www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

CESAP Social Development group has called on the government and opposition to recognize that sovereignty lies in the People and to pay attention to the social emergency.

• In a communique the group warns that immediate action must be taken in the fields of maternity, early childhood, nutrition, unemployment, education and public insecurity.

The government, CESAP insists,  must restore the daycare homes program and all institutions caring for mother and child, as well as allow alliances between public and private sectors.

"One way of tackling the problem of insecurity is to disarm the population and disband armed  groups set up for political motives."

www.iht.com Moisés Naím Thursday, March 6, 2003 The Venezuelan nightmare   WASHINGTON For decades Venezuela was a backwater, uninteresting to the outside world. It could not compete for international attention with nearby countries where superpowers staged proxy wars, or where military juntas "disappeared" thousands of opponents, or where the economies regularly crashed. Venezuela was stable. Its oil fueled an economy that enjoyed the world's highest growth rate from 1950 to 1980 and it boasted a higher per-capita income than Spain from 1928 to 1984. Venezuela was one of the longest-lived democracies in Latin America.Venezuela is no longer boring. It has become a nightmare for its people and a threat not just to its neighbors but to the United States and even Europe. A strike in its oil industry has contributed to a rise in gasoline prices at the worst possible time. Hasil Mohammed Rahaham-Alan, a Venezuelan citizen, was detained last month at a London airport as he arrived from Caracas carrying a hand grenade in his luggage. A week later, President Hugo Chávez praised the arrest orders of two opposition leaders who had been instrumental in organizing the strike, saying they "should have been jailed a long time ago." Chávez has helped to create an environment where stateless international networks whose business is terror, guns or drugs feel at home. Venezuela has also become a laboratory where the accepted wisdom of the 1990s is being tested - and often discredited. The first tenet to fall was the belief that the United States has almost unlimited influence in South America. As one of its main oil suppliers and a close neighbor has careened out of control, America has been a conspicuously inconsequential bystander. And it is not just the United States. The United Nations, agencies like the Organization of American States and the International Monetary Fund, or the international press - all have stood by and watched. Another belief of the 1990s was that global economic forces would force democratically elected leaders to pursue responsible economic policies. Yet Chávez, a democratically elected president, has been willing to tolerate international economic isolation - with disastrous results for Venezuela's poor - in exchange for greater power at home. The 21st century was not supposed to engender a Latin American president with a red beret. Instead of obsessing about luring private capital, he scares it away. Rather than strengthening ties with the United States, he befriends Cuba. Such behavior was supposed to have been made obsolete by the democratization, economic deregulation and globalization of the 1990s. Venezuela is an improbable country to have fallen into this political abyss. It is vast, wealthy, relatively modern and cosmopolitan, with a strong private sector and a homogeneous mixed-race population with little history of conflict. Democracy was supposed to have prevented its decline into a failed state. Yet once Chávez gained control over the government, his rule became exclusionary and profoundly undemocratic. Under Chávez, Venezuela is a powerful reminder that elections are necessary but not sufficient for democracy, and that even longstanding democracies can unravel overnight. A government's legitimacy flows not only from the ballot box but also from the way it conducts itself. Accountability and institutional restraints and balances are needed. The international community became adept at monitoring elections and ensuring their legitimacy in the 1990s. The Venezuelan experience illustrates the urgency of setting up equally effective mechanisms to validate a government's practices. The often stealthy transgressions of Chávez have unleashed a powerful expression of what is perhaps the only trend of the 1990s still visible in Venezuela: civil society. In today's Venezuela millions of once politically indifferent citizens stage almost daily marches and rallies. This is not a traditional opposition movement. It is an inchoate network of people from all social classes and walks of life, who are organized in loosely coordinated units and who do not have any other ambition than to stop a president who has made their country unlivable. For too many years they have been mere inhabitants of their own country. Now they demand to be citizens, and feel they have the right to oust through democratic means a president who has wrought havoc on their country. Even though the constitution allows for early elections, and even though Chávez has promised that he will abide by this provision, the great majority of Venezuelans don't believe him. They are convinced that in August, when the constitution contemplates a referendum on the president, the government will resort to delaying tactics and dirty tricks. With international attention elsewhere, Chávez will use his power to forestall an election and ignore the constitution. Venezuela's citizens have been heroically peaceful and civil in their quest. All they ask is that they be given a chance to vote. The world should do its best to ensure that they have that opportunity. The writer, Venezuela's minister of trade and industry from 1989 to 1990, is editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

The verbal war between Colombia and Venezuela is heating up as Colombian authorities say they are going to do something about alleged incursions of Colombian guerrillas into Venezuela.

Colombian secret police (DAS) chief in La Guajira, Luz Marina Rodriguez says the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army of Colombia (ELN) are entering Venezuela via the Perija mountain range. "We are investigating the allegations … we know the former group uses Venezuela as a resting place.”

Colombian government sources accuse the Venezuelan government of turning a blind eye to the incursions.

• DAS chief in Arauca, Hugo Hernan Jimenez complains that guerrillas cross over to Apure on a permanent basis.

Two days ago, Federation of Colombian Municipalities director, Gilberto Toro claimed that top FARC leaders are actually hiding out in the Venezuelan jungle and accuses President Chavez Frias of turning a blind eye and letting the guerrilla chiefs use Venezuela as a distention zone.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

The verbal war between Colombia and Venezuela is heating up as Colombian authorities say they are going to do something about alleged incursions of Colombian guerrillas into Venezuela.

Colombian secret police (DAS) chief in La Guajira, Luz Marina Rodriguez says the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army of Colombia (ELN) are entering Venezuela via the Perija mountain range. "We are investigating the allegations … we know the former group uses Venezuela as a resting place.”

Colombian government sources accuse the Venezuelan government of turning a blind eye to the incursions.

• DAS chief in Arauca, Hugo Hernan Jimenez complains that guerrillas cross over to Apure on a permanent basis.

Two days ago, Federation of Colombian Municipalities director, Gilberto Toro claimed that top FARC leaders are actually hiding out in the Venezuelan jungle and accuses President Chavez Frias of turning a blind eye and letting the guerrilla chiefs use Venezuela as a distention zone.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: No one can predict the future, although many try. The problem with trying is that the risks and costs of being wrong are too high.

In Corporate Strategic Planning, foretelling the future has been replaced ... decades ago ... by the drawing of multiple scenarios, and the analysis of the impact that each scenario can have on our company, family or country, as the case may be.

• In this manner we can prepare ourselves to minimize the negative impact of an unfriendly scenario or maximize the benefits of a friendly one.

Planning our strategies for multiple futures has the additional advantage of being able to choose the preferred one and try to "make it happen."

This type of planning is very rational, but still largely limited to private business in developing countries ... national planning in these countries still tends to be highly deterministic and based on political dogma, more than on a more pragmatic analysis of possible futures.

These governments tend to assume that their "favorite" scenario is the only one worth considering, so that their planning becomes just a linear prediction.

Trying to anticipate where Venezuela will be in a few year's time requires drawing scenarios based on economic, political and social assumptions.

Such an exercise is characterized by uncertainty, although it is possible to assign probabilities to every assumption. In doing this we can be greatly helped by a cautious extrapolation of past trends.

Some of the key assumptions in the drawing of three basic Venezuelan scenarios include:

1. Political Environment, % Probability A. Consolidation of the Revolution B. Early elections, change of Government C. Open political violence

2. Economic Environment A. Low private investment, high unemployment, low government investment; B Increasing private investment, rising employment more capital expenditure by government C. Economic paralysis

3. Social Environment. A. Continued class struggle, great social unrest B. Diminishing social tensions, reconciliation C. Civil War.

Obviously the exercise calls for objective evaluation of probabilities rather than assigning maximum probabilities to our preferred scenario.

Although I clearly prefer scenario 1B, I can only assign it at this time equal probabilities to that of 1A ... and only a little more to 1C ... something along the lines of 35%, 35% and 30% respectively.

This is not what I would prefer since the "negative scenarios" combine for 65% of probability.

Whatever the political scenario becoming real, it will very strongly influence the economic and social scenarios.

The consolidation of the "revolution" would most probably lead, due to its ideological nature, to less private investment, higher capital flight, more unemployment, more State control ... more than good or bad this is factual.

Of course many followers of the current Venezuelan government will be most reluctant to accept that the "revolution" can only bring more poverty and increasing social and economic disarray.  They will be against accepting statistics to this effect.

• This is why I would recommend that international organizations such as the UN, the IMF, the IDB and the OAS provide most of these statistics.

I think it would be most advisable that the "Group of Friends" promotes a poll, supervised internationally, to measure the "mood" of the country ... today we have the government "truth" and the opposition "truth" but not the "truth."

So, where will Venezuela be in 2006?. Nobody knows...

But, every one of us can draw his/her own scenarios...

Many years ago, a bright student who wanted to make his old teacher look foolish, hid a small bird in his hands, behind his back. He asked his teacher: "Master, Is the bird I have in my hands dead or alive?" If he says dead, I will let it fly. If he says alive, I will strangle it...

The old teacher looked at him evenly and replied: "It will be as you wish..."

So it will be with Venezuela 2006.

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 ppcvicep@telcel.net.ve