<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuel;a's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions America's Region (ICFTU-ORIT) organizer Ivan Gonzalez says the Venezuelan Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) must recover its role as defender of worker's rights and be carried away by momentary issues. 

Speaking at a forum on worker's rights, Gonzalez warns that the CTV cannot expect automatic international solidarity, if it centers activities around political issues. 

Addressing CTV human rights committee, the ORIT representative says that the CTV's fight revolves around getting rid of President Hugo Chavez Frias, then it will be difficult for ORIT to accompany them. 

Trade union leadership must take up the perspective of the defense of human and worker's rights and be more inclusive as regards enrolling people working in the informal economy... Gonzalez admits that there is a legitimate and respectable way of fighting against a government it is a fine line  ... "don't come running to us when there are prisoners or somebody is exiled or when something has to be done." 

This is not the first time that ORIT and indeed the International Labor Organization (ILO) has questioned the dominance of immediate political gains over trade union issues on the part of current CTV leaders.  ILO and ORIT leaders have commented that the experience of CIA interference in other continental trade unions still leaves a bitter taste ... it has made them suspicious regarding hidden agendas  in the current Venezuelan political conflict.

• ORIT is the America's Region (North and South) of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

Venezuelan human rights group PROVEA leader, Marino Alvarado talked about advances and reverses over the last couple of years, welcoming the quantification of the State's labor liabilities to public sector workers ... "unfortunately it hasn't been done on a State and municipal level." 

Alvarado comments that the State has adopted as policy of violating union freedoms ... "Venezuela must ratify the San Salvador Protocol that recognizes the right to strike and the defense of labor rights at the Inter American Human Rights Court  ... something that becomes obligatory for all signatories."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

A Venezuelan opposition newspaper columnist says the CTV had plans to hold a full board meeting with self-exiled CTV president, Carlos Ortega in his temporary residence in Costa Rica ... that is until there was a review of CTV funds...

"The cupboard is bare." It seems that the project to transport CTV officials petered out much to Ortega's despair. It also means that the usual circus and booze that flows during May 1st celebrations after the march have been called off for the same reasons. 

The latest proposal to overcome the problem of communicating with the "Chief," Carlos Ortega is teleconferencing via internet. 

Ortega's family continues to live in Aruba ... where Manuel Cova met Carlos Ortega in Aruba last week and has since announced that Ortega will visit the USA again as well as Europe to lobby international support for "democracy in Venezuela."

What has emerged from the revelations is that Carlos Ortega is not ready to let go of the CTV presidency, which he wants to hold on to because it gains him access as CTV delegate to the ORIT in Costa Rica.

However, according to the opposition columnist, it seems that the CTV is hard put to pay its own employees their wages.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 By: David Coleman

President Hugo Chavez Frias has recalled 62-year academic Jorge Giordani as Economic Coordination & Planning (Cordiplan) Minister in the latest Cabinet reshuffle after Felipe Perez (48) was sacked on the heels of what are described as "sharp differences" between members of Chavez Frias' economic council.

The announcement came as a surprise to insiders who had thought that Giordani and the President had had an ideological parting of the ways after three years in Planning after Chavez Frias came to power in February 1999.  It was not so for Chavez Frias who says "in reality, Jorge never left here ... how can someone leave who has spent a decade thinking, analyzing, proposing ideas that become projects."

Nevertheless, the news caught many financial analysts on the hop after they had welcomed Perez as Giordani's substitute last May last year just weeks after Chavez Frias had been returned to power after the 2-day dictatorship of now-exiled Pedro Carmona Estanga.

Giordani has been seen as the intellectual author of most of Chavez Frias economic policies which have sparked vitriolic opposition from largely corrupt business leaders and labor mafia bosses who claim that he frightened away many foreign investors by praising Giordani as an "anti-IMF policy maker."  Before he's even had a chance to get warm in the seat, opposition radicals are insisting that Giordani's return is only going to heighten the diplo-economic chasm between Caracas and Washington.

Giordani, however, says he will make recovery of Venezuela's opposition-crippled production levels a priority.

Meanwhile Felipe Perez ... a Chicago University Ph.D ... has had publicly disagreements with the President's decision to tighten foreign exchange and price controls backed by most of the remainder of the government economic cabinet ... he had also had "policy differences" with Finance (Hacienda) Minister Tobias Nobrega and Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) directors over how to tackle a deep recession caused by months of economic sabotage by a corrupt opposition which refuses to abide by the nation's Constitution.

Opposition analysts are quick to highlight Giordani's alleged failures during the first three years and claim that now that Chavez Frias brings him "back into the fold when the situation is worse ... it shows that Chavez' priority is politics, not the economy."

Finance (Hacienda) Minister Nobrega ... a banking and finance specialist in civilian life ... has been heading government's efforts to negotiate voluntary debt swaps to ease a payments crunch but watchers say that Giordani's return could lead to confrontation since both strong figures.  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged Venezuela to ditch currency controls and has forecast a 17% GDP contraction following a fall of nearly 9% last year.

BY MIKE LEBOWITZ - greenleft.org.au

There was a lot of confusion outside Venezuela during the last year about what has been happening there. Some people have asked, “How could progressives and trade unionists support the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez given the dedicated opposition of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV)? How, when there was a general strike, could we side with the government rather than workers?”.

Today, there should be no confusion. The CTV has been exposed as an arm of the Fedecamaras, the employers' association, with which it has been allied in the April 2002 coup and in the so-called general strike early this year.

It was a strange general strike, indeed. One in which workers in the oil industry, electricity, transport, public sector and other basic industries kept working and management walked out. A strike in which workers were laid off by the big local and multinational conglomerates, but were promised that they would receive full pay for the period of the lock-out (only now to discover that this promissory note was dependent on the companies defeating the Chavez government).

Make no mistake about it, this “general strike” was a capitalist offensive, supported by the US and its clients, to bring down the pro-poor Chavez government. Its immediate effect was an enormous blow to Venezuela's economy because of the loss of oil revenues for several months following the shut-down of PDVSA, the national oil company, by its managers. There were also losses in tax revenues that resulted from the lockouts and a tax strike by the companies. The resulting “opposition deficit” will make this year a difficult one under any circumstances but particularly so as the government attempts to meet the enormous needs of the Venezuelan people.

However, a longer term effect of this offensive by Venezuela's capitalist oligarchy has been a development of the political consciousness of the poor (most of them in the informal sector) and organised workers. There is a mood among workers of self-confidence — one which emerged when the workers in PDVSA ran the company by themselves after management and technicians abandoned it.

In workplace after workplace, workers are talking about taking over and running their enterprises as cooperatives. PDVSA itself now has two representatives of its workers on its management board, and an associated petrochemicals firm is being run as a cooperative. This process is just beginning, but it looks like capital has lost one of its major weapons, its ability to threaten a capital strike — rather than giving in, Venezuelan workers are moving in!

On March 29, a new labour federation was formed. The National Union of Workers (UNT). The new federation emerged out of a long process of discussion which began last July among the Bolivarian Workers' Force, the workers' movement that is aligned with the Chavez government, the Bolivarian Circles, grassroots organisations among the poor, and independent trade unions (both in and outside the CTV) that are not “Chavist” but which support the general direction of the government.

At the core of these discussions was the question of how autonomous the new federation would be in relation to the government. After the last capitalist offensive, the matter has been resolved — the UNT will be independent, class-oriented, democratic and revolutionary.

At its formation, the UNT already represents more workers than are nominally represented by the CTV, which will lose any credibility it has had outside Venezuela as its member unions leave. (Indeed, the petroleum workers' union, from which the current head of CTV Carlos Ortega came, is itself a key union in the UNT.)

Of course, capital does not give up so easily. Through the CIA and its various fronts, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (which financed the American Center for International Labor Solidarity's support for the CTV), Venezuelan opponents of Chavez's “Bolivarian Revolution” will attempt to maintain the support of international labour federations such as the US AFL-CIO, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the International Labour Organisation.

This is why it is especially important now for progressives and trade unionists to inform themselves of what is happening in Venezuela and in the Venezuelan workers' movement.

[Abridged from ZNet, visit www.zmag.org.]

From Green Left Weekly, April 16, 2003. Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

Reuters Wednesday, April 2, 2003; 2:14 PM By Pascal Fletcher

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador to Venezuela on Wednesday fended off President Hugo Chavez's sharp criticism of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, but said U.S. oil imports from its key South American supplier were flowing normally.

The leftist Chavez, who has irked Washington in the past by befriending Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, has deplored Iraqi civilian casualties and said the U.S.-British attack on Iraq applied the "law of the jungle" to world affairs.

"Well, we disagree," American ambassador Charles Shapiro said when asked about the president's comments.

"We are convinced that this war is unfortunately necessary ... we want to have the support of all the world's governments, but that's not the way it is," he told reporters in Caracas.

However, he confirmed that oil shipments from the world's No. 5 petroleum exporter, which supplies more than 13 percent of U.S. oil imports, had returned to normal after a opposition strike that had slashed output in December and January.

"U.S. companies are buying (Venezuelan) oil," he said.

Despite Chavez's vocal anti-war stance, Venezuela has so far ignored calls from fellow OPEC member Iraq for an oil embargo against the United States and Britain to try to force them to abandon the war.

Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said Sunday Venezuela was guaranteeing supplies to U.S. clients. This was in line with a policy agreed within OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) not to use oil as a weapon in any conflict.

CARACAS RILED BY U.S. RIGHTS REPORT

In another potential irritant to sensitive bilateral ties, Venezuela's Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton said Wednesday he disagreed with a State Department report this week that called the Chavez government's human rights record "poor."

The document, one of an annual series of country reports by Washington, singled out extrajudicial killings of suspects by the Venezuelan police and military, alleged torture and abuse and what it called a widespread climate of impunity.

"There are no policies to violate human rights in Venezuela," Chaderton told reporters during a trip to his country's western frontier with Colombia. But he said "isolated" cases of such abuses could occur.

The State Department's human rights report for the year 2002 also cited intimidation by Chavez's government against political opponents and said press freedom had deteriorated significantly during the year. But it described Venezuela as a "constitutional democracy" and said no political prisoners were reported.

Chavez, who was first elected in 1998, says his self-styled "revolution" is aimed at closing the wide gap between rich and poor in Venezuela, but his foes accuse him of ruling like a dictator and trying to install Cuba-style communism. He has resisted fierce opposition pressure to hold early elections.

Opponents of Chavez's government reacted angrily Wednesday to a decision by a regional appeals court to release from custody four pro-Chavez militants who were caught on TV film firing pistols during a huge anti-government march last year.

At least 19 people were killed and more than 100 hurt in the April 11, 2002 march, which triggered a brief coup against Chavez. He was restored by loyal troops and supporters.

The appeals court ruled there was no clear proof that the four gunmen had actually killed people with their firing although it said they should still stand trial for weapons offenses and acts of intimidation. Government and opposition have blamed each other for the shootings.

U.S.-Venezuelan relations have been strained in the last few years by Chavez's determinedly friendly ties with states seen as hostile to Washington, such as Cuba, Iraq and Libya, and by the Venezuelan leader's outspoken criticism of the U.S. anti-terrorism war in Afghanistan.