www.itv.com 8.22AM GMT, 3 Mar 2003   The explosions came a day after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez lashed out at Colombia and Spain for allegedly interfering in Venezuela's domestic affairs

Thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets of Caracas on bikes and motorcycles to protest against the recent bombings of the Colombian and Spanish embassies.

No-one has taken responsibility for the explosions but the Government and the opposition blame each other.

The explosions came a day after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez lashed out at Colombia and Spain for allegedly interfering in Venezuela's domestic affairs.

According to march organisers, this could have been the motive for attacks they claim were ordered by Chavez.

Leaflets supporting Chavez were found near both blasts, prompting opposition leaders to accuse the Government.

Sunday's protest went through Caracas, making four stops at the Spanish, Colombian, North American and Brazilian embassies.

Outside each embassy the bikers offered a minute of silence and sang the Venezuelan national anthem to show their gratitude to the countries involved in the "Group of Friends of Venezuela", which was created to encourage the negotiating process between the Government and opposition.

Also on Sunday, former employees of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA organised a fair to collect funds to help people fired by the Government during the national strike called by the opposition on December 2.

The strike has brought Venezuela's economy to a virtual standstill and crippled production in the country's all-important oil industry.

Chavez was elected in 1998 with promises to fight corruption and ease poverty, which afflicts 80 per cent of the population.

But opponents say his leftist policies have steered the economy into recession and taken unemployment to 17 per cent.

MYTH #1: President Chavez fights for the poor.

FACTS: Life has become much worse for the poor under President Chavez’ administration. President Chavez’s “revolution” has collapsed under the weight of mismanagement and corruption. President Chavez has destroyed many worthwhile social programs that helped the poor. When Mr. Chavez has to choose between scoring an ideological point and helping people, he chooses ideology. Mr. Chavez’s revolution is no longer about helping people – it is about keeping him in power.

MYTH #2: President Chavez believes in democracy and the rule of law.

FACTS: Mr. Chavez violates his own constitution with impunity. The undermining of independent institutions means there is no way to hold President Chavez accountable for his many crimes… and means that constitutional rights are not available to opponents of the government. Mr. Chavez’s efforts to consolidate control over the Supreme Court continue. Venezuelans are afraid President Chavez will block all constitutional avenues to early elections.

MYTH #3: Freedom of speech is flourishing in Venezuela.

FACTS: The Venezuelan media work in an atmosphere of intimidation and violence. President Chavez incites attacks on individual members of the press. Mr. Chavez uses the government to wage war against the media. Mr. Chavez has proposed a new law to restrict freedom of speech.

MYTH # 4: The tough economic times are due to the strike.

FACTS: The Venezuelan economy was imploding well before the strike. President Chavez has never presented a coherent economic plan, nor has he governed in a way that inspires confidence. The strike was an expression of frustration with (among other things) Mr. Chavez’s gross mismanagement of the economy – it was the result, not the cause, of the failing economy.

MYTH #5: Early elections would set a bad example for the rest of Latin America.

FACTS: Venezuelans face a unique predicament. President Chavez is not your average Latin American lefty. Venezuelans are working within their constitution to achieve early elections.

MYTH #1: President Chavez fights for the poor.

FACTS:

• Life has become much worse for the poor under President Chavez. Since Mr. Chavez first took office, the percentage of people in extreme poverty has risen more than 17%, so that the extreme poor now comprise 34 percent of the population. The price of food has soared. And before the strike, more than 940,000 people had lost their jobs during President Chavez’s rule. In addition, skyrocketing crime – which disproportionately affects the poor – means more people living in fear. In August 2002, 80% of Venezuelans said they thought Chavez had made the country more violent and unsafe. And no wonder – under Mr. Chavez, the number of homicides has nearly doubled.

• President Chavez’s “revolution” has collapsed under the weight of mismanagement and corruption. Mr. Chavez is a disaster when it comes to governing: he has simply been unable to translate his vast executive powers (the executive branch was made much stronger under his new constitution) and record-high oil revenues into any positive changes for Venezuela. In the four years since he took power, he has made 58 Cabinet changes (47 individuals have held Cabinet posts) and appointed four different Vice-Presidents. There have been seven different Ministers of the Interior and Justice, five different Finance Ministers, five different Ministers of Infrastructure, six different Ministers of Commerce, and six different Presidents of state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PdVSA).

The chaos in his government has been accompanied by numerous corruption scandals, earning him sharp criticism from Transparency International. And the amounts of money at stake in these scandals are staggering. One example: Venezuela has a rainy day fund called FIEM, in which oil revenues exceeding a certain amount are to be deposited. In 2001, Chavez failed to deposit Bs. 2.3 trillion (the equivalent, at the time, to US$2.9 billion) into the fund, as required by law. He claimed that he needed the money to pay public salaries and year-end bonuses – expenditures already taken care of by line items in the federal budget. So where did that money go?

• President Chavez has destroyed many worthwhile social programs that helped the poor. Mr. Chavez not only failed to turn his grandiose promises into programs that help the poor, he destroyed many worthwhile programs that the poor had relied on. Existing programs that feed school children and poor families, provide school uniforms, and provide daycare for the children of working mothers have either been cancelled or transferred to the Fondo Único Social (FUS), a military-run government institution which has been at the heart of several corruption accusations. Even the Comptroller has admitted to irregularities at the FUS.

• When President Chavez has to choose between scoring an ideological point and helping people, he chooses ideology. After the worst floods in Venezuela’s history, in which thousands were killed and thousands more left homeless, Chavez refused the help of hundreds of American military engineers, ordering that the ship carrying them to Venezuela reverse course and return to the United States. The coastal road that the engineers were to reconstruct, a critical corridor for the region’s commerce, is still largely unusable, affecting the quality of life in the region, damaging the potential for tourism and commerce, and creating an enormous barrier for the region’s socio-economic recovery.

• President Chavez’s revolution is no longer about helping people – it is about keeping him in power. He has admitted as much, telling Venezuelans that it doesn’t matter if they are naked or hungry, as long as the revolution survives.

Mr. Chavez is overseeing a “revolution” in which he can justify spending $65 million on a new presidential jet, even while many Venezuelans sink deeper into grinding poverty.

MYTH #2: President Chavez believes in democracy and the rule of law.

FACTS:

• President Chavez violates his own constitution with impunity. Functioning democracies require more than free elections, they require strong and independent institutions. Yet Mr. Chavez gutted Venezuela’s system of democratic checks and balances by installing top government officials – including the Attorney General, the Comptroller General, the Human Rights Ombudsman, and the Supreme Court justices – without following procedures laid out in the 1999 constitution drafted by his own supporters.

Noted Venezuelan scholar and former Inter-American Court of Human Rights judge Asdrúbal Aguiar has documented 34 constitutional violations by the Chavez government, ranging from Chavez’s removal of all judges and replacing them with provisional judges to ordering the military to disregard any judicial decisions contravening his direct orders.

In her new book “Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism,” Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment describes Chavez: “He shows no respect for the independence of the judiciary. He prefers legislating by decree to respecting the separation of powers and letting the… National Assembly do its job. In general, he has little respect for institutions… (and) the presence of the military in the government and administration has become pervasive.”

• The undermining of independent institutions means there is no way to hold President Chavez accountable for his many crimes… There are 27 cases against Mr. Chavez pending before the Supreme Court, including charges related to various human rights violations, the April 11th killings, and the receipt of millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions. It is not clear if any of these will receive a fair hearing – or any hearing at all.

• …and means that constitutional rights are not available to opponents of the government. On January 22, 2003, citing a technicality, the Supreme Court suspended a February 2nd non-binding referendum on Chavez’s rule. Referenda on “matters of national interest” are provided for in the Constitution , and this particular referendum had been requested by two million citizens and approved by the National Electoral Council. The decision was first announced not by the Court itself, but by Chavez’s Vice-President, José Vicente Rangel.

The Constitution is Mr. Chavez’s favorite prop – he holds it up at every opportunity, and loves to proclaim: “Everything within the Constitution, nothing outside the Constitution.” (Of course, he just as frequently vows to stay in office until 2021, which would clearly violate this very same Constitution. ) But Mr. Chavez recently announced that he plans to simply ignore the numerous petitions signed by millions of Venezuelan citizens in “El Firmazo.” Could it be that for President Chavez, the Constitution is nothing more than a useful prop?

• President Chavez’s efforts to consolidate control over the Supreme Court continue. On January 14, 2003, members of Mr. Chavez’s political party introduced a new law in the National Assembly, Chapter III of which would add ten new justices to the Supreme Court. While this is an organic law, and thus requires two-thirds vote to pass according to the Constitution, watch for President Chavez’s attempts to push it through by a simple majority vote.

• Venezuelans are afraid Chavez will block all constitutional avenues to early elections. Given President Chavez’s deplorable track record when it comes to following his own Constitution, many Venezuelans fear that his promise to hold a recall referendum this August is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

MYTH #3: Freedom of speech is flourishing in Venezuela.

FACTS:

• The Venezuelan media work in an atmosphere of intimidation and violence. Last May, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that “while it is possible to criticize the authorities, criticism brings on intimidation, which limits the possibility of free expression… in the particular case of journalists, the commission found repeated verbal and physical attacks.”

• President Chavez incites attacks on individual members of the press. While describing a particular member of the press he was vilifying, Chavez said, “We must identify the enemies of the revolution…the people need to know who they are and see their faces, know their names -- and here I am, unmasking one of them.” His violent rhetoric has had its intended result: In 2002, there were more than 130 physical attacks on journalists, and independent lawmaker Alberto Jordan has counted more than 60 assaults and threats against reporters in January 2003 alone and more than 600 since Mr. Chavez took office. On December 9th, 2002, in what was clearly a coordinated effort, more than 26 news outlets were attacked, terrorized or vandalized. Mr. Chavez, whose government said the Commission’s efforts were “an attempt to interfere in Venezuela’s internal affairs, rebuffed efforts by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to ensure the freedom and safety of a particular reporter.”

• President Chavez uses the government to wage war against the media. Mr. Chavez’s war on the media includes numerous threats to withdraw broadcasting licenses: the government has begun “investigations” of the nation’s four private TV networks. The international media organization Inter American Press Association called the recent measures “a prelude to definitive censorship that seeks to silence the media… each day the spaces of opinion in Venezuela become narrower; journalist are attacked, threatened, including one being killed, the media are being watched and subjected to constant pressure.” The OAS special rapporteur for freedom of expression, Eduardo Bertoni, has condemned the government’s behavior, stating basic human rights regarding freedom of speech have been violated.

• President Chavez has proposed a new law to restrict freedom of speech. The law (which the government intends to pass as a non-organic law in order to avoid the need of a two-thirds vote in the National Assembly – contravening the Constitution) regulates the content of television and radio programming through subjective criteria and restrictive qualifications. The “Content Law” requires information to be "timely, truthful, plural and impartial." It dictates content and establishes strict schedule restrictions which could prevent the networks from transmitting live news. The law will be enforced by a government-appointed committee.

MYTH # 4: The tough economic times are due to the strike.

FACTS:

• The Venezuelan economy was imploding well before the strike. When President Chavez took office, the price of oil was US$9 per barrel and the public debt was Bs. 2.3 trillion. Four years later – in the months before the strike began – oil prices had risen to US$27 per barrel – yet public debt had skyrocketed to Bs.14 trillion. Between 1998 and October 2002, 5,000 businesses closed up shop. Over the same period, both consumer and wholesale inflation exploded, and unemployment soared, rising from 11 percent in 1998 to 17 percent just before the strike. In 2002 alone, prior to the strike, the Venezuelan economy contracted by 8.6 percent.

• President Chavez has never presented a coherent economic plan, nor has he governed in a way that inspires confidence. Investors know that he is simply not up to the task of overseeing an economy or governing a nation. Since Chavez took office, Venezuela has lost over $33.1 billion in capital flight , an amount equal to 30 percent of GDP.

More than just a simple protest, the strike was a dramatic expression of frustration towards Chavez’s gross mismanagement of the economy and his open despise towards democratic values – it was the result, not the cause, of the worst economic and political crisis ever confronted by Venezuela.

MYTH #5: Early elections would set a bad example for the rest of Latin America.

FACTS:

• Venezuelans face a unique predicament. The effort to achieve early elections in Venezuela is not a matter of simply wanting to get rid of a leader whose policies are unpopular. In Venezuela, we have a President who has violated our Constitution with impunity. We have a President who has not answered for billions of missing bolivares. We have a President who refuses to allow further investigation or prosecution of the April 11th killings. And we have no untainted or impartial institutions to process and give fair hearing to these charges. Thus, the people of Venezuela have come to believe that their ballots are the best way to hold President Chavez accountable or coaccountable for the many crimes, transgressions and violations.

• President Chavez is not your average Latin American lefty. In the many articles about the new wave of Latin American leaders with left-leaning policies, there has been a tendency to lump Mr. Chavez together with leaders such as Lucio Gutierrez of Ecuador or Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil. But make no mistake about it – President Chavez belongs in a category by himself. Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue described Lula and Chavez as “polar opposites”, noting in particular Lula’s efforts to reach out and build bridges. A recent Los Angeles Times editorial denounced Chavez’s rhetoric as “a hateful message driven by anger” and summed up the differences between the two leaders this way: “Lula has presented a responsible plan to mitigate social ills. Chavez wants to replicate Fidel Castro’s Cuba across the hemisphere.” And Lucio Gutiérrez has himself stated that attempts to link him with Chavez are part of “a campaign by the corrupt sectors of Quito to muddle (his) image in the international community.”

• Venezuelans are working within their constitution to achieve early elections. If President Chavez had a better track record when it came to his own constitution, Venezuelans would not need to seek outside support for their efforts to exercise their constitutional rights. But already there are indications that the millions of petition signatures collected in the February 2nd “Firmazo” will be ignored by the government , in contravention of the constitution. We hope and pray that international leaders advise Mr. Chavez that breaking his own laws and ignoring the voices of millions of Venezuelans will not be tolerated, nor will it go unnoticed to the watchful eyes of the international community.

As Venezuelans we love democracy and peace. We truly appreciate our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and socially diverse condition. We understand we have problems and are aware of the many missed opportunities throughout our history. But we are also convinced that Democracy is the only path to prosperity. We do not wish a Venezuela in a constant epic struggle. We neither believe nor wish for magical, short-term solutions. Our efforts are inspired in the desire and right to a bright future. We are determined to find, through democratic means, a solution to our many troubles. And to that end we build upon our values: freedom, solidarity, participation, equal opportunities, progress and justice.

We strive for a country with justice, prosperity and dignity, a Venezuela where no title is more important than that of “Citizen.”