Protesters call for Venezuelan presidents' resignation

CARACAS, Venezuela -- President Hugo Chavez promised Venezuelans a "peaceful revolution" of radical reforms. But his confrontational style and failure to improve living conditions provoked a rebellion of a different stripe.

In recent weeks, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to demand that Chavez resign. His poll numbers have plummeted. Even the loyalty of the Venezuelan armed forces has come into question after two military officers publicly called on Chavez, a former army paratrooper, to step down.

Chavez, who was sworn in three years ago, controls the courts, the Legislature and the electoral council. But the country's political crisis and deepening economic woes have many analysts wondering whether he will complete his term, which expires on Jan. 1, 2007.

"Most people think that Chavez is finished," said Miguel Angel Burelli, a former Venezuelan foreign minister. "There is an effort to plan for a post-Chavez Venezuela."

Government supporters insist that Chavez remains firmly in charge of this oil-producing nation of 24 million people. They maintain that yuppies who never liked the president lead the street demonstrations and that the poor majority backs the president.

"The opposition lacks leadership or an alternative project," Chavez told Chilean television earlier this month. The media, he added, "transmit false ideas as if there were a military coup here or a state of dissatisfaction, which is absolutely false."

Still, Chavez has launched battles on several fronts that have taken their toll on his popularity. He has badgered the media, bullied the trade unions, compared the Roman Catholic Church to a "tumor," sparked capital flight by issuing controversial economic decrees and angered the United States.

Surveys show that Chavez's job-approval rating has dropped from more than 80 percent in 1999 to about 33 percent. In one recent poll, 55 percent of the respondents said Chavez ought to resign or be forced out of office by the military.

"In three years, he's done all he can to alienate everyone," said Francisco Toro, who is making a film about Chavez tentatively called Searching for the Revolution.

Chavez, 47, who led a failed military coup against President Carlos Andres Perez in 1992, was elected by a landslide to the nation's top office in 1998. After a decade of economic strife and political scandals, he was hailed as a kind of savior for pledging to root out corruption and to govern on behalf of the poor.

His first move was to press for a new constitution that concentrated power in the president's hands. The document paved the way for Chavez to be re-elected to a six-year term in 2000, even though his original term had not expired. All told, Chavez and his supporters won eight elections or referendums during his first two years in office.

Chavez also traveled to partner nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. His shuttle diplomacy helped temporarily raise the price of Venezuela's heavy crude oil from $7 to about $32 a barrel, a windfall for the country. Government spending jumped by one-third.

Tarek William Saab, a pro-Chavez legislator in the National Assembly, said that by doubling the education budget, the president enabled one million additional children to attend public schools.

"Chavez is doing things that no other president has done," said Maria Fuente, a housekeeper, as she watched an anti-government march wind through the streets of downtown Caracas last week.

But other than a bloated state bureaucracy, some critics claim, Venezuela has little to show for the oil bonanza, which came to a halt last year as prices plunged.

The Venezuelan press has reported a series of corruption scandals related to Chavez's Plan Bolivar 2000, an emergency public works program run by the military. The president's anti-poverty programs -- from his plan to relocate urban slum-dwellers to the countryside to opening a network of "people's banks" -- have floundered.

Part of the problem, the president's critics say, is that Chavez never served in civilian government before his election and now relies on military men and hard-line leftists for advice. For example, the newly installed head of the vital national oil company is a former Marxist economist.

"Chavez refuses to acknowledge limits to his wisdom and insists on making every important decision by himself," said Toro, the filmmaker.

The president's actions have turned nearly every major power broker in Venezuela against him.

Business people are outraged by a series of economic laws covering everything from land use to the oil industry that were instituted by decree in November with almost no consultation with interest groups.

When Chavez's hand-picked candidate lost an election to head the powerful Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, the government tried to cancel the outcome. As the press became more critical, Chavez lambasted the media in speeches. He said the Catholic Church served the interests of the country's rich instead of helping the poor.

At times, Chavez has seemed to go out of his way to tweak Washington. Saying that Venezuela has the right to forge its own foreign policy, he has hobnobbed with the leaders of Cuba, Iraq and Libya. Donna Hrinak, the U.S. ambassador to Caracas, was briefly recalled to Washington last fall after Chavez condemned as terrorism the American-led airstrikes against Afghanistan.

"We have expressed our disagreement on some of his policies directly to him," Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this month. He called Chavez's policies a "serious irritant" to U.S.-Venezuelan relations.

Alfredo Keller, who runs a private polling firm in Caracas, said most Venezuelans backed Chavez when he engineered his political reforms. But the president, Keller added, has proved incapable of using the measures to strengthen the economy.

The gross domestic product grew by just 2 percent in 2001, and many analysts believe it may contract slightly this year. Unemployment has nearly doubled to 20 percent, and the crime rate has skyrocketed.

Last week, Chavez scrapped exchange-rate controls and allowed Venezuela's currency, the bolivar, to float on the open market in a rare free-market bid to restore investor confidence. But many analysts fear the move will spark inflation.

"Inflation will eat into Chavez's last bastion of support -- the country's poor -- and will raise the overall level of anger against the struggling president," said a report published last week by Stratfor, an Austin-based global intelligence firm.

In the absence of results, the down-and-out already appear to be tiring of Chavez's tirades against the rich. In one Keller survey taken in slum neighborhoods across the nation in December, 45 percent of the respondents approved of Chavez's performance while 46 percent disapproved.

"The poor are utilitarian," said Jose Vicente Carrasquero, a Caracas political analyst. "They are not Communists or Marxists. They will support you if their lives are getting better."

Backing for Chavez also may be wavering in the military. Earlier this month, Air Force Col. Pedro Soto and National Guard Capt. Pedro Flores publicly called for the president to resign. Soto claimed that 75 percent of their fellow officers agreed with their position.

Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said last week that the military continued to support Chavez.

But Maruja Tarre, a professor at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, said many officers, trained to be staunch anti-Communists, are angry about Chavez's close ties to Cuba and his diplomatic gestures toward leftist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia.

For now, however, most analysts say a coup seems unlikely, because the military does not want to soil its reputation.

But if street protests increase, these observers say, the armed forces may indeed intervene. Keller has even devised flow charts to explain the various paths Venezuela might take in the wake of a putsch.

Another scenario, analysts say, is a recall election that could legally be held at the halfway point of Chavez's term. But no one has emerged to lead Venezuela's opposition so far.

In a nationally televised address last Tuesday, Chavez promised to "sheathe my sword" and make some amends with his opponents. But many observers believe the die has already been cast.

"Chavez is an idealist," said Maria Teresa Romero, editor of Vision Venezuela, an online news service. "He wants to be the symbol of the Latin American left, and he will not betray his cause."

Chavez urges Venezuelans to denounce currency speculators out for self-enrichment

Chavez's schools--[Excerpt]A new constitution written by Chávez supporters requires all schools to teach ``Bolivarian principles'' ---- a code phrase for Chávez's brand of leftist populism ---- and the pro-Chávez majority in the legislative National Assembly is preparing a bill laying out the exact curriculum.

Last month, the president issued Decree 1011, creating a corps of ``itinerant inspectors'' empowered to close schools and fire teachers that don't follow government-set procedures and standards.

``Political commissars,'' Agudo called them. Jaime Manzo, head of the national teachers' union, called it ``a sword hanging over the head of any teacher who refuses to sing Chávez's praises in the classroom.''

Parents' groups and the teachers' union have appealed to the Supreme Court to block the decree and submitted to the assembly an alternate education reform plan that guarantees a ``pluralist education'' and bans ``partisan politics'' from the classroom.

New history texts for fourth- and sixth-graders published in 1999 praised Chávez's coup attempt and branded as ``corrupt oligarchies'' the two parties that ruled Venezuela since the late 1950s, Democratic Action and COPEI.

Chávez has also greatly expanded a system of paramilitary classes in public high schools that had long been on the books but were seldom held, portraying them as ``the founding stones of the new Venezuelan man.''

``He is promoting militarism, infecting texts with viruses that foster class hatreds ... and speak against globalization and privatization,'' Raffalli said in an interview. [End Excerpt]

Chavez refuses to acknowledge limits to his wisdom and insists on making every important decision by himself...
Business people are outraged by a series of economic laws covering everything from land use to the oil industry

In case you haven't guessed it from the above descriptions, Chavez is a communist.

Of course, most mainstream media don't believe there still are commies out there. Just "idealists".

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