VENEZUELA: OAS Attempts to Jumpstart Dialogue Fall on Deaf Ears

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Oct 29 2002 (IPS) - The tension between the government and the opposition was heightened in Venezuela by the visit of the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS), César Gaviria, whose proposal for dialogue has run head-on into the intransigence of both sides.

”I hope the need to give dialogue a chance and to find a future with reduced possibilities of conflict will prevail,” Gaviria said Tuesday, after meeting separately with President Hugo Chávez, cabinet ministers, opposition leaders, Catholic bishops, and representatives of the media.

Gaviria said that ”neither the OAS nor the ‘tripartite group’ (the mediation group he heads) are in a position to resolve the problem known as ‘the Venezuelan crisis’. We are here to facilitate talks, because that is what we can offer, and we have not considered taking sides.”

The tripartite group, comprised of representatives of the OAS, the Carter Centre of former United States president Jimmy Carter, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), was created in June to seek solutions to the ongoing political crisis and the polarisation, which worsened after the short-lived coup d’etat that removed Chávez from office for two days in mid-April.

Gaviria recommends talks on three points: setting up a truth commission to investigate the deaths that occurred in the confusing incidents surrounding the Apr 12 coup; the disarmament of citizen groups; and reforms of the electoral system to make it trustworthy for both the government and the opposition.

While Gaviria is working hard to bring the two sides to the negotiating table, dozens of serving officers who have been relieved of their duties gathered with thousands of civilian supporters over the past week in Altamira square in a middle-class neighbourhood of Caracas, urging the military and the population to refuse to recognise Chávez’s authority.

The rebel officers, most of whom were involved in the Apr 12 coup, are backed by the Democratic Coordinator, an umbrella group of 34 opposition parties and civil society organisations.

But this time they are calling for ”a peaceful, democratic solution” to the political crisis, which has split society in this oil-producing South American nation of 23 million virtually in half.

Private TV stations have been broadcasting the officers’ calls for a military uprising day and night, followed by messages read out by the military chiefs of various regions stating that they will respect the constitution and President Chávez.

The tripartite group, meanwhile, called in a U.S. consultant, William Ury, one of the world’s leading negotiation specialists, who is the author of several books on what he calls the ”third side”, such as ”Getting Past No: Negotiating Your Way from Confrontation to Cooperation”.

Drawing on his experience mediating conflict situations in the Middle East, southern Africa, and between Washington and Moscow, Ury brought together personalities from the ruling party and the opposition in a seminar held in the Caracas headquarters of the Latin American Economic System (SELA).

”We should not ask the two sides to give in,” but to tell us what are their underlying interests, in order to come up with a third alternative, he said.

Several parliamentary deputies from small parties allied with the governing Fifth Republic Movement have suggested a possible solution for a negotiated settlement, based on a referendum that would satisfy both the government and the opposition.

The possibility of a referendum is being studied, ”but with wording of questions that would be acceptable to all,” explained Guillermo Palacios, one of the deputies of the Strength in Movement Organisation, a party from western Venezuela that backs Chávez.

A source in parliament told IPS that a neutral question that has been proposed is to ask voters whether they want early elections. If the answer is yes, it would be left up to parliament to plan and organise the elections.

But Ury did not agree with the proposal to hold early elections, pointing out that one of the sides would win, and if the side that lost felt that the conditions were unfair, it could resort to violence and fan the flames of the conflict. ”The ideal is for there to be neither winners nor losers,” he added.

The opposition leaders who met with Gaviria asked him to support their proposal to convoke a referendum, in order to allow the citizens to decide before year-end whether Chávez should resign immediately or remain in office until the end of his term in 2006.

The right-wing Justice First party and other parties that belong to the Democratic Coordinator have already collected 1.2 million signatures in a petition drive to hold a referendum on the future of the government.

Chávez, in the meantime, has urged the opposition to make use of the constitutional clause that allows a referendum to be held at the half-way point in his term, in August 2003.

Rafael Poleo, with the rightist publication Nuevo País, said at the end of a meeting of newspaper publishers with Gaviria that the OAS secretary-general would prefer to leave aside the electoral question for now.

According to Poleo, ”the innocuousness of Gaviria’s visit makes civil war practically inevitable in Venezuela.”

Ernesto Alvarenga of the opposition Solidarity party, and Carlos Fernández, the president of the Fedecámaras business association, refused to budge from their position, and said the working agenda proposed by Gaviria ”is already out-of-date, and the only decision to be reached now is how to call a referendum.”

The social democratic Timoteo Zambrano, an international spokesman for the Democratic Coordinator, said ”the only point we will discuss at the negotiating table is the date of the referendum.”

Zambrano reported that ”the Democratic Coordinator has set a deadline for Gaviria’s mediation initiative: midnight on Dec 4. After that, we will consider it cancelled.”

The Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, the country’s biggest trade union, is threatening to declare an indeterminate general strike to demand a referendum, while Fedecámaras said a strike would be held if any opposition leader was arrested or became the object of aggression.

But ruling party lawmaker Tarek Saab warned that ”a consultation for people to say whether Chávez is to continue in office or not is a disguised referendum on the future of the government, and we will reject it as unconstitutional.”

VENEZUELA: OAS Attempts to Jumpstart Dialogue Fall on Deaf Ears

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Oct 29 2002 (IPS) - The tension between the government and the opposition was heightened in Venezuela by the visit of the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS), César Gaviria, whose proposal for dialogue has run head-on into the intransigence of both sides.
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