Posted on 12/15/2002 10:28:23 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela - Opponents of President Hugo Chavez piloted motor boats around oil tankers moored off the Venezuelan coast to show support for strikers on board in a new demonstration Sunday, hours after hundreds of thousands of people marched through the capital demanding the president step down.
Dozens of boats pulled up around two tankers on lake Maracaibo in western Venezuela, while people on shore gathered in support waving red, yellow and blue Venezuelan flags.
Opposition protesters caravan in boats in support of oil tanker 'Moruy' that has been anchored with two other oil tankers, the 'Pilin Leon' and 'Morichal' for sixteen days in support of the general strike seeking the ouster of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, as a coast guard boat patrols, background, in Maracaibo Lake in western Venezuela, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2002. Venezuelan soldiers boarded 'Pilin Leon' and forced the crew to disembark. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch)
A two-week-old nationwide strike has crippled Venezuela's vital oil industry, and the tankers stalled offshore for days have been a symbol of the opposition's drive to remove Chavez. The government replaced dissident captains on the striking ships last week, but the tankers still have not moved and the situation on board remains unclear.
The seaborne demonstration came after the opposition held its biggest rally yet Saturday night, when as many as 1 million people clogged a main highway in Caracas, many shouting, "Chavez get out!" Along the march route, protesters filled bridges, overpasses and parks, waving giant Venezuelan flags and blowing whistles.
Chavez supporters hastily threw a smaller, but boisterous street demonstration of thousands.
The huge rally was a fresh slap to Chavez's elected leftist government as it struggles with the strike launched Dec. 2 by labor and business leaders bent on toppling Chavez. The opposition demands Chavez resign or call early elections, angered by what it claims is his inept leadership and mishandling of a deteriorating economy.
Chavez, who says he won't resign, was delivering his regular weekend radio and television address, and many were awaiting his response to the rally - and to the United States' new stance backing the call for early elections.
"Some kind of early election is needed," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said Saturday at the end of a visit.
But Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton has said an early election is "not something outlined in the constitution and it can't be moved forward without the corresponding constitutional considerations."
Venezuela's constitution does not allow for early elections until halfway through a president's term - in this case, August 2003 - and early elections would require amendments to the constitution.
Chavez's leftist ideology, his friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro and a visit to Iraq have rankled Washington, but Shannon said the Bush administration hoped for a peaceful, democratic electoral solution.
Meanwhile, Venezuelans feared worsening gasoline shortages due to the strike. The country has already suffered panic buying, supermarket shortages of basic goods and long lines at banks that shortened business hours.
Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil producer and a major supplier to the United States. During the strike, crude output has fallen from about 3 million barrels a day to only 550,000.
Carlos Ortega, a strike leader and head of the 1-million-strong labor confederation that is the backbone of the work stoppage, told demonstrators Saturday he would not relent as the strike enters a third week.
"This regime has lost in the streets! It has lost the support of the people," he said.
Chavez supporters also dug in. Government officials summoned Chavez supporters on Saturday evening to a "Christmas celebration," where several thousand people danced and clapped hands to traditional Christmas music.
"Those coup plotters, despite all their efforts, cannot defeat him," said Alexis Mujica, a university worker loyal to Chavez.
The embattled populist leader, who survived a brief coup in April, seemed bent on trying to defeat the strike and holding on to his 4-year-old rule of the world's No. 5 oil exporter.
But in another sign that the government was struggling to break the strike, authorities failed in a pre-dawn attempt on Sunday to replace the striking crew of an oil tanker anchored in the oil and shipping hub of Lake Maracaibo.
The navy put a replacement captain and crew aboard the Pilin Leon tanker, whose original captain joined the stoppage more than a week ago, triggering similar actions by other Venezuelan oil tanker captains.
But the replacements had to leave after lawyers representing the strikers discovered they were not qualified to operate the vessel. Several previous attempts to re-start strike-bound tankers, some involving troops, have also failed.
Piling pressure on Chavez, at least half a million Venezuelans took part in a huge opposition rally in east Caracas late Saturday, clamoring for Chavez to step down.
Some estimates put the crowd at over one million.
The huge protest followed a public call by the United States, the largest buyer of Venezuela's now disrupted oil exports, for Chavez to hold early elections. The leftist former army officer firmly rejected the U.S. call on Saturday.***
1 million swarm Caracas roads to demand Chavez's resignation - Chavez calls them "confused" - Some great pictures.
1. President Bush and VP Cheney are Republicans.
2. President Bush and VP Cheney worked in the oil industry.
3. Venezuela has oil
4. Huge rally to over throw Chavez's elected leftist government.
Therefore President Bush and VP Chency are RACIST, oh and it’s only about the oil.............and race.......and oil......and race.
If Venezuela's opposition manages to push Chavez out, what would come next? [Full text] By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press Writer CARACAS, Venezuela - This is how Venezuela's opposition hones its strategy to defeat President Hugo Chavez: Leaders sit around a table screaming at each other, each trying to drown out the others. Some call for Chavez's immediate resignation. Others demand a popular referendum. Yet others want general elections.
"Nobody is really in control. People are shouting, trying to get their message across," said a person who has attended several of the meetings, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
If opposition leaders can't agree among themselves, it could be difficult for them to rally Venezuelans around a contender capable of beating Chavez - who still commands 30 percent approval ratings - at the ballot box.
At least half a dozen politicians have emerged as potential candidates against Chavez - that is, if early elections are eventually held. Each would be a clean break from the leftist former paratrooper and would move Venezuela's foreign policy away from Cuba and toward Washington. They would remove the army from civil duties Chavez has given them, such as painting schools and fixing roads. They would restructure Chavez's extensive programs designed to help Venezuela's poor majority.
The strongest following is for Enrique Mendoza, the governor of Miranda state, which hugs the capital city. Wearing a backward baseball cap and faded jeans, Mendoza mixes informal charm with a record of efficient state governance.
According to a recent survey by the Caracas-based Datanalisis polling firm, Mendoza would get 63 percent of the vote in a one-on-one election against Chavez. Pollsters interviewed 1,000 people in two major cities between Nov. 11 and 19. The survey had a margin of error of three percentage points.
Close behind Mendoza are Julio Borges, a congressman who acted as a judge resolving neighborly disputes in a popular television show, and Henrique Salas Romer, a former governor who ran against Chavez in 1998.
Before Chavez's 1998 landslide victory, Venezuela had seen a 40-year alternation of three centrist political parties, who presided over the riches of an oil boom - and the devastation of an oil bust.
Chavez's challengers condemn his visits with Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and his close personal friend Fidel Castro of Cuba. A new government would likely establish a different foreign policy by strengthening ties with officials in Washington, who Chavez has irked with his "revolutionary" rhetoric, while distancing Venezuela from U.S. enemies like communist-led Cuba.
Shortly after taking office, Chavez played a key role in persuading members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut production and boost oil prices. In so doing, he turned Venezuela, traditionally an OPEC quota buster, into the 11-member cartel's leading price hawk.
Under new leadership, the need to create jobs and increase government revenue could prompt a break with OPEC, leaving Venezuela free to produce and export and much oil as it wants.
Oil exports account to 70 percent of Venezuela's gross domestic product and roughly half of government revenue.
But first, the opposition needs to clarify how it intends to oust Chavez. And on that there is little unity.
Proposals range from a constitutional amendment to cut the president's term from six to four years, to a nonbinding referendum on his rule that might encourage him to resign.
Others believe the best tactic is the pressure of the current general strike, which has lasted 13 days and paralyzed the economy. More than 1 million people rallied Saturday night in the opposition's biggest march yet.
"Some people are carrying signs reading 'Elections Now!' while others yell 'Resign Now!' Those are two completely different situations, and I'm not sure people realize that," said Datanalisis President Antonio Gil Yepes.
While opposition politicians fight for the spotlight and hash out their differences, Chavez is calling on march-happy strike leaders to "move from protest to proposal."
His government has tried to capitalize on the differences within the Democratic Coordinator, the umbrella organization of opposition groups.
The state-run television channel on Saturday broadcast what it said was a taped telephone conversation between two prominent opposition leaders, labor boss Carlos Ortega and former guerrilla Angela Zago.
In the conversation, the two speakers insult fellow opposition leaders, calling them "idiots," and the one identified as Ortega refers to members of the fledgling First Justice party, to which Borges belongs, as "kids."
The two people on the tape discuss a strategy aimed at removing Chavez through a nonbinding referendum on his mandate. They are dubious of an outright vote, saying Chavez would use fraud to win, and say forcing his resignation would be preferable.
The government television station didn't say how it obtained the tape.
Amid all the confusion, most opposition supporters concede Chavez has helped their nation of 24 million people: He has made Venezuelans think about their leadership.
"The one good thing about Chavez is that before we were very different: Nobody went to vote," Denise Carbonell, a 45-year-old engineer, said at an opposition march. "Now everybody will." [End]
-Shane
P.S.- See also the thread linked below here for latest updated Venezuela opposition events...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/806773/posts?
I just hope the boys from Langley get it right when they oust this guy again.
Their TV stations there would have Chavez on live in a little box proclaiming, for instance, that the strike efforts were a failure, hoax and non-existant and the big picture would be a live roving camera going down the street showing just the opposite. It was really comical, if the stakes were not so grave. Or, he'd be saying only some local Caracas disruptions were happening, but the rest of the country was fine, and then the shots from elsewhere around the country showed him to be lieing again. Or, last week, that the petro strike wasn't affecting gas supplies in the country and that most every gas station was open, and there would be the cameras again showing it wasn't so. They do that all the time to him, it's so easy, he opens his mouth and the video rolls and shows the truth. In fact, one TV station in Caracas I'd watch has a regular nightly comedy section as the final segment of their news report called "Chavez vs Chavez" with Rocky movie theme music for the background as they show one clip of Chavez from the past making some declaration and then another, very recent, clip that is in direct contradiction to his earlier pronouncements.
His lies and deceptions have caught up to him and his active/vocal support has largely shrunk to only those with a vested interest in his power maintaining theirs or they are paid or bused or given free beer/food to come to his rallys. The second day of the strike the media there got a copy of the MVR notice that went out telling all the local party chieftans to send X number of drivers to Caracas to drive around town all day to make the traffic look normal to lesson the appearance that the strike was really happening! TV stations even interviewed some of the hired drivers from out of town that were being paid a couple bucks to drive around all day! This is the kind of stuff that goes on down there, but there are so many now against Chavez that inevitably somebody from inside catches wind of these type shenanigans and blows the whistle to the press.
It's amazing and only the USA media still parrots his and his supporters pronouncements without showing this dislocation from reality. Sentiment is very lopsided towards Anti-Chavez and contains a large cross-section of the culture there. This is not an evenly split respectable difference of opinion. It's a no-rules, anything goes, Chavez eager not to have his dynasty evaporate in the glare of reality. It's also why the opponets of his are not eager for another election, they know he'd cheat, they just want him to go!
-Shane
You are so right! No leftist truly wants to help the poor. It is just their means to power. They appeal to the poor and ignorant who believe in greed and a free lunch.
LOL! I hope so, too. That said, I really don't think we were particularly involved in last April's ouster attempt. I read an interview with one of the Venezuelan military officers who is now leading this one, and he said the thing he regretted most was taking Chavez' pistol away just when he was about to shoot himself after he had been driven out of Miraflores in April.
Now THAT's a mistake that won't be made again!
He told me that story, about a week ago in my room overlooking the Altamira Plaza, of how he'd wrestled the gun from Chavez's mouth while pleading with him not to kill himself. Genuinely wishes today he'd not of restrained him so, is an understatement. Could only slowly shake his head as he recounted the ironic story, like something out of a gothic tale of palace intrigue, now that his own head was surely at risk of being on the block for having since deserted Chavez.
I have a lot of admiration for these career military officers truly risking it all (remember, they are publicly standing their ground here, not hiding or running off to Miami) because they are appalled at what's come of their country and very fearful of the Cubanization plans Chavez has embraced. See more of these brave officers taking a stand on principles here...http://www.militaresdemocraticos.com/sp/oficiales.html
-Shane
The problem is that Chavez has been subverting that very thing, and yet I understand that elections are constitutionally permitted yet.
I'm sure Chavez could resign under the constitution of Venezeula, but who is his automatic successor? Surely it's one of his cronies, right?
I guess I'd favor a military coup, suspending the constitution and calling for an early election, but doing so causes damage to democratic principles.
I fear greatly for our democracy-loving friends in Venezuela. Gasoline will run out by mid-week, and the country will descend into chaos. Chavez will not relinquish power easily. I fear thousands will die before he's gone.
But gone he will be, because his supporters are courageous and outnumber Chavez's supporters by a large margin.
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