VENEZUELA: Caldera Full Steam Ahead, Despite Social Unease

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Mar 14 1997 (IPS) - Venezuela’s President Rafael Caldera showed he could be dangerously out of touch with a reality of strikes and social tension in a nation where foreign reserves are swelling while the people go hungry.

The 81 year-old President’s annual speech to Congress earlier this week dispelled rumours of illness and military coups telling Congress he would maintain the neoliberal economic plan first imposed in 1996, despite widespread protests and the critical social situation.

This policy increased reserves to nearly 16 billion dollars while real incomes fell by between 40 and 60 percent, sparking massive popular demonstrations, some violent, from wide sectors of society so far this year.

However, Caldera avoided any concrete statements in his presentation, doing more to dispel the rumours of ill-health with his 600 m televised walk from parliament to his office than to calm the social situation in his speech.

Earlier in the week, the country had been plagued by rumours the leader was either dead or in a coma, and that a military uprising, or something worse, could be on the way.

Caldera even joked about this, saying he was sure the country he would hand on to his successor in February 1999, would be governable and solid “God willing, even if the astrologer doesn’t like it.”

Jose Bernardo Gomez, a well-known local astrologer, was arrested for two days in October, as in a meeting with the business community that Caldera and the nation would have an untimely break up between then and April, which was widely interpreted to mean his death, given rumours on his poor state of health.

The demonstrations and the repeated false rumours of his death basically stem from the increasing social tension and conflict on the labour front, due to sharp falls in real income.

The strikes, demonstrations and other forms of agitation have been daily occurances in a year economic and political analysts expect to better 1996, given massive investments and foreign income of 30 billion dollars.

But the impact of inflation of 103 percent in 1996 and the freezing of salaries led to a massive loss in real income in the last two years which exploded when, the country was informed of facts like the massive international reserves.

Caldera avoided all mention of this agitation, despite a demonstration of between 2,000 and 3,000 people Wednesday – followed by confrontations between protesters and the police, and the launch of an indefinite strike by 16,000 workers and another in the courts Thursday.

He insisted the ‘Agenda Venezuela,’ the adjustment plan he agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1996, is giving fruit, inflation is falling and the social plans increasing.

He confirmed the second part of the Agenda Venezuela was already underway and that economic lift-off was imminent, deepening the privatisation process and converting the country into the epicentre of oil investments worldwide.

Caldera praised the patience and understanding of the Venezuelan people in relation to the impact of the adjustment assuring the measures not only sought to return to clear levels of economic growth, “but the well-being of the population.”

Investors in the Caracas Stock Exchange and business leaders said the most important aspects of the day had been the reassurance that the Agenda would not be abandonned, nor would there be a return to the failed control policy of the first two years of his time in office.

Eduardo Herrera, director of the Venezuelan-American Chamber said that even more important, “and what was longest awaited” was “the parallel speech Caldera gave to Venezuela and foreign investors with his walk.”

But the neoliberal economist Carlos Raul Hernandez also said Caldera was showing signs of the “glass cage” syndrome, meaning he has become isolated from the real situation surrounding him.

On the political front, the general criticism concentrated on the lack of real announcements and responses to the tense social situation.

“It was not a speech for the times Venezuela is currently living through,” said the Social Democrat leader Henry Ramos.

Another opposition figure, Jorge Roig, from the left-wing Causa Radical, said Calderas report was “both deceiving and dangerous, it seems he cannot hear the roaring of the country.”

The effects of the Agenda are not only clear in the billion dollar international reserves, worth two years of imports, “but in the empty stomachs of 22 million Venezuelans,” said Ramos.

Head of parliament, the socialist Cristobal Fernandez, said Caldera had committed the sin of optimism when faced by a country desperate for urgent action and answers to their problems.