Posted on 01/13/2002 1:15:30 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday named as his vice president a retired military colonel who participated in his failed 1992 coup, replacing the much-criticized leftist academic Adina Bastidas.
Chavez, a former paratrooper elected in 1998 with a landslide mandate to fight widespread poverty and graft in his South American oil exporting country, promoted Diosdado Cabello from minister of the presidential secretariat to his executive vice president.
``Very soon I will swear in Diosdado Cabello, a trained systems engineer, as vice president of the republic,'' Chavez said during his weekly radio and television show ``Hello President.''
Cabello began his career in government by presiding over the successful liberalization of the telecommunications market as the head of telecoms regulator Conatel. He is regarded by many as a moderate within the circles of Chavez's ``democratic revolution.''
Bastidas drew stern criticism during more than a year as vice president for a number of comments. These included a well-publicized rant, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, against White-Anglo Saxon Protestant terrorism in the developing world.
Since taking office three years ago, Chavez has alarmed many analysts by naming a number of active and retired military officials to senior government posts, including the current foreign minister and the head of state oil company PDVSA.
He has also reportedly irked many in the armed forces by raising his fellow conspirators in the botched 1992 uprising to influential positions in the military.
Thanking Bastidas for her work, Chavez said her greatest achievement as vice president had been steering the content of 49 controversial laws that the president decreed last year using special legislative powers.
Business leaders have said these laws, ranging from finance and fishing to central government administration and land reform, discriminate against the private sector and will discourage investment.
``Of course they are not perfect, there are some errors as in every human work, but these are mistakes which we will gradually correct and we are currently correcting,'' said Chavez, who has rejected opposition appeals to amend the laws.
After an unprecedented nationwide strike on Dec. 10 to protest this legislation, opposition politicians, business leaders and unions have announced a march in Caracas on Jan. 23 -- the anniversary of the birth of modern Venezuelan democracy -- to protest against what they call Chavez's authoritarian style of government.
Chavez did not immediately name a successor to Cabello in the ministry of the presidential secretariat, nor did he specify if Bastidas would occupy any new government post.
More on the oft described "left-leaning" (don't you just love that?) Hugo Chavez.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, swears in his brother Adan Chavez as head of National Institute of Land and Agricultural Development at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Jan 9, 2002. (AP Photo/Juan Carlos Solorzano, Miraflores)
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