the president's imposition of a new board of directors on PDVSA this week sparked a virtual uprising by the company's senior management. In an unprecedented public statement, managers said the government was pushing the company "to the verge of operational and financial collapse" by imposing political, rather than commercial, criteria.
The political opposition remains relatively weak and divided. But in the view of many analysts, a president who offends both the military and the oil industry is asking for trouble. In the bars and restaurants of Caracas, the debate is no longer over whether Chávez will finish his term, which has nearly five years to run. It is when and how he will go - and what comes next. [End]
Under Brazilian law, nonproducing property can be seized for agrarian reform purposes. But the government's latest official survey does not list Tres Marias as unproductive.
Such discrepancies between the MST's data and the government's are not uncommon, but regardless of who is right, the landowners say they are fed up.
"We are ready for what I am convinced is an imminent conflict," Sa told The Associated Press. "We will not attack, but we are more determined than ever to use our constitutional right to use weapons to defend our land."
Brazil's constitution gives landowners the right to bear arms to protect their property against encroachers. ***
Marxism (or socialism by any other name) will fail (is failing) for the simplest of reasons -- the vast majority of people like political freedom and economic prosperity. The tragedy, imo, is that this lesson has to be learned over and over by so many peoples in so many countries.
BTW, what's the latest news about the supposed referendum, which (supposedly) could be held as early as next August? Or, rather, what is Chavez' current tactic to forstall any such referendum? What is the condition of the opposition in Venezuala these days?
PS - I love your posts. You deserve a big THANK YOU from all us FReepers for your tireless work to bring us news from that troubled country.
Impressive. I hope they put this right to good use. Seems that this da Silva character, like Chavez, is following the same old Marxist script: gain legitimate political power, proclaim a 'revolution', then use the Presidential power to foment a revolution of have-nots against property owners (the real revolution). Once the masses run riot over most of the country and the propertied classes are subdued or driven into exile, cement the revolution with absolute power (ala Cuba's 'President-for-life' Fidel Castro).
Chávez is throwing up procedural roadblocks on the recall, just like everyone expected. The opposition is making inroads into Chavez's constituency, so he's started giving speeches again warning of a coup. That, along with Chavistas and the National Guard having a free hand to attack and disarm local police without consequence, as well as tortures, firings, arrests, murders of students, reporters, any opposition, he's pretty well stopped most mass demonstrations.
Er, is that a warning or a promise, Hugo?
It's heartening to hear that inroads into the Chaveztistas are being made. It seems more and more likely that this crisis will have to be resolved violently, yet I am certain that the democratic forces will prevail.
I have a special feeling for Venezuela because it is home to Winter baseball and because so many major league stars hail from that country.
I also feel that Chavez is one colossal idiot, politically. He will further destroy the economy and further alienate the 'masses' by importing Cubans to run their country for them. Venezuelans need Cubans to tell them how to teach Spanish to other Venezuelans? Then they can all be literate and happy, just like Fidel's 12 million happy subjects...
Under a recent pact brokered by the Organization of American States, Venezuela's opposition may seek a referendum later this year on Chavez's mandate, which runs to 2007. The deal was part of efforts to end chronic unrest destabilizing this key oil supplier to the United States.
The accord urged the National Assembly to quickly appoint the elections council to organize the vote and committed the government to provide funding. But on Thursday, Chavez supporters_ who control just more than half of the National Assembly's 165 seats - didn't attend a congressional session to discuss the council appointments. Acting assembly president Ricardo Gutierrez said no debate can be held until 29 lawmakers from both sides return from a trip to the United States.
Cesar Perez, a member of the Copei Social Christian opposition party, accused the ruling party of trying to delay the process.
Opposition lawmakers long predicted Chavez's downfall at the ballot box next month, or halfway into Chavez's six-year term. Yet several opposition parties can't agree on the first step - choosing an elections council - and time is running out for a vote in 2003.
"Without continued pressure from the international community and greater unity and strategy within the opposition, it isn't going to happen (this year)," said Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Opponents accuse Chavez, a former paratrooper who was elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000, of ruining Venezuela's economy, fomenting political violence and ignoring widespread corruption. Chavez - who survived a brief 2002 coup and a general strike this year - says a disenfranchised elite is committed to toppling him and his revolution for Venezuela's majority poor. [End]
"Jesse Chacon will be sworn in, probably tomorrow, as minister of communication and information," a government official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters on Wednesday.
Chacon, a computer systems engineer and retired army lieutenant, took part with Chavez in a 1992 botched coup. Chavez won the 1998 presidential election, and Chacon was named two years ago to head the state telecommunications regulatory agency CONATEL.
As chief of CONATEL, which is responsible for monitoring television and radio broadcasting in Venezuela, Chacon is one of the architects of a proposed law that would prohibit broadcasting of sex and violence during most of the day and evening in order to protect children.
The proposed bill also forbids broadcasting events and statements that "incite disruption of public order."
Opponents of the populist president say the Radio and Television Social Responsibility law before parliament is an attempt to muzzle criticism of the government by private media controlled by the opposition.
Broadcasters who repeatedly broke these rules would face large fines or could have their licenses taken away.
New York-based Human Rights Watch urged Chavez Tuesday to withdraw the broadcasting bill, saying that, if passed, it would have a "chilling effect on free expression."
Chavez and other officials have defended it, saying the government needs to counter what they call a campaign of "media terrorism" being waged by the opposition.
Chacon replaces Nora Uribe, a journalist who resigned as Chavez's information minister after technical problems disrupted a live presidential broadcast June 24. Uribe had served nearly a year in the newly created post. [End]
The lack of jobs was the biggest problem for 35.5% of the 1,000 surveyed in June, up from 26% in a similar poll last November, according to the report.
Unemployment is currently around 20%, compared with about 15% a year ago, as the government battles an enduring recession highlighted by the first quarter's 29% economic contraction.
The poll is bad news for Chavez who faces a recall vote after Aug. 19, the halfway point of his six-year term which runs through early 2007.
The left-leaning leader's critics fear he'll try to maintain his grip on power by delaying the vote until after Aug. 19, 2004. If he loses the referendum after that date, a vice president he appoints can finish out his term, instead of calling early elections. [End]
Alfredo Pena, mayor of metropolitan Caracas, is a fierce government opponent, who ironically depends for his financial resources on the central government. Caracas health officials say their budget has been cut by over 50 percent, with the result that their already over-burdened clinics are facing collapse. They suggest that this may be part of a plan to shift resources to the Cuban cooperation project.
Adding to the controversy are accusations that the Cubans are neither qualified to practice medicine nor familiar with modern pharmacology or treatment methods. There have been claims by Venezuelan doctors of serious malpractice that allegedly placed patients' lives in danger.
The Cuban personnel have not been required to validate their qualifications in Venezuela, and according to the president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation, Douglas Leon Natera, they are operating illegally.
President Chavez dedicated most of his regular Sunday radio and television show to denying these allegations. He added that the plan was to bring in a thousand Cuban doctors in all.***
o Argentina's Kirchner, who campaigned against U.S.-backed free-market policies -- and made a point of not meeting the U.S. ambassador to Argentina during the electoral race -- has said he will end his country's ''automatic alignment'' with the United States. Instead, Argentina's new government says, it will side with Brazil on major foreign policy decisions.
o In Brazil, da Silva took office Jan. 1 as head of a proudly leftist government. A union leader who until only a year ago advocated not paying Brazil's foreign debt and rolling back his predecessor's free-market reforms, da Silva said during the campaign that a U.S.-backed hemispheric free-trade plan amounts to the ''economic annexation'' of Latin America to the United States. He gave a red-carpet welcome to Chávez and Castro on his first day in office.
o In Ecuador, Lucio Gutiérrez took office Jan. 15 after winning an upset victory with the backing of his Patriotic Society Party and Pachakutik, a leftist political movement that represents the country's marginalized Indians. A former army officer who led a failed coup in January 2000, Gutiérrez vowed in his inauguration ceremony to take strong steps against ``the corrupt oligarchy that has robbed our money.''
o In Venezuela, Chávez has gradually radicalized his ''Bolivarian revolution'' since taking office in 1999. In his first year in office, he proclaimed that ''Venezuela . . . is heading in the same direction, toward the same sea to which the Cuban people are heading: a sea of happiness, of real social justice, of peace,'' and added that he would turn over the government ''in the year 2013.'' Most recently, he has blamed the ''oligarchy'' for trying to topple him, and said he intends to remain in power until 2021.
o In Chile, Socialist Party leader Ricardo Lagos took office in 2000 as his country's first leftist president since the end of the rightist dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 1990.
o Haiti is led by a leftist president.
o And Castro remains firmly entrenched in Cuba nearly 45 years after seizing power.***
About 30 soldiers in dress uniform lifted their rifles as priests and parishioners carried Velasco's casket outside the cathedral, circled around a plaza and returned to bury him inside. Velasco died early Monday after a long battle with cancer. He was 74. Several hundred National Guardsmen formed a line to keep back dozens of President Hugo Chavez's supporters, who shouted "the rats bury their rat" in one corner of the plaza. ***
The Landless Workers' Movement (MST) has launched a series of land invasions designed to pressure the government into speeding up agrarian reform. The group called a moratorium on such invasions during the election campaign late last year, but it abandoned the stay in March, turning up the heat by invading scores of farms, ranches, and government buildings in their most concerted series of actions in years. Some political analysts call the unrest the biggest threat to the popular president's nascent administration. "This is one of Lula's biggest problems," says David Fleischer, the editor of Brazil Focus, a political journal. "It's really stirred up a hornet's nest."***
The official peace negotiations come after a December cease-fire and six months of exploratory talks. The AUC is an umbrella paramilitary group that is accused of some of the worst human rights abuses in Colombia's 39-year civil war. It arose in the 1980s to counter extortion and kidnappings by leftist rebels in rural areas where government troops had little or no control.
"I believe that this can contribute to the country laying down the foundation for peace," President Alvaro Uribe said from the city of Arauca, where he moved the capital for three days. There was no immediate comment from the leftist rebels, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The FARC has said it would join peace talks, but has demanded a safe haven and other preconditions the government refuses to accept. ***
The nationwide vote, the first election under the government of President Alvaro Uribe, will take place Oct. 26. The president took power last year promising to make Latin America's most violent nation safe again. "Those who register as a candidate for the election will be declared military targets. You and your families in any place where the FARC are found will subjugated to country's armed conflict," the letter read.
Commanders of Colombia's armed forces said they were aware of the letter and would guarantee security for all of the candidates, who must register within the coming weeks to be eligible. In mid-2002, the FARC threatened to kill or kidnap all mayors and municipal government officials in a move it said was aimed at destroying the state from the bottom up. The threat forced many politicians to take refuge in distant military bases, governing remotely. Twelve Colombian mayors were killed in 2002, and police blamed most of the killings on Marxist rebels. The FARC also kidnapped 12 provincial lawmakers last year. [End]
Former workers have a defense plan for their Los Semerucos housing complex, which adjoins the Amuay Refinery near Punto Fijo, 220 miles west of Caracas. Whenever Chavez supporters or National Guardsmen come to evict them, residents light fireworks and use portable radios to alert their neighbors. They set up barricades of burning tires. "We are not the violent ones. They are. But we are prepared to protect our families," said Victor Estrada, a 46-year-old computer technician fired in February. Chavez axed 18,000 PDVSA employees during the strike, including 7,000, from executives to mechanics, in western Venezuela's oil towns.
Most hang on in company housing. But PDVSA has asked the courts to evict them, and non-strikers are growing restless. Unapetrol, a union formed by strikers, has asked the courts to reinstate fired workers. It claims they didn't get severance pay and that new PDVSA managers have frozen their pension and savings accounts. Unapetrol attorney Aquiles Blanco says PDVSA owes the former workers $337 million. ***
Tourists who prefer more stable destinations have deserted Venezuela's pristine beaches, Andean peaks and rain forest. Their absence is especially felt in Sinamaica, a lagoon of Wayu and Anu Indian towns built on stilts north of Maracaibo. Tourists used to crowd boats to see Sinamaica's "palofitos," or wood and palm-thatch homes. Now boatsman Juan Cardenas spends his days just killing time. "On a Saturday or Sunday, I used to do six or seven boat tours," said Cardenas, who charges $15 for a one-hour tour. "Nowadays, I'm lucky if I do one."***
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