Venezuela strike leader homebound, still defiant

www.miami.com Posted on Sat, Mar. 15, 2003 BY MARIKA LYNCH mlynch@herald.com

UNDER HOUSE ARREST: Carlos Fernandez is guarded by six police officers.

VALENCIA, Venezuela - Not long ago, business leader Carlos Fernández and union leader Carlos Ortega appeared together nightly on television to offer boisterous and confident reports on the progress of a general strike designed to bring down President Hugo Chávez's government. Back then, the president's days in office seemed numbered, and these men were the stars of a rising movement.

But Chávez, the leftist firebrand first elected in 1998, is still sitting comfortably at Venezuela's White House, Miraflores Palace. Fernández is under house arrest for rebellion -- guarded 24 hours a day by six gun-toting police officers in fatigues. And Costa Rica granted Ortega asylum on Friday.

Fernandez's arrest and Ortega's asylum request have dealt a blow to an already staggering opposition movement, which led a failed two-month strike, and now has lost its most visible leaders. Their rise and fall illustrates Chavez's ability to outlast his opponents and remain in power despite the masses against him.

Facing charges similar to those Fernández faces, Ortega was the third of Chávez's opponents to be granted asylum. After entering the Costa Rican Embassy in Caracas, he told officials there that he feared for his safety. Arrest warrants have been issued for seven former striking oil executives, who are in hiding.

For his part in the protest, Fernández, the president of the country's largest business federation, could face up to 24 years in prison. His own business empire is near collapse, and the commotion has aggravated his hypertension. Pale and weakened, he walked gingerly over his tile floors, past the candle-lit virgin statuette, for an interview in his living room this week.

''I am a political prisoner,'' Fernández said from a comfortable, peach stucco house. ``There isn't a crime here. To ask for freedom, to ask that there are opportunities for all Venezuelans, that there are elections as a way out of this crisis -- that can't be a crime.''

Since he was taken into custody outside a Caracas restaurant Feb. 20 -- ''kidnapped,'' he calls it -- Fernández spends his days resting, mostly.

On his 53rd birthday this week, hundreds waved balloons and flags outside his home, and a TV reporter broadcast a misty tribute that branded him a national patriot. But Fernández stayed behind the guarded door.

Still, Fernández says he has no regrets. The strike crushed the economy, hobbled the country's important oil sector and emboldened Chávez even more -- but it also brought nternational pressure on the government.

''The strike unmasked the government's ideological orientation. I think at this height of the game nobody can disagree that the model is totalitarian, autocratic and based on regimes that now have disappeared from the earth,'' said Fernández, who likened Chávez's economic program's to Cuba's.

By business leaders' estimates, about 25,000 businesses were forced to close in December. Thousands of people lost jobs, and the country's oil industry was crippled.

`TERRIBLE THING'

''It broke the economy; it made people poorer. Whether you agree the strike is a success or a failure, it was a terrible thing for the well being of people,'' said Janet Kelly, a political science professor and analyst.

But the effort was worth it, Fernández said, because it moved the country toward a solution by attracting former President Jimmy Carter to Caracas as a mediator and sparked the creation of a ''Group of Friends'' -- representatives from the U.S., Brazilian and other governments who vowed to help resolve the crisis.

Fernández, who immigrated to Venezuela from Spain at age 7 and with his siblings owns a half dozen companies from cement distribution to a construction material factory, was taken by surprise at night last month by armed men who didn't identify themselves. He was held by police who didn't produce a warrant until daybreak. The arrest alarmed human rights advocates, who saw it as a counter-attack by Chávez.

In the government's eyes, the men who led the strike need to pay for the strike's damage to Venezuela's economy. Congressman Rafael Simón Jiménez said he disagrees with the manner in which Fernández was arrested -- his human rights weren't respected, he said. But he says someone should take responsibility for the strike.

''The strike caused irreparable damage to the people of Venezuela, not just the government, but the citizens,'' the former vice president of the National Assembly said. ``We all have to respond for our actions before the constitution and the laws.''

WORSE TROUBLE

Chávez, a former Army paratrooper who led an unsuccessful coup in 1992, was elected with am ambitious promise to alleviate poverty in this South American nation. But the country's economic troubles have only worsened during his tenure, and many in Chávez's power base -- mainly, the large impoverished sector -- have grown disillusioned.

Venezuela's businessmen, never comfortable with Chávez, feel that his populist policies are leading the country to ruin. A coalition of business and union leaders called a strike Dec. 2, asking Chávez to resign or end his term early with new elections. Malls and restaurants closed, the oil industry was crippled and Venezuelans waited hours in line to fill their cars with gas.

But the strike ended, Chávez survived and was even able to get rid of his detractors at the national oil company.

With Fernández detained and other strike leaders in hiding, other vocal opponents have emerged, including Henrique Salas Romer, a former governor who challenged Chávez for the presidency in 1998.

Meanwhile the opposition has collected signatures for an August recall referendum, but its strategy is in a bit of disarray.

Fernández says some kind of political accord should be reached, but remains shy on specifics.

He doesn't foresee more strikes.