www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 16, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Playing cat and mouse game, Venezuelan Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) president Carlos Ortega’s lawyer, Omar Estacio has declared that his client has not asked for territorial asylum.

Splitting words, Estacio admits that Ortega has asked for and received diplomatic asylum but is currently assessing his options.

This morning the lawyer visited the Costa Rican Embassy where Ortega is holed up and afterwards threw out a suggestion that the Inter American system offers a series of alternatives and Ortega is weighing them up before making a final decision.

Among the alternatives under discussion is for Ortega to hand himself over to the authorities creating a potential security problem for the government.

Observers say the government will not offer Ortega house arrest but preventive arrest until his trial comes up.

Ortega is said to be angry about reactions to his asylum among the opposition and inside the CTV itself. It has been learned that lawyers have been putting out feelers to people connected to the Inter American Human Rights Court about the viability of obtaining a legal restraining order against the government for alleged human rights against the trade union leader.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 16, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

CTV general secretary and fellow AD member, Manuel Cova says he's traveling to Geneva to visit the International Labor Organization (ILO) to discuss Ortega’s case and has given his full support to Carlos Ortega’s "diplomatic asylum" claim.

“Ortega’s decision is completely justified because of threats against his life from some sectors of the government and the closing dragnet of security forces … legal insecurity and the total bias of the public powers, combined with the action of paramilitary groups are sufficient reasons to prevent a crime being committed against our leader.”

The CTV general secretary confirms that he has received calls from trade union leaders throughout the world expressing solidarity with Carlos Ortega. Some political observers forecast that Cova will take over from Ortega as CTV president.

The government had questioned Ortega’s legitimacy as top CTV leader accusing him of vote-rigging ... whereas in Cova’s case, the CNE had ratified the construction workers’ union leader as a legitimately-elected trade union official.

It would seem that Ortega’s removal has given the CTV more legitimacy to confront the challenge of a new trade union central from the left and it is expected that Cova will advise in Geneva not to press the issue of Ortega’s alleged political persecution too far, since European trade union members had expressed concern after April 11 about Ortega’s blatant monopoly of the CTV for unclear political and personal objectives.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 16, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Accion Democratica (AD) leader, Henry Ramos Allup has slammed other opposition parties for their silence over rogue CTV leader Carlos Ortega's "diplomatic asylum" in Costa Rica ... commenting that they've never experienced what it is like to live under a dictatorship.

AD is the only political party to have thrown in its lot with Venezuelan Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) president, Carlos Ortega with both the CTV and AD staging a token protest supporting the self-exiled Ortega ... who forced AD and the disloyal opposition to play to his and rogue Fedecamaras president Carlos Fernandez’ tune.

• Ramos Allup has also hit out against CTV leaders ... especially Pablo Castro ... who, he claims, are fighting for the spoils in Ortega’s absence.

“The CTV presidency is not the inheritance of a dead man … it’s tragic and pathetic that they're thinking of substituting Ortega ... who came up from the grassroots … they're envious of his leadership.”

AD leader, Timoteo Zambrano ... who has already made two gaffes in two days calling on the International Red Cross to find an allegedly “disappeared” First Lady and making Carlos Ortega honorary AD president to cock a snoot at former AD kingpin, Rafael Marin ... has thanked Costa Rican Ambassador Ricardo Lizano for holding out "diplomatic asylum" to Ortega, following the tradition of receiving such distinguished exiles as AD founder Romulo Betancourt.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Saturday, March 15, 2003 By: Roy S. Carson

Costa Rican government official Miguel Diaz has confirmed that fugitive Venezuelan Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) president Carlos Ortega has been afforded "diplomatic asylum" in the tiny central American state of Costa Rica.  The news comes as Accion Democratica (AD) said they had appointed Ortega as "honorary president" of the discredited political party which is largely responsible for Venezuela's international image as a corrupt backwater of Latin America.

Interior & Justice (MIJ) Minister Lucas Rincon Romro says the government is so glad to get rid of Ortega that it will more than willingly issue a 'safe conduct' for Ortega to travel to Caracas (Simon Bolivar) international airport at Maiquetia to go into self-imposed exile.

Just  weeks ago, Ortega (who had evacuated his family to the Dutch Antilles island of Aruba), had gone underground emphatically stating that he would never abandon Venezuela or his fight to remove democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez Frias.

Costa Rican ambassador Ricardo Lizano has been less than forthcoming about his temporary guest at the embassy in Caracas, but Costa Rican Foreign Minister Roberto Tovar says his country is extending asylum privileges to Ortega "for humanitarian reasons." and he will remain at the Embassy as a guest  until such times as the necessary documents have been prepared for his safe removal from Caracas to San Jose."

Ortega fled to the safety of the Costa Rican Embassy in Caracas last Thursday (March  13) claiming he was afraid for his personal security as Venezuelan security agencies closed in on his hideaway.  Questions have been raised as to why Ortega had not been arrested earlier, but a government official simply said he was not considered important enough and that "things will take their natural course!"

Earlier there had been several calls for Ortega to give himself up and face justice.  Fellow anti-government rebel Fedecamaras president Carlos Fernandez was arrested just two weeks ago while feasting at a luxury restaurant in Las Mercedes and is currently languishing in luxury house arrest at his $-million villa near Valencia (Carabobo State) where he was taken by helicopter after a Caracas judge allowed him the unusual privilege on claims that a high blood pressure condition made his incarceration a risk to his physical well-being.

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.