Venezuela's Chavez -- no more mister nice guy

www.alertnet.org 21 Feb 2003 18:27

By Phil Stewart

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb 21 (Reuters) - It's hard to recall the humbled Hugo Chavez of April, who spoke of God, peace and reconciliation with his foes after surviving a 48-hour coup.

These days, Venezuela's paratrooper-turned-president spits out words like "attack" and "battle" and says he is going on the offensive against the "terrorists" and "fascists" who have defied him.

"I sheathed my sword (after the coup) and I was wrong," Chavez told a cheering crowd of thousands at a pro-government rally this week. "I have been forced to draw it again, and I will never ever sheath it."

His offensive is off to a roaring start. He's fired more than 13,000 dissident oil workers, crushed an opposition oil walkout and outlasted a two-month nationwide strike meekly abandoned this month. He has also tightened his grip on private sector enemies with newly imposed price and currency controls.

In his most triumphant stroke so far, Chavez won the arrest of a dissident industrialist for committing treason on Thursday and threatens to do the same to a group of media moguls he's dubbed the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

"The Chavistas are now on a roll ... I think now he's going to begin moving to tighten his controls on civil society and see what the reaction is," said Riordan Roett at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Most troubling for his opponents -- and there are millions -- is that the populist president's crackdown has been carried out within the bounds of Venezuela's loosely written laws, observers say. That has left little room for protest by wary foreign diplomats, especially in the United States, where the Bush administration was stung for its hesitant condemnation of last year's putsch.

"His main game is playing the constitutional president. He plays it up to the brink, but all of the measures he takes always have some sort of legal base," said Caracas-based political analyst Janet Kelly.

CHAMPION OF THE POOR?

Hailed by supporters as a champion of the poor and reviled by critics as an ignorant dictator, the maverick president has become as well known as those two other world-famous Venezuelan products -- abundant oil and beauty queens.

The second of six sons of school teachers, Chavez has come a long way from his humble rural roots.

Voted into office in 1998, six years after trying to seize power at the point of a gun, Chavez launched his self-proclaimed "Bolivarian Revolution".

This combined left-wing socialist tenets of equality and wealth distribution with fervent nationalism inspired by Venezuela's 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar.

But his honeymoon in power is long gone, as are his once soaring popularity ratings of 80 percent or more. Venezuela's economy contracted nearly 9 percent last year and unemployment and crime are rising.

His new currency controls are starving businesses of vital U.S. dollars and price controls on everything from tomatoes to funeral services threaten to bankrupt shopowners.

For the man who wants to united South America, as Bolivar tried to do, Chavez faces a deeply divided Venezuela.

His new offensive seems to be widening the rift between allies and enemies of his government, riding roughshod over negotiations on early elections and raising fears that the country's tense standoff will explode into class warfare.

"We've tried flags, we've tried whistles. The world has seen our frustration and nothing has changed," said middle class Luis Alberto, at an opposition rally this week. "The next step is forming self-defense groups and taking up arms."

The mostly poor pro-government "Chavistas," drawn from the country's sprawling urban slums, cheer the president's aggressive rhetoric against the Venezuelan elite and heed his calls to defend his revolution from coup-mongers.

As many Venezuelans arm themselves, there have been worrying outbreaks of violence -- far worse than the street clashes that left seven dead and scores injured since December. In a murky quadruple homicide police are still investigating, a dozen gunmen last week kidnapped, tortured and executed three military dissidents and female protester after a rally.

For analysts watching Venezuela unravel, the question isn't whether Chavez will again strike at his enemies -- but whether he might cross the line looking for revenge.