Pablo Aure

Tarde o temprano se tendrá que convocar una asamblea nacional constituyente para que todos los venezolanos nos demos un nuevo ordenamiento jurídico que esté acorde con la realidad nacional, sin volver a cometer el error de trasladar realidades extranjeras a la realidad patria.

Desde luego, esa eventual constituyente no se dará mientras Hugo Chávez sea el Comandante en Jefe de la FAN, pues no se garantizaría un clima de tranquilidad en ningún proceso electoral.

Estamos claros que para salir de la grave crisis por la cual atraviesa Venezuela es condición indispensable provocar la renuncia de Hugo Chávez, pero del mismo modo debemos afirmar que, también es necesario sustituir de la manera más idónea a los representantes de los demás poderes públicos, ya que si bien es cierto que con la salida de Chávez se solucionaría el problema inmediato, no es menos cierto que a él sobreviviría la podredumbre enquistada en el Poder Moral (Defensor del Pueblo, Fiscal General y Contralor General de la República), en el Poder Legislativo o en el Poder Judicial; y esa reestructuración en un régimen democrático sólo se puede hacer mediante una constituyente.

Evidentemente antes del llamado a esa constituyente tendrá que existir una vía política que sustituya transitoriamente y por muy corto tiempo a los integrantes deslegitimados de los poderes públicos. En tal sentido, la vía inmediata será política la cual no está escrita en ningún texto jurídico, lo que quiere decir, que no debemos seguir insistiendo buscando soluciones en la Constitución de la República ni en ninguna otra ley.

En consecuencia luego de un breve período de transición la reorganización de nuestro país debe ser mediante un proceso Constituyente en el cual el pueblo elija a sus genuinos representantes por nombre y apellido en lugar de elegirlos sin conocerlos por planchas o "kinos". Estoy seguro que a partir de allí, nacerá una nueva Venezuela.

Por otra parte, tenemos que sentirnos orgullosos del gentilicio venezolano, pues la crisis actual ha hecho posible que la inmensa mayoría de los venezolanos que salimos a protestar sin seguir a alguna persona en particular o de determinada agrupación política, nos reencontremos, y apartando intereses mezquinos nos hemos enrumbado en una misma causa: Salir de Hugo Chávez Frías y lograr una Venezuela mejor.

Aunado a ese propósito, ha despertado en el pueblo un sentimiento patriótico y de solidaridad; como ejemplo de estos dos sentimientos tenemos el amor por Venezuela y a sus símbolos. La solidaridad la observamos cuando se ve amenazada la libertad personal de algún político, de algún trabajador del petróleo, de un empresario y hasta de un militar; ante tales amenazas, inmediatamente la sociedad civil organizada o no, sale en su defensa y protección.

Este despertar del pueblo venezolano será la herencia más hermosa que recordará la historia poschavista.

With fanfare and ostentation, we Latin-Americans signed the Democratic Charter and said: Never again   But the first test was enough for the Charter to be reduced to wet paper and those that signed it reduced to the condition of Tartuffes. Venezuela has been doing for a year what we Peruvians never had the strength to do during eight years and each day the lack of Latin-American solidarity with its civil resistance becomes more heart rendering. Fortunately, that resistance exhibits courage and organization and –with the paralization of two thirds of the oil industry- some results that could overthrow the regime.   But if this happens, it will be despite Latina America. It will not be our party. Hugo Chávez won elections in 1998 and he immediately disfigured democracy, first designing a Constitution-delirium made to his measure, later having himself reelected with an extension of his mandate, even later capturing the supervisory organizations while arming militia units that he called “Bolivarian Circles’ and finally, assuming powers to capture by decree the economic system.    Last year, he precipitated the crisis with 49 expropriatory decrees which concentrated in the Presidency the destiny of all homes. On December 10 2001, with the first strike against Chavez, civil resistance was born. Since then it has never stopped. Chavez has sustained his power on the military, on the mobs that terrorize politicians, reporters and demonstrators, and oil, which, with almost three million barrels a day, of which two million are exported, oxygenated an economy in ruins. So far in this fight, Chavez has fathered two massacres, one in April and another in December and has continued to refuse to a disproportionately cautious request: early elections or referendum.   While this drama is displayed, Latin America makes faces once in a while so that it does not appear as if it is not doing anything. Cesar Gaviria, allowed himself to drop by Caracas. He did not arrive like the leader of the OAS to tell Chavez: You have overflowed legality, thus, honor the Democratic Charter and unless you fix an acceptable date for elections, we will apply the sanctions. No: without the mandate that he was not given, but also without the leadership that he did not give himself, he arrived as a tourist. He proclaimed the equivalence of the parts and asked for a negotiated solution. While this happened, the brains of the opposition were flying through the air of Plaza Altamira, Chavista mobs assaulted TV channels and soldiers captured Captains of the Merchant Marine joining the strike aboard their tankers (potential torches) filled with fuel.   The dialogue table, like what happened in Peru, is virtual. What is real is what happens outside: without the “vladivideo”, Fujimori did not make a single concession despite the saliva spent in that negotiation, and, without the addition of Petroleos de Venezuela and the Merchant Marine to the strike, he wouldn’t even have offered a popular election in August.   The OAS is a ship adrift and it reaches good port only when the drift takes it there-after many deaths and injuries. Latin-American Governments believe that, by avoiding the application of the Charter, they avoid being victims of their own people. Poor devils. The number one problem of the continent, that which precisely has it under the threat of civilian overflow over the Governments is the lack of legitimacy of its leadership class.     To sustain the tyrant of a neighbor country and abandon to their luck the people which are being shot at in the streets is the worst form, for a Latin American Government, to make itself legitimate in front of its own people. Illegitimacy of the governing class is born in the loss of credibility.   It is a sentimental abyss that the treason against the Venezuelan people increases rather than decrease. That is why, the coward calculation of our Governments, which believe they can buy internal peace looking the other way in Venezuela, is in the end the best demonstration that its rebel civil societies are correct in believing that they are not credible.   Maybe the Governments have turned their backs to you, dear Venezuelans. But we, those on foot, have not done so. I remember with emotion having accompanied you in the streets last year and having forecasted, in “Letras Libres’ that that December 10 was the memorable beginning of a memorable campaign. In this era in which it is not so much the Governments, up there, like the societies, down here, the ones that represent countries, know that you are not alone.   Our leaders have not found out yet, but in the plains, we are all Venezuelans! 

www.independent.org

Felipe Perez Marti Unable to silence media criticism of his administration's massive corruption and angry with press coverage of his country's general strike, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is now planning to take control of privately-owned TV stations.

The scheme was announced by top Chavez minister, Felipe Perez Marti, speaking Friday to a small crowd of Chavez-supporters gathered in front of stateowned oil company PDVSA: " - After the taking of PDVSA, the people will take control of the mass media," promised Perez Marti.

Mr Perez Marti, an economist, is the head of Venezuela's Planification Ministry. On previous occasions, he has publicly voiced support and admiration for the Cuban model of government, where only one TV station is allowed and where state censorship strictly controls public opinion. His predecessor in the post, former Planning Minister Jorge Giordani, goes one step further. Giordani is best known in Venezuela for having authored a college text that holds up North Korea as an example to follow.

Planning Minister Perez Marti promised that the government would only take control of TV stations who let the opposition speak, and that those journalists who abide by the official government line can still keep their jobs: " - Mass media which does not transmit biased news and which transmit good news will survive. Those who betray the people's cause can not continue to transmit in Venezuela", he assured.

Government control of the press is already unsurpassed in Venezuela, where the Chavez government can - at any time, and with no prior notification - hijack all TV- and radio signals to broadcast its own messages.

So far this year, nearly one thousand such interruptions of regular programming have already taken place. Independent political parties and democratic opposition groups do not have this right, but are instead voluntarily given ample coverage by the country's privately owned TV stations. This coverage of opposition leaders has angered Hugo Chavez, who calls the TV stations biased.

Venezuela's mass media has been critical of Chavez and has served as an important brake on corruption and human rights abuses in the country. In Venezuela, all branches of government are controlled by one single party, the MVR or Movimiento Quinta Republica, whose is under the command of Hugo Chavez.

" - Ordinary Venezuelans now turn to the press, rather than going to court or complaining to politicans when their rights are violated," explains general Enrique Medina Gomez, former military attache to Washington and now a dissident who has joined with 134 other military officials to publicly oppose Hugo Chavez. " - They know that they can not fight the government in a country where the president has packed the Supreme Court with his cronies, and where both the legislative and adminstrative branches are under the sole control of one man only."

December 21, 2002 www.militaresdemocraticos.com

"Not one step backward. Out! Leave Now!" "Not one step backward. Out! Leave Now!" "Not one step backward. Out! Leave Now!" "Not one step backward. Out! Leave Now!" "Not one step backward. Out! Leave Now!" "Not one step backward. Out! Leave Now!"

Excelentísimos Embajadores de los países miembros de la Organización de Estados Americanos

Los abajo firmantes, latinoamericanos de profunda convicción democrática, nos dirigimos a Uds. en la oportunidad de expresarles nuestra profunda preocupación por la escalada de violencia que hoy afecta a nuestro hermano país Venezuela, estimulada por el discurso agresivo del jefe de Estado venezolano, cuya última y dolorosa manifestación fue la masacre del pasado 6 de diciembre en la Plaza Altamira de Caracas, en la cual resultaron 5 muertos y mas de 20 heridos.

Aumenta nuestra preocupación debido al escaso interés que los representantes del sector oficial han otorgado a la Mesa de Negociación y Acuerdos que empeñosamente ha gestionado el Secretario General de la OEA César Gaviria; con lo cual se boicotea no sólo una salida electoral y democrática a la actual crisis venezolana, sino también el cumplimiento de los otros objetivos propuestos tales como el desarme a la población civil y el establecimiento de la verdad para esclarecer los hechos de abril, a los cuales ahora se suman los recientes acontecimientos de la Plaza Altamira.

Es necesario que la OEA tome una postura clara y decidida frente a un problema que no solo compete a Venezuela sino a todo el mundo y en especial a las instituciones latinoamericanas.

Con base a estas circunstancias , así como en las permanentes violaciones de los arts. 3 y 4 de la carta Democrática de la OEA por parte del gobierno venezolano, ya advertidos por la Comisión Interamericana de los Derechos Humanos, y de no llegarse a acuerdos por la vía de la negociación en los próximos días, solicitamos a Uds. que en la reunión del Consejo Permanente pautada a solicitud del gobierno del Perú, se activen los mecanismos previstos en los artículos 20 y 21 de la Carta Democrática Interamericana, que faciliten el restablecimiento del orden democrático en Venezuela y contribuya a evitar mayores confrontaciones violentas entre ciudadanos de un mismo pueblo.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

www.PetitionOnline.com