Posted on 01/22/2003 1:57:23 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela - Fearing dangers to their employees from Venezuela's political violence, many multinational companies are sending workers home or suspending operations, or both.
Microsoft Corp. on Monday closed two Venezuela offices, saying it could not guarantee employees' safety. The company has about 85 employees in Caracas and six in the western city of Maracaibo.
Since Venezuela's opposition called a strike Dec. 2 aimed at ousting President Hugo Chavez, oil companies such as ConocoPhillips and France's TotalFinaElf have withdrawn nonessential expatriate staff. Some fast food franchises such as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Subway have closed.
The total number of companies and workers isn't known, but departures accelerated after the U.S. Embassy and other missions issued strong safety warnings in December.
The U.S. Embassy sent off its own nonessential staff and closed its commercial attache's office.
Dozens of Venezuelans have been killed in political violence since an April coup briefly toppled Chavez. Six have been killed since the strike began.
None of the companies has announced it is withdrawing for good. Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest exporter of crude, and it has accumulated $20 billion in investment in its natural gas, oil and oil-related services sector alone in the past 10 years.
"I think (oil companies) are assessing the situation and trying to stay as invisible as possible," said Larry Goldstein, president of the New York-based Petroleum Research Foundation. "Politically they don't want to be seen as choosing sides right now. Some have substantial investments they have to protect."
Many local workers are striking and others can't get to work because of gasoline shortages. Political protests occur daily and often end in violence. Financial transactions can be hard to complete since Venezuelan banks are operating only three hours a day.
Ricardo Tinoco, a spokesman for Ford Motor Co. in Venezuela, said operations have been suspended since early December.
He said all employees were told to come back next week. "But in light of the current situation, the lack of fuel and the fact that many of our suppliers are on strike, we don't see how we'll be able to start operations next week as planned," he said.
Ford has a large assembly plant in Valencia, 70 miles west of Caracas.
Venezuela's military raided a Coca-Cola affiliate bottler and another bottler belonging to Venezuela's largest food and drinks producer, Empresas Polar, on Friday. Both companies denied hoarding goods.
The Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce condemned the raids as "a grave rupture of the state of law." It warned more than 1,000 affiliates that the army could commit more abuses and urged them to report alleged violations.
Late Tuesday, there were reports out of Caracas that 16 of the 45 pilots had accepted the government's offer and had returned to work. But U.S. oil markets had closed by then. …………. Even if the pilots agree to a deal, analysts said it would be a largely symbolic victory for the government and Chavez. There would still be many others on strike demanding that Chavez leave office. "It clearly represents a fissure in the opposition, but the pilots and the work they do in Lake Maracaibo is ancillary," said Paul Doran, senior Latin America analyst with Control Risks Group in London. "Currently it is unclear how much oil is actually reaching the tankers." Also on Tuesday, former U.S. President Carter proposed that Venezuela hold a referendum on Chavez in August as a way of ending the strike. Chavez has been resisting efforts to move up the presidential elections from 2006. As Carter works to mediate a settlement, some were looking for an end to the deadlock.
"This is at a junction where something has to give," said Terry Hallmark, manager of political risk and policy assessment at IHS Energy Group in Houston. "The fact that Chavez was willing to split up Petroleos de Venezuela, one of the best-run national oil companies in the world, is a sign of how Chavez proposed splitting up PDVSA into two, one for the eastern part of the country and another for the west. It was viewed as a ploy to divide strikingPDVSA workers in Caracas, where the company now has its headquarters.
If tanker pilots go back to work, it will not lead to an immediate resumption in oil exports because most foreign tankers will not dock at Venezuelan ports over insurance concerns related to the strike. In the eastern ports of Puerto La Cruz and Jose, where pilots are working, tankers are refusing to dock, citing unsafe conditions. Even if the strike were to end tomorrow, the damage to some Venezuelan oil fields is irreparable. The country is expected to lose about 400,000 barrels per day of production that cannot be restored, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency. ***
His first visits abroad were to Baghdad, Tripoli, and Teheran. His friendship with Castro is both personal and concrete: in accordance with a 2000 agreement, Venezuela provides 50 percent of Cuba's oil imports, some 53,000 bpd, with 25 percent of the cost payable over 15 years and a two-year grace period-all of which amounts to a vital lifeline to Cuba's dismal economy. Castro has paid a long visit to Venezuela (reminiscent of his three-week visit to Allende's Chile) and provides doctors (which Venezuela does not need) and experts on internal security (which the Chávez regime does need), including some involved in the formation of the "Bolivarian circles," a local copy of Cuba's infamous Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Like the CDRs, the Bolivarian circles are basically mobs of the unemployed, unemployable and social misfits paid and armed by the government.
To make his ideological allegiances and the threat he poses to regional stability clearer, Chávez' security services are actively cooperating with the Colombian Marxist-Leninist terrorists/narcotrafficantes of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejército Popular (FARC-EP), including providing arms, safe havens and transit facilities-at least according to the Colombian government and high-ranking defectors from the Venezuelan military.
All of this raises a crucial issue regarding the Chávez regime's chances of surviving: the loyalty of the armed forces. Indeed, with his popularity in the 20-percent range among all social and economic sectors of the population, including the poor and disadvantaged he is supposedly championing, it is becoming clearer by the day that Chávez' ability to stay in office, just as Allende's before him, is almost completely dependent on the military.
The problem is that the Venezuelan military has a dislike of Castro and Castroism that goes back to the early 1960s, when Fidel and his sidekick Che Guevara prepared and led a failed insurgency against the recently established democratic government in Caracas. And although in April 2002 segments of the military briefly removed Chávez from power, only to have others bring him back, the country's almost total militarization in recent months-the armed forces have taken over the oil fields, ports, and police armories in Caracas, the transportation and distribution sectors, etc.-increases the stress on an institution that has had no decisive political role since the 1950s. Chávez' habit of appearing in public ceremonies with the generals in his lieutenant colonel uniform, rather than as the civilian supreme commander he is supposed to be by the Constitution, does not help with the military's institutional pride-or speak well for his political judgment.***
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.