The president promised to ``tighten the screws'' on his business opponents. He ordered the authorities to investigate whether any opposition bankers or business executives held government funds in their accounts or were seeking state contracts, suggesting that these could be withdrawn. ``Watch out, I'm going to be checking on this personally,'' Chavez said.
[Full Text] CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - A strike against land and oil reforms by President Hugo Chavez shut down much of Venezuela on Monday but the left-leaning leader promised more revolutionary policies and a crackdown against his ``oligarch'' enemies.
The one-day stoppage, the biggest anti-government protest to date in Chavez's three years of rule, was mostly peaceful.
But police in Caracas used water cannons to halt angry supporters of the president as they tried to join others demonstrating outside the headquarters of Fedecamaras, the private business association that called the strike.
The 12-hour national shutdown, and Chavez's belligerent verbal response, revealed a nation increasingly divided along class and political lines over radical oil, land and other reforms introduced by Chavez.
The stand-off seemed to herald increased political tension in one of Latin America's oldest democracies.
As shops, banks, businesses and schools stayed closed throughout the day, private business leaders who organized the strike hailed it as powerful message to Chavez to change the course of his self-proclaimed ``revolution.''
But Chavez, a former paratrooper and ex-coup plotter, was defiant on Monday, pledging to speed up the pace of the reforms he says are essential to close the gap between the poor majority and a rich minority in Venezuela.
``A handful of cowardly and immoral oligarchs are not going to throw Venezuela into chaos,'' Chavez, wearing a red paratrooper's beret and camouflage fatigues, told a cheering crowd of more than 5,000 supporters at a rally in Caracas.
President Hugo Chavez is surrounded by supporters as he arrives in Santa Ines, Venezuela, to inaugurate a land reform law Monday, Dec. 10, 2001. The land reform law is designed to correct a situation in which 1 percent of the population owns more than 60 percent of the country's arable land.(AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch
The rally attended by pro-Chavez peasants and farm workers was held to launch a disputed land law that aims to break up unproductive estates and distribute idle land to the poor.
Fedecamaras said the reforms would hurt the economy, destroy jobs and frighten off investors. ``Thank you, Fedecamaras. ... I'm not going to wait a second to apply this law,'' said a defiant Chavez.
Business leaders say the reform laws, which include new oil sector legislation that hikes royalty taxes and asserts majority state control over new oil projects, were passed without consultation with the private sector or workers.
Fedecamaras President Pedro Carmona told Reuters the strike had been backed by small businesses and many street vendors.
A Sunday atmosphere of quiet streets, shuttered shops and light traffic reigned in most of Caracas and in other cities.
The state-owned oil company PDVSA said contingency measures kept oil shipments flowing in the world's No 4. oil exporter.
The main workers' union CTV had also joined the stoppage, mounting a broad opposition challenge to Chavez.
Carmona rejected the president's portrayal of the strike as the action of a rich, resentful minority. ``That's just refusing to see the reality, this massive, convincing demonstration that the country gave today,'' Carmona said.
The strike ended at 6 p.m. local time.
Carmona hoped the government would display the ``necessary sensibility'' to establish a dialogue after Monday's strike.
But Chavez's speech to his supporters was anything but conciliatory. ``I'm not taking a single step backwards. ... I'm calling for a counterattack by the revolution,'' he said.
FEARS OF CAPITAL FLIGHT, STAGNATION
The president promised to ``tighten the screws'' on his business opponents.
He ordered the authorities to investigate whether any opposition bankers or business executives held government funds in their accounts or were seeking state contracts, suggesting that these could be withdrawn. ``Watch out, I'm going to be checking on this personally,'' Chavez said.
His comments were likely to rekindle fears among opponents that he might be considering increasingly authoritarian steps, including force, to implement reform and silence opposition. Chavez won a landslide election in 1998, six years after failing to seize power in a coup. He installed a National Assembly and Supreme Court controlled by his supporters.
His opponents have accused the president of concentrating personal power and of seeking to create a socialist-style economic and political system in Venezuela with similarities to communist-ruled Cuba, which he openly admires.
One foreign financial analyst said he feared the heightened political confrontation in Venezuela, combined with falling world prices for the country's main export oil, would lead to capital flight and economic stagnation.
``Clearly, in the near term, this is going to be a mess,'' Michael Gavin, chief of Latin American economics and debt strategy at UBS Warburg, told Reuters.
The national strike was an embarrassment for Chavez as he prepared to host a summit of Caribbean region leaders on Tuesday and Wednesday on the resort island of Margarita.