Posted on 11/28/2003 12:59:57 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Opponents of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez start a four-day signature drive on Friday seeking a referendum to vote the leftist leader out of office five years after he was first elected.
A splintered alliance of opposition parties and groups hopes to gather 2.4 million signatures needed to trigger a vote against the former army officer who they say is steadily turning the world's No. 5 oil exporter into a communist tyranny.
After two years of conflict, opposition leaders believe their referendum campaign will succeed in ousting Chavez at the ballot box. A short-lived coup last year and a recent crippling two-month oil strike failed to topple him.
"This is the beginning and the end of this democratic fight. Here we have the dreams and hopes of millions of people," opposition leader Enrique Mendoza told reporters.
The opposition says it will collect signatures at more than 2,700 centers across the country and expects dozens of international observers to guarantee a fair process. But they fear Chavez may use violence to scuttle their campaign.
The National Electoral Council will have to verify the signatures before deciding whether to allow the presidential referendum in April next year.
Chavez has seen his support wither since he won a landslide 1998 election and was re-elected in mid-2000. A steep recession, high inflation and climbing unemployment has undermined living standards for Venezuela's 25 million people.
Polls show two-thirds of Venezuelans would vote against him in a referendum though he dismisses the surveys as biased.
Still, a creeping economic recovery and increased state spending on social programs such as education and health have helped shore up his support.
The fiery Venezuelan leader says he will defeat any attempt to unseat him through a poll and claims his support is as strong as ever in the poverty-stricken countryside and the sprawling shanty towns that ring Caracas.
"No way am I going to sign against him," said Elcy Torres, a 25-year-old student who thanked a state education program for helping her to secure a place at university.
Six years after leading a botched coup as a young army paratrooper, Chavez was elected promising to improve the lives of Venezuela's impoverished majority who see little of the country's huge oil wealth.
But his foes say his revolutionary reforms, such as cheap credits and land redistribution, are ruining the economy. Chavez dismisses his opponents as rich elites desperate to protect their privileges.
A government signature campaign last weekend seeking referendums on opposition National Assembly deputies went ahead without problems. But it failed to draw the massive visible support Chavez had predicted.
If you signed the first petition you were fired or lost your school grant.
***Vanessa Roca, a 31-year-old secretary from the eastern state of Monagas, says she lost her job at a state-owned transport company after signing a petition calling for a recall referendum to remove Chavez from office. She traveled seven hours by bus to ask officials at the National Electoral Commission (CNE) to remove her name from the petition.
"A friend who had the same thing happen to him told me this might help me get my job back," she said. "I understand it happened to a lot of us."
As the Chavez government tries to remain in office, state employees and students who signed the petition, or who are suspected of sympathizing with the political opposition, are being purged from jobs, internships and grants, according to dozens of interviews with trade unionists, students, state workers, lawyers and human rights activists.
And in an effort to discredit the recall movement, state workers whose names appear on the petition are being encouraged by the government to sign legal complaints alleging that their signatures were forged.
Former President Carlos Andres Perez predicts Chavez "will not have a peaceful exit" and will be forced out of office if he refuses to accept the recall vote. "Violence is bad, and we don't promote it," he recently told Colombia's daily newspaper, El Tiempo, "but no other option is possible."
The Chavez administration denies the allegations of firing state workers for signing the recall petition, saying the referendum petition was a violation of the constitution and the signatures were marred by fraud. Government supporters claim they have uncovered 6,000 forged signatures. Some 175 formal complaints are being investigated by a state prosecutor's office.
Chavez's supporters say he is the only president who has ever paid the nation's poor any attention and is the only hope for redistributing the nation's oil wealth. Thousands of slum dwellers took to the streets when the political opposition came close to removing the controversial president in a coup d'etat in April. Chavez has also accused Washington of supporting the recall campaign.
His foes -- dominated by the middle class -- accuse the president of seeking to impose a communist-style dictatorship, while igniting class hatred with his revolutionary rhetoric. They also accuse him of wrecking the economy and are desperate to remove him before his term ends in 2007. They collected 2. 7 million signatures calling for his removal.
But on Sept. 17, the five-member CNE ruled the signatures were invalid on technical grounds -- they were gathered before Chavez reached the half-way point of his presidency (Aug. 19) as required by law.
On Sept. 26, the CNE announced new rules, giving Chavez opponents four days to collect at least 2.4 million signatures -- Chavez wanted just one day -- to require a vote. If the signatures this time are declared valid, the council has 97 days to set an election date. At the earliest, observers expect a recall vote in February.
But the harassment of those in favor of a recall casts doubt on the willingness of Chavez, a self-proclaimed "revolutionary" who led a failed coup in 1992, to abide by the law even though he backed the inclusion of a recall mechanism in the 1999 constitution.
University student Alejandro Suarez (not his real name) earned a government grant to write his undergraduate thesis on geology while working as an intern at the state oil company known as PDVSA. But after months of waiting for final state approval, he was told that he had been rejected.
"The secretary said, 'Did you sign something?' " Suarez recalled. When he said he had, she responded, 'It must be that. You're not the only one. There are 18 more cases.' "
In all, university sources say, hundreds of students may have been affected.
Professor Monica Martiz, director of the geology school at the Central University of Venezuela, said students who signed the recall petition were listed on a pro-government congressman's Web site and "were immediately rejected" for grant monies and internships.
The Web site belongs to Congressman Luis Tascon, who says the names were delivered to his office anonymously in a sealed envelope. A police investigation -- requested by the CNE -- is now under way to discover who gave Tascon the database, which is supposed to remain in the safekeeping of election officials.
Carlos Martinez, a Caracas lawyer, says the list appears to have made its way to government offices. Martinez, who is representing several military officers who signed the petition, says his clients were either discharged, detained or denied promotions. "Only the docile ones are allowed to stay," he said.
Job discrimination on political grounds violates the Venezuelan constitution and it is the job of the government's chief civil rights ombudsman, German Mundarain, to assist victims of such abuses.
But several current and former employees said Mundarain himself has been firing workers who oppose Chavez.*** Source
A government signature campaign last weekend seeking referendums on opposition National Assembly deputies went ahead without problems. But it failed to draw the massive visible support Chavez had predicted.
But Chavez has claimed they collected 8 million signatures.
Some in the community -- the local Venezuelan community, in particular -- also will be counting signatures in an effort to change the face of government in their country.
In a move reminiscent of the recall petition and election Californians recently held to replace Gov. Gray Davis with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Venezuelans are attempting to force a recall of President Hugo Chavez.
According to the constitutional framework, the opposition must gather the signatures of 2.4 million voters, 20 percent of the Venezuelan electorate, to force the referendum that would be expected next April. The four-day petition drive begins today.
A related petition drive is scheduled here Saturday (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.) at Ray Miller Park, 1800 Eldridge Parkway.
That drive, named Reafirmazo Alternativo, may be rendered largely symbolic, because the Chavez government moved to exclude Venezuelans living abroad from participating in the recall petition. It's a move that, in essence, strips Venezuelans living here and elsewhere around the globe of their rights under the Venezuelan Constitution.
Nevertheless, organizers say they expect petitions to be signed by Venezuelans living in more than 100 cities around the world, including many of the estimated 1,800 Venezuelans in the Houston area.
The signatures gathered here will be witnessed, notarized and submitted, along with others from Venezuelans outside their country, to international human rights organizations. The signatures collected will accompany a formal complaint to be introduced before Venezuelan and international institutions, said local spokesperson Cristal Montañez. ***
Hugo Cabezas and Tareck el Aissami were appointed last month as director and deputy director of the Identification and Immigration Directorate, in charge of border controls and issuing passports and national ID cards. The agency also works with electoral authorities on voter registration.
Both were top student leaders at the University of the Andes in the western city of Merida, described by senior school officials as a virtual haven for armed Chávez supporters and leftist guerrillas.
When El Aissami served as president of the student body from 2001 to 2003, his armed supporters controlled the university's dormitories, said Oswando Alcala, a professor and director of student affairs.
Cabezas and El Aissami declined several Herald requests for interviews. Calls to the Information Ministry in Caracas also failed to elicit an official response.
Their appointments to the passport office raised eyebrows both because of the reports of Arabs obtaining Venezuelan ID documents and the possibility of fraud in an ongoing drive for a referendum to recall Chávez. His popularity stands at less than 40 percent.
''These appointments raise suspicions,'' said Pompeyo Marquez, a former Cabinet minister for border issues and an opponent of Chávez opponent. ``The risk is that they can play tricks both as regards elections and with identity cards.''
MAGAZINE REPORT
Allegations that Chávez's leftist government issued ID documents to Islamic radicals surfaced most recently in the newsweekly U.S. News and World Report. ''Venezuela is providing support -- including identity documents -- that could prove useful to radical Islamic groups,'' the magazine reported last month, quoting senior U.S. military and intelligence officials.
Chávez has strongly denied previous opposition allegations of links to Islamic radicals and leftist guerrillas from neighboring Colombia. Following the U.S. magazine's report, he accused the U.S. ''extreme right'' of trying to justify his ouster by ``anything: an assassination, a coup d'etat, an invasion.''*** [More at LINK]
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