The disruption to oil sales, which account for half of government revenues and 80 percent of the country's total export revenues, has badly mauled an economy already shuddering under the effects of a severe recession. The oil-reliant economy, battered by political turmoil, contracted sharply in 2002 and inflation ended the year at a five-year-high of 31.2 percent, the Central Bank said. Economists say the oil industry strike has cost the government well over $1 billion in lost income. This means it may have to delay payments of public debt or public sector salaries. "The government has its back against the wall from the fiscal point of view," Francisco Rodriguez, the top economic adviser to the National Assembly, told local radio.***
Members of the opposition wave national flags during a protest march in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, Dec 29, 2002. Tens of thousands of opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez marched Sunday to demand the president resign and to mark the 28th day of a nationwide strike that has virtually halted oil exports and evaporated domestic gasoline supplies.(AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
Brazil Sees Coalition With Venezuela, Cuba***"We will form an 'axis of good,' good for the people, good for the future," Chavez said at the time. But Brazilian political scientists dismissed the possibility of an "Axis of Good" being created by the meetings between Silva, Castro and Chavez. "There is no way this represents the beginning of Chavez' 'Axis of Good' and much less the 'Axis of Evil' imagined by right-wing Americans," said Luciano Dias, a political scientist at the Brasilia-based Brazilian Institute of Political Studies. Silva, who is popularly known as Lula, "would never even consider creating a nucleus of leftists in Latin America, he is too smart for that," Dias said. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not comment Thursday on the possibility of the alliance.
Chavez left his strikebound and politically riven country despite the crippling work stoppage aimed at toppling him from the presidency of the world's fifth largest oil producer. Silva also has a compelling reason for staying on friendly terms with Chavez: The long border the two countries share. "Brazil worries very much about violence in Venezuela spilling over into Brazil," Haber said. "So you want to have peaceful relations with the Venezuelan, regardless of who is in charge."
During his breakfast with Silva, Chavez also brought up the idea of increasing cooperation among Latin American state-owned oil industries and set up a company called Petro-America. "It would become a sort of Latin American OPEC," Chavez said. "It would start with Venezuela's PDVSA and Brazil's Petrobras," and could come to include Ecopetrol from Colombia, PetroEcuador from Ecuador, and PetroTrinidad from Trinidad and Tobago." Last week, Cardoso's outgoing administration sent a tanker to Venezuela carrying 520,000 barrels of gasoline, but that barely dented shortages around the country. If Silva decides to help Chavez with Brazilian oil workers, it probably won't accomplish much either, said Albert Fishlow, who heads Columbia University's Brazilian studies program. "If he does it will be minimal and not enough to affect the situation," Fishlow said.***
Venezuela's opposition comes together to try ousting Chavez - but what next? *** CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's diverse opposition has closed ranks for a formidable campaign to oust President Hugo Chavez. But its leaders have yet to consider what happens next or who would run as a candidate should Chavez step aside or agree to new elections. Take Enrique Mendoza, the folksy conservative governor of Miranda State who is considered a potential challenger. He's holed up in a hotel conference room juggling three cell phones, strategizing and nervously watching the television news amid a general strike that has brought Venezuela's economy to a virtual standstill. "Look at all of those people!" he says, popping out of his seat. He watches an attempt by Chavez supporters to break through an opposition roadblock: "That'll teach them to be respectful." His candidacy? His platform? "We can't talk about that until we know there will be elections," he says, reaching to answer another call.
A recent survey by the Caracas-based Datanalisis polling firm gives Mendoza 63 percent of the vote in a hypothetical race against Chavez. Pollsters interviewed 1,000 people in two major cities Nov. 11-19. The survey had a margin of error of 3 percentage points. Mendoza is an independent aligned with the new Justice First party, which has placed itself at the forefront of the anti-Chavez campaign. The party is popular among young, middle-class Venezuelans because its leaders are mostly under 40 and unassociated with corrupt governments of the past.
Another serious contender is Julio Borges, an Oxford-educated legislator and head of Justice First. He's the exact opposite of Chavez, a former army paratrooper from humble origins who spent two years in jail for leading a failed coup in 1992 before sweeping the 1998 election with tough talk against a corrupt political establishment. Borges, 33, won converts by personally leading a march through a band of rock-throwing Chavez supporters to deliver 2 million signatures demanding a referendum on the president's administration. *** Borges' party once drafted a proposal for an entire new constitution, based on decentralized government and more private participation in the economy. But such efforts have been sidelined by the push to oust Chavez.
There's also Carlos Ortega, the gruff president of the 1 million-member Venezuelan Workers Confederation who, as former head of the largest oil workers union, has dealt a serious blow to the Chavez government by leading a strike for higher pay. Ortega stunned fellow opposition leaders by announcing at a rally that the strike would begin Dec. 2. He also sent thousands on a march during an April strike to the presidential palace, which led to 19 people being killed by gunfire and a coup that briefly ousted Chavez. ***