Chavez, Foes Agree Venezuela Referendum
<a href=www.riyadhdaily.com.sa>Riyadh Daily Caracas
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez challenged his foes on Friday to try to oust him through the ballot box as his government and the opposition agreed to work to hold a referendum on his rule after Aug. 19. The left-wing former paratrooper on Friday commemorated the first anniversary of a short-lived coup against him by rebel military officers. He said his brief overthrow a year ago was like "losing my virginity" and that he would not allow any new coup to succeed. The referendum announcement by government and opposition negotiators, meeting in Caracas under the auspices of the Organization of American States, boosted hopes for a peaceful, electoral settlement to Venezuela’s political crisis, although a date for a poll still has to be fixed. The United States welcomed the agreement as "positive."
"We call on all Venezuelans to support this carefully negotiated agreement and to work assiduously over the coming months to turn it into a reality," US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington. While Chavez hailed his survival of the April 2002 coup as a "victory," several hundred opposition protesters rallied in east Caracas on Friday to mourn the deaths of 19 people who were shot to death during a big anti-Chavez march a year ago. On April 11 last year, generals and admirals opposed to Chavez’s self-styled "revolution" in the world’s No. 5 oil exporter took the populist leader prisoner after the killings of opposition supporters near the presidential palace. Loyal troops and supporters restored Chavez to power after 48 hours. He later survived a crippling two-month strike by opponents that slashed the country’s oil production and exports in December and January, plunging the economy into recession.
In Friday’s demonstrations, opposition protesters, many wearing black and carrying crosses and coffins, occupied a highway, chanting "Justice! Justice!" and "Freedom! Freedom!" Chavez, who was democratically elected in 1998 on a platform of fighting poverty, urged his foes to collect signatures to hold a recall referendum on his rule after Aug. 19. They accuse him of ruling like a dictator and of trying to install Cuban-style communisn in Venezuela. The constitution allows for such a referendum halfway through his current mandate, which is due to last until early 2007. The opposition must collect the signatures of at least 20 percent of the electorate to trigger such a recall poll. "Let them collect the signatures, one by one. If I lose the referendum, I’ll go, but they have to beat me fair and square," Chavez told a news conference. Describing his dramatic reinstatement last year as a "kind of miracle," a buoyant Chavez vowed that he would not be caught out again by another attempt to overthrow him by force. "I was a bit like a virgin. We lost our virginity on April 11," he said. He added that both the armed forces and supporters living in poor neighborhoods around the palace now had plans to respond to any new coup attempt.