Venezuelan government jumping the tracks
Posted: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel
VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: The Presidency of Hugo Chavez has become a runaway train in the process of jumping the tracks. The derailment is taking place on national TV. Movie-goers will surely remember the collapse of Humphrey Bogart as the paranoid captain in "The Caine Mutiny" or that of Jack Nicholson as the sadistic officer in "A Few Good Men," under the implacable questioning of Tom Cruise. Whoever saw and heard Chavez last Sunday, February 23, will know exactly what I mean.
After saying that the President of Fedecamaras, Carlos Fernandez, had been well-treated, he added: "The criminal will be punished." He forgot that the Constitution stipulates that a citizen is innocent until proven guilty. The President of a country can not render a verdict on a citizen before the judicial system. Only the dictators do that. He was applying undue pressure on the judge who would have to pass a sentence on Fernandez. Justice my eye...
- But the opinions on Fernandez were only the "appetizers." The main course was made up of the scoldings Chavez gave to Cesar Gaviria, the secretary general of the OAS; to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe; to President Bush and to the Spanish Head of Government Aznar.
Wearing a purple shirt, eyes invisible behind narrow slits, voice trembling with rage, Chavez said to Gaviria: "You were President once ... occupy your proper place... instead of meddling in our affairs," forgetting that Gaviria was in Venezuela as representative of the Western Hemisphere Community of Nations.
To Colombia President Uribe he said: "Go and work on your internal problems instead of criticizing our independent country," forgetting that he has made friends with the Colombian guerrillas, those murderers and drug traffickers. He warned both Aznar and Bush that "Venezuela is an independent country" forgetting that USA and Spain are members of the 'Group of Friends' recognized by his government to facilitate a solution to the political crisis created by his outlandish attitude.
This explosion came after violations of human rights and the Constitution had clearly taken place in the case of Carlos Fernandez. Our Constitution stipulates that any citizen who is arrested will have the right to communicate immediately with family and lawyers. Fernandez was incommunicado for ten hours, during which his family did not know where he was.
Fernandez was kidnapped because:
- The people taking him broke into the restaurant and were not identifiable as policemen.
- They arrived in taxis, not official vehicles.
- They carried no arrest order.
- They roughed Fernandez up.
- No proper judicial representative accompanied the men.
I will tell my readers something else. The "judge" who sent the men to get Fernandez, Mikael Moreno, is a murderer ... he has killed two persons already. After he served a short prison term for his second killing he studied Law in a disreputable Caracas University. He became the defender of Killer Richard Penalver, one of the murderers of 17 people on April 11. He never did any post graduate studies ... which are mandatory to become a judge. Nevertheless he was appointed judge by the government. This man is no proper judge but a gangster.
Last Saturday, half a block from where I live, one Metropolitan Police officer was killed with a shot in the back and seven others wounded by a group of urban guerrillas stationed in PDVSA's headquarters in La Campina ... the same group I have mentioned several times before. Tuesday morning, two powerful explosive devices went off in front of the Colombian and Spanish consulate and embassy in Caracas.
The government train has jumped the tracks ... Chavez is a man in urgent need of psychiatric treatment but he does not know it, and his followers do not dare to tell him.
Ahead we see increasing turmoil, possible early elections or ... if this is blocked by Chavez ... civil war!
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