CRUMBLING OPPOSITION Venezuelan general strike scaled back

www.sanmateocountytimes.com112681155293,00.html Article Last Updated: Monday, February 03, 2003 - 12:27:30 PM MST By Juan Forero, New York Times

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Organized opposition to President Hugo Chavez edged closer Sunday to a fractious defeat, one day after leaders of a two-month-old general strike officially abandoned most of that protest because it was so unpopular and economically disastrous.

While thousands of Venezuelans turned out Sunday to sign petitions seeking Chavez's resignation, they have no legal effect and Chavez is expected to ignore them. And while anti-Chavez oil workers remain on strike, the government has managed to increase oil production in recent weeks, making their protest increasingly ineffective in Venezuela's most important industry.

"We have definitively defeated a new destabilizing aim, a new perverse, malevolent, criminal effort to sink Venezuela, sink the revolution, sink the government," Chavez told the nation Sunday in this weekly televised call-in show.

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The opposition, which had coalesced in recent months under an umbrella called the Democratic Coordinator to prod for Chavez's ouster, is now splintered in its search for a coherent plan, say political analysts and government opponents close to strike leaders.

"They have not had a clear strategy and now Chavez has passed from a defensive strategy to an offensive strategy," said Alberto Garrido, an author who has chronicled the Chavez presidency in several highly critical books. "He feels that the opposition is weak."

Leaders of the strike had hoped it would force Chavez from power. But on Saturday they scaled it back in the face of staggering economic losses for businesses that had once supported the walkout.

A referendum on Chavez's rule that the opposition had wanted was declared invalid by the Supreme Court last month, and negotiations between the government and opposition will at best lead to an election later this year that Chavez may very well win.

Publicly, opposition leaders said they are undaunted. Sunday, with staunchly anti-Chavez television stations providing day-long coverage, government opponents staged "El Firmazo," or the Big Sign-up -- a petition drive organized and funded by the opposition groups.

But instead of displaying unity and focusing on one realistic aim, the Democratic Coordinator asked Venezuelans to choose from among eight proposals, from cutting the president's term to abolishing a series of economic laws passed by Chavez.

The government, which has embarked on negotiations with the opposition over two electoral solutions proposed last month by former President Jimmy Carter, is expected to ignore the results of the petition drive.

"Today's Big Sign-Up is an emotional climax," said Garrido. "The Big Sign-Up is a way for the opposition to avoid recognizing that their strategy was wrong all along."

The discord in the anti-Chavez movement is also apparent in other steps members of the Democratic Coordinator have proposed. The First Justice Party, for instance, contends that there should be a movement for a citizen assembly to reconstitute the National Assembly, an unlikely proposition that has been harshly criticized by another Democratic Coordinator member, the Democratic Action party. One demand in the petition drive Sunday calls for the Chavez to resign, which he has consistently rejected, even when he was in a far weaker position.

Luis Vicente Leon, a political analyst and co-director of the Caracas polling firm, Datanalisis, said part of the problem is the scattershot approach employed by the opposition. "When they fail, try something else, and then something else and then something else," he said.

Michael Shifter, who closely tracks Venezuela for the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy group, said he has told opposition leaders they should simply focus on a recall referendum for later this year, which could lead to Chavez's ouster. Though the opposition had once rejected the proposal, saying it was too far off, they are now open to the idea, which Chavez had long supported in public comments.

"Hopefully they will learn the lesson that they have to mount a long-term effort and do the political work to come up with the political support, to come up with an agenda," Shifter said from Washington.

Shifter said that the opposition simply "underestimated Chavez's determination to hang on and miscalculated."

"In that sense they are victims of their own strategy," he said.

Still, analysts close to Democratic Coordinator leaders said it will be difficult for them to formulate a clear strategy. The organization is made up of 40 groups, from traditional political parties, to business groups, a labor confederation and a former guerrilla group -- all with their own proposals.

"There are strong divisions," said Leon. "There is difficulty in coordinating a position, when there are radicals and moderates."

Leon and other analysts said they believe that a key for the opposition is choosing a candidate who is able to command attention and, once an election is called, take on Chavez. So far, though, no one challenger has emerged, and the latest Datanalisis poll in January shows that Chavez would most certainly win an election against a wide field of opponents, as currently exists.

Those who remain active in the anti-Chavez fight acknowledged the hardships.

At a Caracas school Sunday morning, with hundreds lining up to sign anti-Chavez petitions, Antonio Ponte, 32, said that he still held out hope even though he acknowledged the strike had not succeeded.

"Of course, it was a hard blow," said Ponte. "But look, there is still optimism. We are going to get rid of Chavez -- we do not know how -- but we are going to do it."