Posted on 02/26/2002 12:07:45 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in an interview published Tuesday, dismissed growing calls by military officers for his resignation. But a U.S. official said Venezuelan officers have raised the possibility of a coup.
Chavez told the French daily Le Monde that the dissident officers "are dissatisfied for personal reasons" and that risks of a military coup are "zero."
"Venezuela has a government that was legitimately elected and enjoys popular support. I might even say that it enjoys more popular support than any other country in the American continent," he said. He claimed the news media were "putting on a show" with the officers.
Adding weight to the dissidents' argument that they speak for a silent majority in the ranks, a Bush administration official said Tuesday that some Venezuelan officers have sounded out U.S. diplomats about how Washington would react to a coup. They were told the U.S. stridently opposes any subversion of Venezuela's democratic process, the official said on condition he not be identified.
In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the United States has made no secret of its concerns that Chavez has tried to stifle dissent.
"We believe that all parties should respect democratic institutions," said the spokesman, Richard Boucher.
"That applies to whatever direction the attacks on democracy might be coming from," he added.
Chavez, a former army paratrooper who led a failed coup in 1992, was overwhelmingly elected president in 1998 on an anti-poverty, anti-corruption platform. His current term expires in 2007.
Already locked in a verbal war with business, labor, the news media and the Roman Catholic Church, Chavez has struggled for weeks to play down perceptions of military discontent. Those efforts suffered another blow Monday when a fourth military officer demanded that he resign.
Air Force Gen. Roman Gomez Ruiz urged other colleagues to speak out, citing alleged government corruption and what he called Chavez's politicization of the armed forces. He said "many more" in the 100,000-strong military shared his discontent.
"Remember that the people are above all else. And our loyalty is to the nation, not with a particular leader," Gomez Ruiz said. "President Chavez, for the good of the country and for love of the armed forces, resign peacefully and take responsibility for your failure."
Gomez Ruiz said Tuesday he was worried about the expanding polarization of Venezuelan society into two camps - one led by the leftist Chavez and the other by a growing but disorganized opposition that has balked at the president's attempts to increase the state's role in the economy and is weary of his incessant verbal attacks on any and all critics.
Amid the bickering, Venezuela's oil-dependent economy has struggled along with the global slump in world oil prices. Poverty afflicts 80 percent of the nation's 24 million people. Street crime is high. And the Venezuelan bolivar has lost more than a third of its value against the U.S. dollar in recent weeks after the government abandoned exchange controls in an effort to stem billions of dollars in capital flight.
Many in the armed forces resent Chavez's distancing of Venezuela from traditional allies such as the United States and his political ties with Cuba and leftist Colombian rebels. They also object to being assigned public works and other traditionally civilian tasks, which they consider outside their role as defenders of the country.
"We need peace, tranquility, quiet, work and a lot of security," Gomez Ruiz told Union Radio Tuesday.
He praised other officers who have publicly called for Chavez to resign: Air Force Col. Pedro Soto, National Guard Capt. Pedro Flores and Navy Vice Adm. Carlos Molina Tamayo. Another officer, Gen. Guaicaipuro Lameda, quit the armed forces after he was fired as head of Venezuela's state-owned petroleum company so that he could be free to criticize Chavez.
Soto was discharged last week, and Flores was jailed for 15 days. The military is still deciding whether to sanction Molina Tamayo.
Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said Gomez Ruiz was angry about being asked to step down earlier this month as head of air transport in the Infrastructure Ministry.
Both the government and opposition groups planned marches in Caracas on Wednesday to commemorate 1989 food riots that killed hundreds.
In a newspaper advertisement Tuesday, more than 3,000 workers at state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela SA protested Chavez's decision to fire Lameda and replace him with leftist economist Gaston Parra.
Bump!!
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