www.guardian.co.uk Leader Monday January 20, 2003 The Guardian

As the long-running political crisis in Venezuela begins to have an ever-greater international impact, efforts to end a divisive general strike and get the country back to work continue to founder. Until this week, outside mediation intended to defuse the confrontation between President Hugo Chavez and his vociferous opponents has been led by Cesar Gaviria, secretary-general of the Organisation of American States. But Mr Gaviria has made no headway and has now been reinforced by a new group, to be known as the Friends of Venezuela, initiated by the new Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, and including Mexico, Chile, Spain, Portugal and the US. It is not yet clear what the "friends" may propose - but the problem is plain enough. Venezuela, losing $50m a day and moving ever closer to bankruptcy, escalating violence and possible civil war, cannot afford to allow the present situation to continue unresolved. The neighbours, and in particular the US, think so too.

Washington, unsurprisingly given its disproportionate wealth and power, has more to lose than most. Venezuela supplies about one-sixth of US oil imports or did so, at least, until managers at the state oil company joined the anti-Chavez rebellion at a cost to their country so far of $4bn. Non-emergency US crude stocks are now touching a 27-year low and pump prices are rising, just as its designs on Iraq threaten to disrupt Middle Eastern supply. For the US, the problem is increasingly strategic, not local.

Despite this growing sense of urgency and a clear US temptation to try to take charge, the damage caused by Washington's perceived backing for last year's abortive coup against Mr Chavez has taught it to tread warily. Last week, controversial Latin American policy chief Otto Reich was moved to a lesser position. The state department has meanwhile taken to emphasising the need for a "peaceful, constitutional, democratic and electoral" solution. Regional leader Brazil would in any case be likely to oppose any US attempt to force the pace and warns that "aiming for magic solutions could lead to more violent conflicts". Indeed, Mr da Silva is far from unsympathetic to Mr Chavez, and rightly so. While both have their flaws, both are elected presidents attempting to reform badly run countries, raise the poor and reverse decades of entrenched injustice. Pressure from special interests, from whatever quarter, should be resisted.

www.newsday.com Jan 14, 2003 By Letta Tayler Latin America Correspondent

January 20, 2003 Caracas -- For seven weeks, Lila Vega, a pediatrician, has worked only a fifth of her usual hours -- and earned a fifth of her usual income -- as part of a strike aimed at unseating populist President Hugo Chávez.

When Vega does go to her office, she bikes the six miles. That way, she doesn't have to wait hours in line to fill her car's tank with gasoline, which is almost impossible to find because Venezuela's oil monopoly has joined the strike.

Most teachers are participating, too, so Vega's daughters no longer attend school. "We have to continue the pressure,” said Vega, her mouth tightening. "We're not returning to our normal lives until Chávez leaves.”

As the massive strike entered its 49th day yesterday with Chávez showing no signs of resigning, daily routines have been turned upside down across Venezuela, and so has the mood of its 24 million citizens.

The realization that the strike could limp along indefinitely, severely wounding an economy that already was ill, has cast a combustible mix of determination, hostility and fear on this traditionally ebullient country.

"There was euphoria in the beginning of the strike, when the opposition thought Chávez would quickly leave,” said Caracas psychiatrist Ignacio Taboada. "But as people realize this could go on for months, the euphoria is being replaced by enormous anxiety, and anger.”

Strike organizers have in recent days quietly condoned an easing of the stoppage by participants who are going broke. Some stores and restaurants are cautiously reopening in areas frequented by the opposition, who are mostly in the middle and upper classes.

"I'm all for the strike, but I've got debts to pay and I need to eat,” said José Luis Martínez, a perfume-shop owner in an affluent area who recently reopened.

In Chávez strongholds, most stores have stayed open. But thousands are still closed in key industries, and more than half of schools and universities are shut or barely functioning. Cooking gas and cornmeal are widely unavailable except on the black market.

Most hospitals are handling only emergencies and lack many key medicines. Banks are open three hours daily, and movie theaters are shut.

Even Venezuela's beloved baseball league has canceled its winter season to support the strike. And its equally beloved beer, Polar, has stopped production, prompting guzzlers to turn to expensive imports, if they can afford to. The petroleum industry, which before the strike supplied 13 percent of U.S. oil imports, is producing a fraction of its normal output, which has pushed U.S. stocks of crude oil to nearly their lowest level in two decades.

Chávez's foes charge that he wants to impose a communist regime and is leading the country to economic ruin. Supporters counter that he is being targeted because he wants to share the nation's wealth with the 80 percent who are poor.

Chávez's popularity is at 30 percent, but he refuses to consider leaving until August, when the constitution allows a binding referendum on truncating his term. It is scheduled to end in 2007.

Many political observers believe opposition leaders have backed themselves into a corner by having declared early on that they'd continue the strike, which is costing the country $50 million a day, until they topple the leftist leader. "It was one thing to start the strike but another not to have any plan for the eventuality that Chávez wouldn't immediately leave,” said Janet Kelly, a political analyst here.

The strike has fallen into sometimes surreal patterns, even at the daily protests for and against the president. A few days ago, several thousand opposition housewives paraded through Caracas waving posters of the Virgin of Coromoto, the nation's patron saint, whom they implored to save them from "Chávez the dictator.”

A few hours later, flocks of kindergartners stomped jauntily through an adjacent neighborhood, chanting, "Chávez, friend! The children are with you!”

Sporadic violence has led to five deaths and hundreds of injuries, many involving children. The danger that her children could be caught in a confrontation is one reason Vega is relieved her daughters aren't attending school -- even if they only spend two hours daily studying lessons their teachers post on the Internet.

The other reason is that "they are receiving a valuable lesson in how citizens' participation can make a difference,” said Vega, who spends time collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment to force early presidential elections.

Others who disagree are gathering in increasing numbers to bang on school doors, declaring that the opposition has hijacked education.

Friction is even greater in poor Caracas neighborhoods such as La Pastora, a cluster of crumbling homes perched above a cliff. Though many La Pastora residents oppose Chávez, they expressed fury at finding cooking staples only on the expensive black market.

Rosa Martínez, a La Pastora housewife who lives with her husband and four children in a one-room apartment the size of a jail cell, said she paid almost seven times the normal rate for cooking gas and twice the normal price for cornmeal a few days ago.

"I didn't vote for Chávez, but I'd vote for him now if he ran again because what this strike is doing to us is even worse,” Martínez fumed.

"We're destroying the country to get rid of one man,” said Fanny García, a retired secretary who backs neither Chávez nor the opposition. "I wonder if it's worth it.”

sf.indymedia.org Venezuela, January 19th, 2003 by Trastor • Monday January 20, 2003 at 01:22 AM interfaz@cantv.net

CocaCola - Polar - TV brainwashing - Bolivarians Hacked.

In Venezuela the brainwashing by the media is working hard still. Coca-Cola and Polar companies are broadciasting anounces on TV channels in which they state that Chavez's moves to take by military force its warehouses and depots full of sodas and beers to give it to poors -like Robin Hood perhaps?-, is an "another" "anti-democratic" move by our President.

What I don't understand is that instead of taking food to poors, Chavez is giving Coca-Cola and Polar Beers...

Another matter is that women of the middle class opposing Chavez were hardly hit by soldiers during this CocaCola and Polar actions. The General of the National Guard Acosta Carles is the commander of these attacks to women oposing Chavez orders to take beers and cocacolas by the force.

As always in political struggles in Venezuela, poors need to drink beers at any cost, it seems.

Also, the opposition to Chavez is brodcasting TV ads in which they say: "Which Venezuela do you want to WATCH?" a democratic one without Chavez or a military one ruled by this "monster".

Why they don't say: "In which Venezuela do you want to LIVE?", it is a very illustrating ad, the opposition will not give us a Venezuela to live in democracy, but a Venezuela in which TV can show us their lies about democracy, that's clear to me, that's the reason why they are saying: "Which venezuela do you want to WATCH?"

The "Middle Class in Positive", a bolivarian organization supporting Chavez, and another bolivarian organizations are saying that their emails are being hacked, I guess about INTESA experts behind this hacking activities, INTESA was the computer company in charge of controlling all PDVSA's computer techonology.

www.thescotsman.co.uk

JEREMY MCDERMOTT WITH a Venezuelan flag draped over her shoulders, Verónica Narvaez marched through the streets of Caracas, blowing a whistle and banging a pot, one of more than 100,000 protesters who gathered on Saturday to demand the resignation of President Hugo Chavez.

"We do not want an authoritarian regime here. We do not want another Cuba," she said.

In a basement of Caracas’s historic Plaza Bolívar, Lina Ron spent her weekend organising pro-Chavez demonstrations. Pictures of the revolutionary icon "Che" Guevara line the walls, whilst Ms Ron juggles radios and mobile phones, speaking to government supporters and members of the radical "Bolivarian Circles" that are prepared to defend, to the death if necessary, the president and his "peaceful revolution".

"These protests are the final throes of a corrupt oligarchy that has stolen the country’s oil wealth and is trying to resist the president’s plan to redistribute the money in favour of the poor," she said.

There is a grain of truth in both positions, but to the outsider nothing that could justify the polarisation that has ripped apart Venezuela and brought the economy to its knees.

The crisis revolves around one man, the fiery and charismatic president, Hugo Chavez. A former paratrooper colonel who still wears the red beret that has become the symbol of the "Chavistas", he won the presidency in 1998 (and again in 2000) with a massive majority, vowing to overthrow the corrupt political system that had squandered the nation’s oil wealth and left more than 70 per cent of the population living in poverty.

But Mr Chavez’s radical rhetoric, constitutional and land reforms began to alarm moderate Venezuelans who wanted change, but not so much, nor so fast. It did not help that Mr Chavez professed open admiration for Fidel Castro and struck a deal with the Cuban dictator to supply oil at subsidised prices.

In April last year discontent led to street protests which exploded into violence. Nineteen people were killed in battles between protesters and government supporters.

The military led a coup, placing a right-wing businessman, Pedro Carmona, in the presidency. He lasted less than two days after the slums of Caracas disgorged thousands of Chavistas who converged on the presidential palace. The military lost its nerve and Mr Chavez was restored. But instead of moderating his rhetoric, Mr Chavez made it yet more inflammatory and purged the military, insisting nothing would stand in the way of his socialist revolution.

His majority support began to melt away, and in December the fragmented opposition felt strong enough to call a national strike demanding his resignation.

Now, Venezuela is seven weeks into the strike, which has paralysed the oil industry, the nation’s lifeblood and led to a contraction of more than eight per cent of the economy.

Before the strike, Venezuela was the world’s fifth largest exporter of oil, pumping out three million barrels of crude a day. That dropped to nothing in December and Venezuela had to import fuel. Shops closed over the Christmas period and many of the country’s largest businesses ceased production.

But the president refused to be daunted, calling the opposition "fascists and coup-mongerers". He moved onto the offensive, and has set about breaking the strike, particularly in the crucial oil industry.

Soldiers were deployed to petrol stations, striking oil tankers were boarded, striking workers fired. He has managed to get production back up to about 800,000 barrels a day and the strike is crumbling. Troops have been sent into soft drinks and food factories and stocks seized for distribution "to the people".

The opposition has moderated its demands as the strike has weakened, now calling for a referendum on Mr Chavez’s rule next month. The president has insisted that is unconstitutional but that he will call one in August and if he loses it, will go quietly.

But that is not enough for the opposition, so the battle continues and the country bleeds, with more people being killed in political violence and the economy losing money, now estimated at almost three billion pounds.

Despite the mediation of the Organisation of the American States (OAS) and now an international commission called the "Friends of Venezuela", the two sides seems further apart than ever.

"There is no compromise possible any more. Chavez has to go," insisted Mrs Narvaez as she sat in her luxury apartment block in the wealthy suburb of Miraflores.

For Ms Ron the revolution must continue and indeed accelerate. "For the first time the people have woken up to their rights. We demand a share in the country’s wealth, and are prepared to fight against the rich who are trying to cling to their privileges," she said.

But the polarisation is not about the division between rich and poor, or a fight between authoritarianism and democracy. The poor have got poorer and the middle class has been decimated. Mr Chavez has won every election fairly and has acted within the law in all the measures he has applied. The opposition has pursued democratic protest, but does not represent the majority.

Mr Chavez can only count on 25 per cent support at the moment, the die-hard Chavistas. But the opposition is bitterly divided, united only in its desire to remove Mr Chavez. If there were elections called today it is likely Mr Chavez would win.

But the prospects of election or referendum are distant and the president has ordered his troops to seize any stores of food that opposition sympathisers are hoarding.

The vice president, Jose Vicente Rangel, insisted the strike was now "fiction" and "everything is now excessively normal in Venezuela". Normal it is not and, in Venezuela, fact is stranger than fiction.

DIVIDED: CHAVEZ OPPOSITION

PRESIDENT Chavez’s greatest asset is the opposition’s fragmentation. When he won his landslide victory in 1998 he swept away the traditional parties, the Social Democratic party, Democratic Action, and the Christian Democrats, Copei. In their place have sprung up diverse parties and individuals, allies of convenience, not ideology. This is perhaps best illustrated by two of leading lights in the opposition movement.

One the one hand there is the opposition’s main "bruiser", the leader of Venezuela’s largest union, Carlos Ortega.

He is to be seen at most opposition rallies, often passing the microphone to Carlos Fernandez, head of the largest business federation, revealing the paradox of Venezuelan politics that sees businessmen and trade unionists on the same dais.

From more traditional political backgrounds, at least six men are claiming titles as opposition leaders. The strongest of them is Enrique Mendoza, governor of central Miranda State. He has a decent record of efficient administration and has come out top in informal polls on leaders most likely to beat Mr Chavez in an election. Behind him are Julio Borges, a congressman who has achieved a national profile by appearing in a popular television show, and Henrique Salas Romer, a former governor who lost against Mr Chavez in 1998.

www.guardian.co.uk Monday January 20, 2003 1:00 AM

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez on Sunday threatened to order more raids on striking private food producers and warned the government may abandon negotiations with opponents trying to force him from office.

Meanwhile, thousands of Venezuelans with roots in Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Portugal and other countries marched for peace, waving the flags of their homelands and Venezuela. Some carried signs that read liberty'' and union'' in six languages.

I've never seen the country so divided,'' said Jose Lopes, 60, a bookstore owner who immigrated to Venezuela from Portugal as a teenager. We don't want to leave but if Chavez doesn't leave it's a possibility.''

Opponents accuse the 48-year-old president of running roughshod over democratic institutions and wrecking the economy with leftist policies.

A combination of opposition parties, business leaders and labor unions called for a general strike on Dec. 2 to demand Chavez accept the results of a nonbinding referendum on his rule.

Venezuela's National Elections Council scheduled the vote for Feb. 2 after accepting an opposition petition, but Chavez's supporters have challenged the referendum in court. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue soon.

Chavez, whose six-year term ends in 2007, insists his foes must wait until August - or halfway through his six-year term - when a recall referendum is permitted by the constitution.

The strike has brought Venezuela's economy to a standstill, causing shortages of gasoline, food and drink, including bottled water, milk, soft drinks and flour.

Local producers insist they are still making basic foodstuffs but that fuel shortages and lack of security for their transport workers have hampered deliveries.

Some businessmen have reflected and have started to open their factories,'' Chavez said during his weekly television and radio show. Those who refuse, who resist, well, be sure that today, tomorrow, or after we will raid your warehouses and stockpiles.''

On Friday, National Guard soldiers seized water and soft drinks from two bottling plants. One was an affiliate of Coca-Cola, the other belonged to Venezuela's largest food and drinks producer, Empresas Polar.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel on Sunday rejected U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro's criticism of the raids, which he said affected U.S. interests in Venezuela. Shapiro also questioned their legality.

``Ambassador, with all due respect, you are not an authority in this country,'' Rangel said Sunday while speaking to supporters in Venezuela's Margarita Island.

Bilateral ``relations have to be on an equal plain of mutual respect. This is not a protectorate, it is not a colony,'' Rangel said.

Chavez also warned the government would walk away from negotiations sponsored by the Organization of American States if the opposition continued seeking his ouster through what he calls unconstitutional means.

We are carefully evaluating the possibility that our representatives will leave the (negotiating) table,'' he said. We don't talk with terrorists. We are willing to talk with any Venezuelan within the framework of the constitution.''

The talks, which began in November, have yielded few results. Six countries - Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Portugal, Spain and the United States - have begun an initiative called ``Friends of Venezuela'' to support the negotiations.

The strike is strongest in Venezuela's oil industry, previously the world's fifth-largest exporter.

Oil production has dwindled to 800,000 barrels a day, compared with the 3 million barrels a day the country usually produces, according to the government. Strike leaders put the figure at 400,000 barrels a day.

Chavez, who has fired more than 1,000 strikers from the state oil monopoly, said Sunday that production could be restored to 2 million barrels a day by the end of the month.

But Chavez acknowledged that gasoline shortages have increased. He blamed the difficulties on ``sabotage'' by strikers and delayed gasoline imports. He also promised to reinforce troop presence at oil installations and said 60 gasoline trucks were on their way to Caracas, the capital, on Sunday.

``Keep rationing gasoline,'' Chavez urged listeners.

Besides the factory raid, troops have seized striking oil tankers and kept strikers out of oil installations. Five people have died in politically related violence since the strike began.

Also Sunday, Chavez appointed retired Gen. Lucas Rincon as his interior minister, replacing Diosdado Cabello, who was named infrastructure minister last week. Rincon's appointment comes despite his role in April's failed coup and his later resignation as defense minister.

Rincon announced to the world that Chavez resigned after 19 people died during an opposition march on the presidential palace. Loyal soldiers restored Chavez to power two days later after an interim government dissolved the constitution.

Chavez also appointed Gen. Jorge Garcia Carneiro as commander of Venezuela's army, replacing Gen. Julio Garcia Montoya.