POLITICS-VENEZUELA: Temperatures Continue to Rise

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Oct 15 2002 (IPS) - Venezuela’s main trade union confirmed Monday that it was calling a 12-hour general strike for Oct 21, in another attempt to secure the resignation of President Hugo Chávez, who on Sunday flatly rejected the demands set forth by the broad opposition movement.

The strike announced by the president of the Venezuelan Confederation of Workers (CTV), Carlos Ortega, will be the third held against Chávez in less than a year.

Carlos Fernández, the head of the country’s main business council, Fedecámaras, as well as the leading representatives of the Democratic Coordinator, an umbrella group linking 34 anti- government political parties and civil society organisations, backed the call for the strike.

The announcement came in response to the speech that Chávez delivered Sunday to a downtown Caracas gathering of hundreds of thousands of his followers.

The president dismissed the demands of the opposition movement, which held its own massive demonstration on Oct 10 under the slogan ”Elections Now!” to demand that he resign or announce early elections by next Wednesday.

”Respect for the Constitution” was the theme of Sunday’s pro- government march. This South American country’s constitution, which was rewritten under Chávez, stipulates that a referendum to determine the future of the government cannot be organised before August 2003, the halfway-point of the president’s term in office.

Buoyed up by the huge crowd that took to the streets to support him 72 hours after the opposition rally, Chávez openly challenged his adversaries. ”I’m so scared!” he joked from the rostrum. ”I dare the opposition to bring the country to a halt. Let’s see if they will really do it. Let’s see who is a match for whom.

”What lies behind the strike is a plot for a coup,” said the president. ”But if they try that, I have said it: we are ready to sweep them aside again in that terrain,” he warned.

According to Ortega, ”We are very close to Chávez removing his mask and declaring his government a dictatorial regime.”

In mid-April, Chávez was removed from office by a group of military chiefs and civilians and held by a faction of the armed forces for two days, after a huge opposition protest on Apr 11 ended with unexplained shootings that claimed the lives of 18 demonstrators.

But he reclaimed the presidency on Apr 14, with the support of loyal troops and hundreds of thousands of his sympathisers, who took to the streets.

”This is a country that is extremely politically divided, with its hard-line extremes writing the agenda of both sides,” analyst Barry Lynn, who has been contracted by the New America Foundation – a liberal U.S. think-tank – told IPS.

The pro-Chávez rally ”defused the possibility of a new coup, because it clearly showed the military that there are thousands and thousands of people willing to defend the president with their lives,” according to Lynn.

The chief editor of the Tal Cual newspaper, Teodoro Petkoff, a veteran leftist leader and outspoken critic of Chávez, warned that ”the hard-liners mutually feed into each other.

”If the two rallies showed us anything, it is that both sides are strong. Neither can impose anything on the other by force,” said the analyst.

Meanwhile, Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary- General César Gaviria postponed a visit to Caracas scheduled for Monday.

Gaviria is the head of a ”tripartite working group,” made up of representatives from the OAS, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s Carter Centre, and the United Nations Development Programme, which is trying to kickstart talks between the Chávez administration and the opposition.

The OAS official has proposed a ”commitment to peace and democracy” in the framework of the Inter-American Democracy Charter. He said the two sides would sign the agreement this week.

Vice-President José Vicente Rangel explained that the agendas of both Gaviria and Chávez ran into complications Monday.

The president is leaving Monday for a tour of Europe, where he plans to visit France, Norway, Britain and Italy this week. In Rome, he will be one of the keynote speakers at the Oct 16 ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

”They agreed that the OAS secretary-general would come as soon as the president returns” next weekend, said Rangel.

Ortega, meanwhile, said ”it is just another show of irresponsibility by the president, to absent himself from the country in such a difficult situation.”

Antonio Ledezma, an activist with the opposition group ‘Alianza Bravo Pueblo’, said ”the cancellation of the OAS chief’s visit should worry us, because his is the route that we must follow to come up with solutions to the crisis.”

The Venezuelan parliament, where the ruling coalition enjoys a small majority, agreed to sign the commitment to peace and democracy proposed by Gaviria, as did most of the parties and organisations grouped in the Democratic Coordinator. Rangel also said Monday that he was ready to sign the commitment.

But the opposition warned that they wanted Chávez’s, not the vice-president’s, signature. They are also demanding that the commitment outline a timetable for early elections.

Political analyst Jorge Olavaria, a critic of Chávez, said the opposition was not ”asking him to resign, but to surrender,” and urged them to engage in negotiations instead.

Chávez’s term ends in late 2006, at which point he will be eligible for reelection. But as of August 2003, the opposition can seek a referendum to vote on his removal, by collecting at least one and a half million signatures.

Regional and sectorial assemblies were announced Monday to prepare for the Oct 21 general strike.

POLITICS-VENEZUELA: Temperatures Continue to Rise

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Oct 14 2002 (IPS) - Venezuela’s main trade union confirmed Monday that it was calling a 12-hour general strike for Oct 21, in another attempt to secure the resignation of President Hugo Chávez, who on Sunday flatly rejected the demands set forth by the broad opposition movement.
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