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Posted on 06/13/2002 2:33:07 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS - A new wave of coup threats against President Hugo Chávez is pushing Venezuelans to the edge of hysteria, with many residents of the capital stockpiling food and condo associations preparing an inventory of guns in case of looting.
Clandestine communiqués and videos from alleged military officers vowing to topple the leftist president emerge almost daily. As each rumor peaks and wanes, the country's battered currency fluctuates wildly against the U.S. dollar.
The threats and an accompanying gusher of dire rumors have sparked an unprecedented crisis in this oil-rich nation, virtually paralyzing the country and awakening fears of bloodshed, even civil war.
U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro said Wednesday the coup rumors helped prompt a State Department warning this week that Americans in Venezuela should take security precautions. ''In a country where there are so many rumors, it's important for foreigners to be careful,'' he said.
The crisis atmosphere is even more intense than in April, when a sudden military coup forced Chávez out of power for two days amid a whirlwind of political violence and looting that left 70 dead.
''The country is on the verge of a nervous breakdown,'' the centrist TalCual newspaper said this week in an editorial that called for calm.
In the eye of the storm, Chávez has equivocated. One day he claims to have evidence of a plot afoot, but the next he dismisses the threats as the fraudulent work of opposition media bent on goading officers into an attempt to topple him.
But senior government officials privately admit that the 80,000-member armed forces are deeply split between Chávez supporters and foes who accuse him of pitching the nation into anarchy with his populist ''Bolivarian Revolution,'' Western diplomats say.
The unrest in the armed forces has swelled recently amid reports that the president, a former army lieutenant colonel, will jump loyalists over more qualified officers when the next round of promotions is announced. That is expected on July 5.
Chávez purged some 600 officers after the April coup, launched by commanders angered by reports that pro-Chávez gunmen started a shootout during a massive opposition march April 11 in which 17 people were killed.
''The barracks are boiling,'' said José Machillanda, a retired army colonel who has taught courses at several military institutions.
The success of any coup attempt is uncertain. Loyalist officers restored Chávez to power on April 14, and recent polls show he has the support of 40 percent of Venezuelans, especially among the poorest of the poor.
Civilian opponents are nevertheless charging that Chávez, elected by a landslide in 1998, is leading the nation into political anarchy and economic ruin by trying to impose an authoritarian, corruption-riddled regime.
Reconciliation talks launched by Chávez and some opponents after April 11 are stalled, and a campaign to collect enough voters' signatures to force early elections is moving too slowly for many critics.
''To collect signatures on the streets is a waste of time . . . this forces us into armed action,'' said the April 11 Movement, which claims to be made up of mid-level military officers, in a message -- Communiqué No. 3 -- issued Tuesday.
CIVILIANS WARNED
An earlier communiqué warned civilians last week to arm themselves and stay home after June 7, and vowed to crush the Bolivarian Circles, groups of civilian Chávez supporters allegedly armed by the government.
A previously unknown Coordinator for the Organized Civil Society endorsed the Movement on Tuesday, saying in a statement that, ``of course we'll try to maintain the constitutional line, but above all we must assure this government falls.''
Ten hooded men in combat fatigues, claiming to be military officers, appeared on a video last week urging civilians to prepare for a coup that will impose martial law and hold new elections in three months.
Opposition television stations have been rebroadcasting Chávez's comments in a 1996 interview defending his failed 1992 military coup attempt against President Carlos Andrés Pérez as ``legitimate, when a government does not listen to the people.''
Vice President José Vicente Rangel, meanwhile, has denied rumors that 1,500 Cuban troops had landed recently at an airport near Caracas to help defend Chávez, a close ally of President Fidel Castro.
VENEZUELANS PREPARE
The constant pounding of the coup drums has led many Venezuelans to prepare for the worst, with supermarkets and gasoline stations in the past week reporting significantly increased sales of nonperishable food items and fuel.
Fearing outbreaks of looting in any crisis, the residents' associations in the Guaicay and Los Samanes upper middle class neighborhoods in central Caracas announced Tuesday they planned to defend their districts with weapons if necessary.
Some condominium associations in tonier Caracas districts have also taken inventories of residents' guns and hired extra armed security guards, according to Western diplomats.
Moderates in this deeply polarized country, which holds the largest petroleum reserves outside the Middle East, have been calling for calm and warning that a coup attempt could unleash a civil war.
''Once the shooting starts everything becomes uncertain,'' said the TalCual editorial. ``On that road it will not be possible to rule without blood and gunfire.
But hard-line Chávez opponents say all the constitutional solutions under consideration -- resignation, charging Chávez with the April 11 killings, foreign mediation, a recall referendum or early elections -- would take too long.
''The time has come to kill or be killed,'' wrote columnist John Salas.
But the biggest problem, Mr. Rodriguez suggests, may lie with the leftist president himself. "A lot of investors are worried about Chavez," he says. "There are deep worries about the security of property rights in Venezuela and that things will get politically more difficult. The specter of political instability has hovered over the Venezuelan economy since January, beginning with a series of mass demonstrations, strikes and, finally, an unsuccessful military coup that ousted Mr. Chavez for 48 hours, before he was brought back by loyal troops. Since then, the country has been in a fiscal swoon, despite rising prices for oil, which accounts for 80% of exports and generates about half of government revenues.***
If he actually gets driven out of Venezuela alive, I look for him to pop up in Cuba as Castro's annointed heir.
For now the free oil spigot is shut to Castro and he's hurting.
Venezuela: Halt in Oil to Cuba May Ease Pressure on Chavez***Cuba owes PDVSA nearly $128 million at a time when cash flow is getting very tight at the firm due to a combination of lower international oil prices, failure by the Chavez government to pay its energy-related debts to the company and increasing doubts about the availability of more than $4 billion in PDVSA cash that is supposed to be on deposit at the macroeconomic stabilization fund (FIEM). PDVSA deposited the cash in the FIEM, which was created before Chavez was elected in December 1998, for the purpose of keeping surplus cash out of the economy so as not to trigger higher interest rates and inflation. Rodriguez said May 27 that the funds would be used for oil and gas investments, not to underwrite the government's current spending needs.
However, with the Chavez regime facing a cash flow shortfall estimated at nearly $11 billion -- due to its rapidly pending liabilities to state governments, workers and foreign and domestic creditors -- it's likely that PDVSA's funds are no longer in the FIEM. In fact, in order for PDVSA to withdraw the $4 billion, Venezuela's Central Bank likely would have to draw down its international reserves by an identical amount. Following a first quarter 2002 GDP contraction of 4.2 percent and a $3.7 billion balance of payments deficit, the Central Bank can't transfer $4 billion of its declining foreign exchange reserves to PDVSA without accelerating the currency's devaluation and raising interest rates even higher.
With the economy sinking deeper into recession and PDVSA in worsening financial health, continuing oil shipments to Cuba is a politically untenable proposition. The current oil supply agreement is highly unpopular within PDVSA and sectors of the armed forces opposed to closer ties with the Castro regime. Chavez likely will have more clashes in coming weeks with his political opponents, including moderates within his own camp. While the oil supply agreement has not been rescinded officially, the de facto suspension of more oil shipments to Cuba may help to defuse at least some of the tensions within potential flashpoint groups like the military and PDVSA.***
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Cash-Strapped Cuba Faces Summer***The 2,000 workers have been reassigned to other mills or farm work, according to mill administrator Isabel Chavez. The Sugar Ministry has given no reason for shutting the mill. But at the beginning of the 2001-2002 sugar harvest, the official Cuban news agency reported that only 100 of Cuba's 154 sugar mills were working. The whole sugar industry is being restructured, but the modernizing technology needed in the mills would cost between $4 million to $5 million per mill, the government has said. Meanwhile, as sugar prices fall, oil is up, and Cuba has to import more than half its petroleum needs. Fidel Castro's government is cutting energy use by 10 percent at state enterprises. ***
Communist and former ally seen as perfect man to push Chávez out*** Miquilena's party holds only four of the 79 opposition seats in the 165-member Assembly, against 83 Chávez supporters and three independents, according to most opposition head counts. But his leftist pro-Chávez credentials make him the perfect man to lure away moderate Chavista Assembly members willing to dump the president because of the passions he incites undermine the socialist policies that they support in this oil-rich but grindingly poor nation -- ``Chavismo without Chávez.'' Those same credentials, however, make some Chávez opponents wary of Miquilena. ''The fact that people see him as a moderate is a sign of our desperation,'' said Robert Bottome, publisher of the VenEconomía weekly. Miquilena declined Herald requests for an interview. ***
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