www.veneconomy.com

Los representantes del gobierno parecen no inmutarse ante la crítica realidad económica del país. Ningún ser pensante puede prever una caída en el Producto Interno Bruto de sólo 2% para este año, si durante 2002 el decrecimiento fue de 8,9% con niveles de producción petrolera de 3,3 millones de b/d y un promedio de $22,18 por barril. Es prácticamente imposible que con una capacidad de producción significativamente disminuida y una profundización de la recesión consecuencia del paro nacional, de la destrucción de PDVSA, de la imposición de controles de precios y de cambio y del deterioro del clima político, la caída del PIB pueda ser de apenas 2% como lo estima Felipe Pérez, ministro de Planificación. Existe casi un consenso entre los expertos del sector privado en que la contracción económica no será menor a 15%, lo que representaría el peor comportamiento desde que se llevan estadísticas. Si para los representantes del gobierno es difícil admitir la realidad, parece que lo es más ponerse de acuerdo en torno a las cifras. Mientras Felipe Pérez sólo reconoce un decrecimiento de 2,07%, Tobías Nóbrega, ministro de Finanzas, piensa que no habrá ni crecimiento ni contracción, es decir, cero crecimiento. Lo que no se explica es que si los ministros piensan así, por qué en el presupuesto de la nación se estipula un crecimiento de 3,7%. La situación de las finanzas públicas luce terriblemente comprometida. Mientras que los ingresos petroleros han mermado de manera importante, la recaudación fiscal también se ha reducido como consecuencia de la crisis. El monto de la deuda interna alcanzó el récord de Bs.14,4 billones al cierre de 2002, tras ubicarse en Bs.2,3 billones al cierre de 1998. Incluso se duplicó en términos de dólares. Cuando el ministro encargado de Finanzas, Jesús Bermúdez, reconoció el año pasado en una interpelación en la Asamblea Nacional que el gobierno se había financiado en bolívares porque sabían que la devaluación de la moneda venía en camino, nunca imaginó que la principal fuente de ingresos del país sería desmantelada. Hoy en día, ni el beneficio de una devaluación contribuirá a reducir el enorme peso de la deuda interna. De hecho, ya hacia finales del año pasado y ante la imposibilidad de honrar sus compromisos, el gobierno se vio obligado a refinanciar deuda con la banca nacional. De seguir complicándose el entorno político y económico, Venezuela podría –incluso– verse imposibilitada para cumplir con sus obligaciones del servicio de la deuda pública.

caracaschronicles.blogspot.com By Francisco Toro

So, Carlos Fernández got arrested – what’s the big problem? Listening to his speeches during the General Strike, it’s hard to argue he didn’t break some laws. In particular, when he urged people not to pay their taxes, isn’t it obvious that that’s incitement? And it’s not like Chávez went and arrested him personally: a court ordered his arrest. Isn’t that what courts are for?

It’s an argument you might find compelling, but only if you know nothing about the Venezuelan justice system. The story of Venezuela’s courts in the last four years is the story of a systematic, thorough political purge. By now, the vast majority of Venezuela’s judges have been handpicked by presidential cronies – a good number are clearly presidential cronies themselves. Take, for instance, the judge who initially heard the Fernández case. He’s a long-time chavista activist with a murder conviction on his police rap-sheet who, just a couple of months ago, was serving as defense council for one of the chavista gunmen videotaped emptying his gun into an opposition crowd back in April. He’s far from the exception.

It all started in 1999. It’s hard to believe now, but just four years ago Hugo Chávez had 80% approval ratings and the political capital to do just about anything he pleased. As part of his pledge to reinvent the state from the ground up, Chávez launched a so-called “Judicial Restructuring Committee” charged with overhauling the court system. It was a popular decision back then, and understandably so: years of old regime cronyism had left the courts riddled with political picks who took their marching orders from their respective party patrons. The courts were badly in need of a shake-up, and after years of railing against the political subordination of the judiciary, Chávez seemed like just the man for the job.

But the exercise went wrong from the start. Daunted by the prospect of having to investigate each and every judge one by one, the Judicial Restructuring Committee adopted a highly dubious expedient. They decided to just suspend all judges who had eight or more corruption complaints pending against them. Obviously, it was a quick-and-dirty shorthand. Just as obviously, it demonstrated appalling contempt for the procedural rights of the judges involved. While the move certainly cleared away many of the worst cases of judicial abuse, it doubtlessly also included all kinds of “false-positive” – honest judges who’d accumulated several spurious complaints against them and found themselves booted from the bench with no chance to defend themselves. Indeed, some 80% of Venezuelan judges had that many complaints pending against them, and it’s hard to believe that all of them really were corrupt.

The Restructuring Committee had the power to replace the suspended judges with “provisionally appointed judges.” To keep the purge from bringing the court system to a halt altogether, these provisional judges were hired after a superexpedited selection process. And that’s where the trouble started. In typical form, Chávez had named only personal supporters to the Restructuring Committee. Not surprisingly, they selected only chavistas as provisional judges. The result was a mass swap of politically motivated magistrates: out went the adecos, in went the chavistas.

But the abuse went further than that. A normal Venezuelan judge, under the old system, was terribly hard to get rid of. This created some problems – bad apples were hard to dump – but solved others – honest judges were hard to pressure. Though many judges clearly supplemented their income with bribes, and many answered faithfully to their political patrons, at least they didn’t have to worry that they’d lose their jobs if they handed down a decision that displeased their higher ups.

Provisional judges are different: they have no special labor protections. In fact, they can be removed just as quickly and easily as they were appointed by the same people who initially chose them. So by the end of 1999, not only were the vast majority of Venezuelan judges chavistas, but they were chavistas who knew their job security was totally dependent on their willingness to follow the orders handed down by their political masters.

The president and his cronies soon developed a taste for this new brand of judiciary, chuck-full as it was of defenseless provisional judges. The system made it much easier to keep judges on the straight-and-narrow. So provisional appointments – which, as the name suggests, were initially supposed to last only a few months while regular judges could be selected – became, in fact if not in law, permanent. Today, four years after the restructuring drive started, a whopping 84% of the nation’s 1380 judges are provisional appointments.

Keep this in mind the next time you read a story about a Venezuelan judge ordering an arrest of a political leader. The scrupulously neutral language of international journalism contributes to the appearance that these decisions are based on at least a minimum of democratic legality. But when it comes down to it, these judges are not any harder for Chávez to appoint or remove than his minister, and just as beholden to him.

The situation is just as bad in the Supreme Tribunal, though there the story is a bit more complex. Chávez continually says it’s absurd for people to charge him with controling the Supreme Tribunal, because the tribunal has ruled against him on a couple of high-profile cases. That, he implies, is living proof that he’s purer than pure and never set out to subjugate the court. The truth is far less flattering than that: he did try, it’s just that he was too clumsy to pull it off.

Following the approval of the new constitution in 1999, the old Supreme Court was fired en masse, and a brand new Supreme Tribunal was selected. The appointments required a two-thirds majority in parliament, which Chávez didn’t have. He had no choice but to cut a deal with some of his opponents in the National Assembly to select a new court. To their eternal shame, Acción Democrática and Proyecto Venezuela decided to play ball.

The parliamentary deal to select a new tribunal was old regime politics at its worst - a stereotypical smoky room deal. Between them, the three parties had the required 2/3rds of parliament needed for the appointments, so they more-or-less divvied up the court the way a butcher might cut up a salami. Since MVR had about 70% of the three-party-coalition’s seats, they claimed 70% of the 20-member court: 14 magistrates. AD had about 20% of the seats, so they got to pick their four magistrates. Proyecto Venezuela, as the junior partner, got to pick two. This is not speculation: I’ve heard AD leaders, who were later excorciated by the opposition for playing along on this, defend themselves publicly by saying that only by cutting a deal could they block Chávez from appointing a 100% court. “At least we have a few magistrates,” they say.

Each of the Supreme Tribunal magistrates selected in this way know precisely which party they owe their appointment to, and which party they have to take orders from. Years of angry chavista denunciations against these sorts of shenanigans were left by the wayside. It was, as one pundit memorably put it – “more of the same, but worse.”

The problem is that Chávez screwed it up. Big time. He outsourced the task of picking “his” magistrates to Luis Miquilena, who was his then right-hand man back then. He thought he could trust him. But Miquilena picked personal buddies for the job, some of whom obviously saw him, and not Chávez, as the real boss. Eventually, as Chávez’s governing style became more erratic and authoritarian, Miquilena jumped ship. And when he did, he dragged some of the Supreme Court justices along with him.

That, in essence, is why Chávez has lost some cases before the court: Miquilena has enough pull over a few of the magistrates to turn them against Chávez on selected occasions. So, in a sense, Chávez is right: he doesn’t totally control the tribunal – not anymore. But that’s hardly because either he or the magistrates underwent some sort of mystical conversion to Montesquieu’s liberal vision. The magistrates are still puppets, it’s just that one of the puppeteers switched sides.

Of course Chávez finds this situation intolerable: the very notion that an important branch of government could fall outside his control runs directly counter to the autocratic spirit that animates his whole government. So he’s had his cronies at the National Assembly hatch a plan to expand the number of magistrates from twenty to thirty, together with expedited new methods for appointing magistrates that would allow him to pick ten new, this time reliable, candidates to solidify his wavering majority in the tribunal. It’s shameless court packing. But then, shame is in short supply in Caracas these days.

The move would also solidify his control of the lower courts. Since the new constitution came into force, the Judicial Restructuring committee was wound down and responsibility for managing the nation’s courts now lies with the Supreme Tribunal, through something called the Executive Directorate of the Magistracy – DEM, after its Spanish acronym. Control of the Supreme Tribunal means control of the DEM, and through it, of all the lower courts. So packing the Supreme Tribunal allows Chávez to strengthen his control of the lower courts, and to continue to pack them with provisionally appointed cronies.

In short, the judicial system has become, like the rest of the Venezuelan state, a presidential plaything. The orders to arrest Carlos Fernández and the PDVSA strike leaders are patently, transparently political decisions, bits extracted whole from presidential speeches. These courts, which act with such frightful celerity when it comes to prosecuting the president’s opponents, slow to a glacial pace when it comes to prosecuting the president’s friends, even when those who have been videotaped shooting into crowds of unarmed civilians. To summarize the government’s judicial philosophy: if you call an opposition march you go to jail, but if you empty your gun into that march, you’re a revolutionary hero, and your lawyer is appointed judge.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 02, 2003 By: Roy S. Carson

President Hugo Chavez Frias says the hour has come for the transformation of Venezuela's economic model ... the government is focusing all its forces on concrete details in a plan to generate employment, investment and to generate a superior quality of living for the whole of Venezuela's 23.4 million population.

Chavez Frias was speaking after a Council of Ministers meeting with Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) president Major General (ret.) Francisco Rangel Gomez , representatives of the Bolivar State Federation of Chambers of Commerce & Industry, the State Governor and regional private company executives to formulate decisions to boost small and medium industries throughout the southeastern region.

The National Executive is to contribute 20 billion bolivares as well as subsidies for the purchase of productive machinery this year and an important quantity of seed maize ... a mill and factory for the production of pre-cooked maize and flour is to be opened.

"The time has arrived for the transformation of our economic model," Chavez Frias said.  "We must transcend the 20th century economic model, which only generated wealth and riches for a minority, a model based on inequality which has generated unemployment and poverty through exclusion."

During his visit to Ciudad Guayana, President Chavez initiated a series of workshops in which the national government, together with the CVG and regional government will work with local federations and chambers of commerce under the direction of  Special Economic Zones Minister Francisco Natera to kick-start businesses between Santa Elena de Uairen on the Brazilian border all the way up to the Orinoco delta region in parallel with a similatr project in northern Brazil to stimulate economic integration.

www.cnn.com Sunday, March 2, 2003 Posted: 12:43 PM EST (1743 GMT)

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- A suspected car bomb exploded early Sunday in the western Venezuelan oil city of Maracaibo, destroying three cars and damaging buildings including a local office of the U.S. oil company Chevron Texaco, police said.

No one was injured in the blast, which shattered windows and hurled debris over a wide area, badly scarring the fronts of several private houses in the Richmond estate of Maracaibo's San Francisco district.

"Everything points to it being a car bomb," San Francisco police inspector Francis Gonzalez told Reuters.

The explosion in Venezuela's second city was the third in less than a week following bomb attacks early Tuesday against Spanish and Colombian diplomatic buildings in Caracas, in which five people were injured.

Police are still investigating these attacks.

Gonzalez said a local administrative office in San Francisco of the U.S. oil giant Chevron suffered damage to its windows and facade in Sunday's blast but did not appear to be the main target. Chevron is one of the major foreign oil companies operating in the oil-rich country.

Worst hit by the explosion was the home of a well-known local family, the Melians, and police were investigating the possibility that the attack might have been directed against them, Gonzalez said.

The Richmond neighborhood is home to many families involved in the local oil industry.

Venezuela's western oil and shipping hub of Maracaibo was one of the areas most affected by a recent two-month opposition strike against President Hugo Chavez in December and January which slashed oil production by the world's No. 5 oil exporter.

Chavez has sacked some 15,000 strikers in the state oil industry, calling them "terrorists" trying to overthrow him.

The recent bomb attacks are unusual in Venezuela. Although the country has suffered an increase in political violence caused by feuding between supporters and foes of left-wing populist Chavez, bomb attacks of the kind experienced in neighboring Colombia are rare.

Colombia said Saturday its security forces, in a joint operation with Venezuelan armed forces, had foiled an attempt by leftist Colombian guerrillas to blow up a border crossing bridge using a tanker truck packed with explosives.

In the operation, four suspected Colombian guerrillas were captured by Venezuelan troops and handed over to Colombian authorities.

Tuesday's bomb attacks against the Spanish embassy cooperation office and the Colombian consulate in Caracas followed a speech by Chavez in which he sharply criticized the governments of Spain, Colombia and the United States, warning them not to meddle in his country's political crisis.

Chavez, who was first elected in 1998 and survived a coup last year, is resisting fierce opposition pressure to resign.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 02, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Foro por la Vida human rights umbrella organization has issued an important statement defending the work of Cofavic human rights over 14 years since it was created in the wake of February 27, 1989 (27F) spontaneous riots in which more than 400 people were killed by the Armed Forces (FAN) and police.

The group welcomes Cofavic’s victory at the Inter American Human Rights (IAHR) Court after failing to get justice in Venezuela. The IAHR Court has ordered the Venezuelan State to investigate 27F, identify those intellectually and materially responsible, as well as eventual accessories, penalize them, publish the IAHRC sentence in the Gaceta Oficial and pay compensation to families.

Foro por la Vida hits out at a silly statement made by Deputy Planning & Development (Cordiplan) Minister Roland Denis on February 27 at a religious ceremony outside the Cementario del Sur. Denis says Cofavic’s “initial spirit has disappeared under the manipulating hands of its executive director,” Liliana Ortega and those connected to Cofavic are a bunch of “poor devils that allow themselves to be used.”

Worse still, Denis has the nerve to say that the families of people who were killed have the right to receive attention but not financial compensation … “a rebellion like that cannot be solved by money … it’s not a question of payments.” Allegedly defending the State Treasury, Denis also claims that the State has no responsibility in the matter!

• Such statements, Foro por la Vida insists, contribute little to the fight against impunity and respect for human rights.

Foro por la Vida expresses its solidarity with each and every member of Cofavic and with Cofavic’s rejection of any attempt by any sector to capitalize and use 27F as a political standard in detriment to the victims that have maintained an independent and non-political 14-year struggle in favor of human rights.”

It calls on the government to comply with the IAHR Court’s ruling as soon as possible to avoid falling foul of the 1999 Constitution.

I support the statement 100% and fail to understand why the government has been skirting the issue. The only reason I can find is what Domingo Alberto Rangel suggests … that President Chavez Frias defends the Armed Force (FAN) come rain and come shine as Venezuela’s savior and scandals must be shoved under the carpet to avoid damage to the corporation.

I cannot understand either why the President hasn’t seized the opportunity to blast officers responsible for blemishing his praiseworthy Bolivar 2000 Plan. One reader has offered an explication comparing President Hugo Chavez Frias’ attitude to FAN human rights abuses to the behavior of the Catholic Church when scandals arise.

As long as President Chavez Frias fails to stand firm on his electoral HR platform, human rights abuses will continue to dog his government and the opposition will continue to capitalize human rights issues, as happened to the April 11 killings … which is why I want to see a truth commission up and working.

Cofavic has still to clear itself of the image that it has become the opposition’s favorite HR group and it could start by becoming a member of Foro por la Vida.

• The 27F commemoration reminds us that neither the government nor opposition should be allowed to kidnap human rights.

If President Chavez Frias complies with the international court, it would send a message to any military commander or politician that the era of impunity is over and that anything s/he orders could come back to haunt them.

Flunkies like Denis only reinforce the feeling that government policy on FAN HR abuses is to let sleeping dogs lie.

The President cannot hide on this one or blame it on twits like Denis!