Exiled opposition leader to square off against rival

AP Sunday, Jun 01, 2003,Page 7

An exile accused of treason will compete against an ally of President Hugo Chavez for the right to lead Venezuela's labor movement at the UN' annual labor conference starting on Tuesday.

Carlos Ortega, head of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation, fled to Costa Rica after leading a two-month general strike that failed to oust Chavez earlier this year.

Ortega squares off against Orlando Chirinos, leader of the government-supported National Workers Union, at the International Labor Organization assembly in Geneva. The gathering runs through June 19.

It's the first time since Venezuela became a democracy in 1958 that the 65-year-old workers confederation, or CTV, won't lead Venezuela's official labor delegation.

Citing the strike and alleged fraud in CTV elections in 2001, Chavez's government tapped the newly formed Workers Union, or UNT, to represent Venezuelan unions.

Ortega hopes the ILO will withhold recognition of Chirinos' group, which it sees as another move by Chavez to assert his leftist government's control over Venezuelan society.

"The government is risking having the UNT expelled from the ILO meeting," said CTV leader Froilan Barrios.

ILO officials were not immediately available for comment Friday.

At stake is the welfare of millions of workers and retirees who are owed millions of dollars in back pay and pensions. Venezuela's minimum wage is 247,600 bolivars (US$155). It costs about 400,000 bolivars (US$250) each month to feed a family of four.

From exile, the burly Ortega remains a hero to many who accuse Chavez of imposing an authoritarian regime and bankrupting the economy.

As former head of Venezuela's largest oil workers union, Ortega handed Chavez his first defeat by leading a successful oil strike for higher pay in 2000.

Later that year, Chavez won a referendum to force the CTV to hold internal elections -- elections bitterly opposed by the ILO as government interference in private union affairs. Ortega handily beat Chavez's candidate; Chavez accused Ortega of electoral fraud.

Last year, Ortega led a general strike that snowballed into a two-day coup in April. He tried again in December and repeatedly predicted Chavez would resign.

Venezuelans paid dearly for the strike. Organized with Venezuela's largest business association, it momentarily paralyzed the world's No. 5 oil exporter. It cost Venezuela US$7.5 billion and contributed to a 29 percent economic contraction in the first quarter this year. Chavez fired more than 18,000 strikers from the state-owned oil monopoly.

Chavez ordered Ortega's arrest on treason charges, which can carry 26-year prison terms. Ortega fled.

Critics accused the CTV of again putting politics above worker rights -- a reputation it gained over decades of cronyism before Chavez's 1998 election. Workers were charged by union bosses to get jobs while leaders lived privileged lives.