Chávez Foes Scale Back Strike for Businesses

www.nytimes.com By JUAN FORERO

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 1 — With large numbers of businesses across Venezuela opening to offset huge financial losses from a 62-day-old general strike, opposition leaders said today that they would scale back the walkout next week so that factories, shops, malls and schools could reopen.

The strike, which has failed in its originally stated mission to force President Hugo Chávez to resign or to call early elections, will continue only in the all-important oil industry.

But the decision, which opposition leaders said would be explained in detail in a news conference on Sunday night, was seen as a clear victory for Mr. Chávez, who has played down the walkout while calling its organizers fascists and coup plotters.

The government's opponents characterized their action as a new phase in their efforts to unseat Mr. Chávez. They asserted that the strike, which began Dec. 2, had led to international participation in Venezuela's political crisis and pressed the government into negotiations that could lead to an electoral solution.

"Now that there is a concrete proposal for elections, the Venezuelan conflict is going into a new phase where the key to the protest is no longer the strike but negotiations," said Jesús Torrealba, executive secretary of the opposition group's coordinating committee.

But the fact is that for many days the strike has been one in name only, with Venezuelans having tired of a walkout that had devastated their economy while bringing none of the results promised in December. The blow to the Venezuelan economy, Latin America's fourth largest, is estimated at $4 billion in lost oil revenues alone.

"We share the opposition's opinion, but we live by working," said Maritza Rondón, owner of a wholesale hardware store in Venezuela's second-largest city, Maracaibo, that reopened weeks ago. "Our business has nothing to do with our politics."

Alfredo Chirino, owner of an auto parts factory in Caracas that reopened this week, said he could not keep his business closed any longer. "We wanted to have some income, and we had to meet some commitments dating back to November," he said. "We needed to bring in income to pay our workers."

The reopening of businesses appears to give Mr. Chávez the upper hand in negotiations with the opposition that are being mediated by the Organization of American States. The government's position could be further solidified as the state-owned oil company continues to reactivate oil production.

"The opposition has basically lost the strike," said Gregory Wilpert, an American here who is finishing a book about the Chávez era. "They gambled that the strike would get rid of Chávez, and the strike failed. They now don't have many other options."

Indeed, opposition demands that Mr. Chávez resign, often heard in December from his foes, have dissipated. Instead, the two sides are now expected to mull over two electoral solutions to the crisis that were proposed last month by former President Jimmy Carter and have the support of the United States and five other nations whose representatives met on Friday with Mr. Chávez and his opponents.

But opposition leaders, who called their decision today a goodwill gesture toward the government, said they would continue to apply pressure.

On Sunday, they plan to hold what is being called El Firmazo — loosely translated as "the big sign-up" — a petition drive. Organizers are hoping to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to support a constitutional amendment to shorten the president's term and lead to new elections.

In the meantime, Mr. Torrealba and other opposition leaders said that the movement would continue to hold street demonstrations and that some businesses would open their doors but reduce their hours of operation as a sign of protest.