<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic news Posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Venezuelan Human rights group PROVEA  has taken on the National Assembly (AN) for not implementing a transitory regime after promulgating the new Social Security law (LOSSS) on December 31. 

PROVEA HR Defense Area coordinator, Marino Alvarado says the group will lodge an appeal at the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) asking it  to fill the legal void. 

Alvarado  points out that the AN has not listed corresponding percentages to employer and worker's contributions under the concept of forced layoffs aimed at helping a worker who has been laid off from work. 

The law also ignores other accumulated benefits, Alvarado claims,  and it means that the worker is exposed to abuses because there are no legal obligations forcing an employer whether public or private to keep up with payments. "The principle of progressiveness of human rights, the right to social security and the principle of inalienability of worker's rights are under threat."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: Some 15 months ago the President reluctantly sacked his mentor, Planning Minister Jorge Giordani, in order to inject some modern ideas into his collapsing economic cabinet. He also replaced the Minister of Finance, Nelson Merentes, who had illegally diverted ...at the President's request ... some $3 billion away from the Macroeconomic Stabilization Fund (FIEM) and into the government payroll, to pay for central administration bureaucracy Christmas bonuses.

You might think that anyone coming in would have been more satisfactory than the Giordani-Merentes team ... but what has happened in these months of performance by the new economic team, has left no doubt that the problem can not be solved simply by playing musical chairs in the economic cabinet.

The replacement team of Felipe Perez and Tobias Nobrega proved to be as inefficient (Perez) as Giordani and as unethical (Nobrega) as Merentes.

Felipe Perez was honest but came to his job armed with unusual economic theories, in which the Holy Spirit should be invoked in order to improve the situation of the economy. Although this is a method frequently resorted to in our churches, it had never been used as an official component of national economic policy. His first public announcements were related to the need all Venezuelans had to believe that everything was going to be alright. "If you fervently think that the currency will not be devalued, it will not..." To think otherwise, he added "would be an insult to the Holy Spirit."

These declarations sent Catholics and atheists alike rushing to the Currency Exchange Agencies to buy dollars, and produced a clearly blasphemous capital flight estimated at some $8 billion during the past year.

"Felipe the Brief" soon started to become harsher in his pronouncements ... he said, at one point in time, that dissident PDVSA managers should be shot.

He became extremely critical of the World Bank and other multilateral financial agencies, asserting that they had never been able to predict how the Venezuelan economy would behave.

He claimed that Venezuelan inflation would not be bigger than 20% when it was already apparent that it would be closer to 35-40%.

He said that the fiscal deficit would not surpass 3-4% when in fact it was inevitable that it would reach 8% or more.

He never stopped sounding extremely optimistic ... which is a healthy attitude in normal circumstances, but not when you are a piano player on the Titanic.

One thing was positive about his performance: He opened up an Internet channel of communication with the general public, something that no other cabinet member has done, since there are no conclusive indications that they have heard about Internet.  On this website, Perez discussed economic theory with gusto, true to his vocation as an academician. He was sold on what he termed the theory of positive expectations ... or something like that ... which simply means that, if you repeat endlessly that things will be okay, they will be okay. This did not work...

Worse, Felipe started to encroach on Nobrega's turf where he is a hard ball player ... not in vain, he had worked as an economic Advisor at the National Assembly ... a shark tank ... and had been quite a hustler in the hotly competitive economic consulting sector. When Noriega saw that Felipe wanted to do the two jobs, that of Planning and Finance Ministers, he complained to Chavez ... and Chavez came up with a brilliant move ... he brought Jorge Giordani back!

But I really have to ask: Among 24 million people or so in our country, can no one better than Giordani be found to do the job of Planning Minister?

After all, we already found out what he could do the first time around. His major contribution to the government was to describe the Venezuelan economy as a "submarine" ... temporarily being underwater, until government programs would make it surface...

As readers would do well in suspecting, Giordani's submarine theory was simply an aquatic variation of Perez's theological thesis. Marine science and religion coming to the rescue of our economy during the 5th republic. Giordani's pet program to produce the surfacing of the submarine was the development of the Orinoco-Apure fluvial Axis. This program is reminiscent in scope to the program dreamt of by old Sukarno in Indonesia (the father, not the daughter) ... that of transmigrating some 50 million surplus Javanese from the overcrowded island to other units of the Indonesian archipelago.

The small problem with this was the logistics ... with the amount of ships Sukarno had, it soon became obvious that moving this crowd from Java to the other islands would take about 1,100 years. In other words, the program had an almost geological dimension, rather than political.

• As we know now, Sukarno would not have been able to see the results of his efforts, as he died soon after.

The program conceived by Giordani is more modest but no less unrealistic. It has to do with converting the southern portion of Venezuela into a true industrial and economic emporium, to be built along the big rivers.

In order to do this, some substantial money will be needed ... which is nowhere to be seen. Only the preliminary studies ordered by Giordani almost exhausted the money allocated to the total program in the desperately cash short government. Still, the return of Giordani to the cabinet means that the Orinoco-Apure project will be resurrected ... in fact, Chavez already mentioned it during his last radio program.

Predictably the return of Giordani to the government, as the main financial and development ideologue, produced an immediate dive of the Venezuelan Bonds.

My telling this will not add much to the panic already existing among international investors who have stakes in the country ... or will make up the minds of those who are thinking about coming, to come or not to come.

They are well informed. We have a saying in Venezuela: "La culpa no es del ciego sino de quien le da el garrote" ... The one to blame is not the blind man but he who gives him the stick...

Giordani is not the guy to blame, but he who named him ... both the first time around and, incredibly, this second time around.

It could be argued that Giordani could have graciously declined, but this would have needed another kind of man...

And these kind of men do not exist in the 5th republic.....

Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983.  In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort.  You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email gustavo@vheadline.com

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 By: Jorge Marin

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 13:58:59 -0400 From: Jorge Marin Jorge.Marin@pollak.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: PDVSA here to stay

Dear Editor: I have been reading Gustavo Coronel's commentaries for some time now. Many times, I have disagree and other times it has made me wonder whether he has a point. But his last editorial Explosions, anarchy and mercenaries in the new PDVSA goes beyond criticism, it is fanaticism of the worst kind.

The PDVSA that he once knew is gone, never to be return.

These people made an error of judgement when they decided to joint the strike last December. And by refusing to return to work, as ordered by Supreme Court, they in fact gave up their positions.

Their actions affected all Venezuelans and as such it should be punishable by law. That is why their leaders are flying to other lands to escape prosecution.

The people that took the reigns of this company are people with great conviction ... they are Venezuelans called out of retirement, and Venezuelans from foreign lands who have come to rescue PDVSA ... and by association the elected government. They did so while their lives were threatened, some had their cars riddled with bullets at their homes, some had daily demonstrations of fanatics outside their homes. And yet they overcame the sabotage of computer systems and equipment in order that the Venezuela's economy and democracy would not collapse.

The fact that production has reached the 2.8 million barrels a day in such a short time proved that they know what they are doing. They are all heroes in my book.

I am sorry that so many PDVSA employees lost their jobs. But it is ridiculous to think that the same people that committed sabotage be allowed to return to work. If they're truly skilled, I am sure they will eventually find work in the private sector, otherwise they were probably deadweight anyway.

I believe the facts that Kira Marquez Perez presents, as opposed to Gustavo Coronel's "facts" ... which are plain rhetoric.

Jorge Marin Jorge.Marin@pollak.com

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuel;a's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions America's Region (ICFTU-ORIT) organizer Ivan Gonzalez says the Venezuelan Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) must recover its role as defender of worker's rights and be carried away by momentary issues. 

Speaking at a forum on worker's rights, Gonzalez warns that the CTV cannot expect automatic international solidarity, if it centers activities around political issues. 

Addressing CTV human rights committee, the ORIT representative says that the CTV's fight revolves around getting rid of President Hugo Chavez Frias, then it will be difficult for ORIT to accompany them. 

Trade union leadership must take up the perspective of the defense of human and worker's rights and be more inclusive as regards enrolling people working in the informal economy... Gonzalez admits that there is a legitimate and respectable way of fighting against a government it is a fine line  ... "don't come running to us when there are prisoners or somebody is exiled or when something has to be done." 

This is not the first time that ORIT and indeed the International Labor Organization (ILO) has questioned the dominance of immediate political gains over trade union issues on the part of current CTV leaders.  ILO and ORIT leaders have commented that the experience of CIA interference in other continental trade unions still leaves a bitter taste ... it has made them suspicious regarding hidden agendas  in the current Venezuelan political conflict.

• ORIT is the America's Region (North and South) of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

Venezuelan human rights group PROVEA leader, Marino Alvarado talked about advances and reverses over the last couple of years, welcoming the quantification of the State's labor liabilities to public sector workers ... "unfortunately it hasn't been done on a State and municipal level." 

Alvarado comments that the State has adopted as policy of violating union freedoms ... "Venezuela must ratify the San Salvador Protocol that recognizes the right to strike and the defense of labor rights at the Inter American Human Rights Court  ... something that becomes obligatory for all signatories."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuel;a's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions America's Region (ICFTU-ORIT) organizer Ivan Gonzalez says the Venezuelan Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) must recover its role as defender of worker's rights and be carried away by momentary issues. 

Speaking at a forum on worker's rights, Gonzalez warns that the CTV cannot expect automatic international solidarity, if it centers activities around political issues. 

Addressing CTV human rights committee, the ORIT representative says that the CTV's fight revolves around getting rid of President Hugo Chavez Frias, then it will be difficult for ORIT to accompany them. 

Trade union leadership must take up the perspective of the defense of human and worker's rights and be more inclusive as regards enrolling people working in the informal economy... Gonzalez admits that there is a legitimate and respectable way of fighting against a government it is a fine line  ... "don't come running to us when there are prisoners or somebody is exiled or when something has to be done." 

This is not the first time that ORIT and indeed the International Labor Organization (ILO) has questioned the dominance of immediate political gains over trade union issues on the part of current CTV leaders.  ILO and ORIT leaders have commented that the experience of CIA interference in other continental trade unions still leaves a bitter taste ... it has made them suspicious regarding hidden agendas  in the current Venezuelan political conflict.

• ORIT is the America's Region (North and South) of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

Venezuelan human rights group PROVEA leader, Marino Alvarado talked about advances and reverses over the last couple of years, welcoming the quantification of the State's labor liabilities to public sector workers ... "unfortunately it hasn't been done on a State and municipal level." 

Alvarado comments that the State has adopted as policy of violating union freedoms ... "Venezuela must ratify the San Salvador Protocol that recognizes the right to strike and the defense of labor rights at the Inter American Human Rights Court  ... something that becomes obligatory for all signatories."