Posted on 01/01/2003 1:50:33 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of foes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez greeted the new year early on Wednesday with a big street party in Caracas, vowing to vote the leftist leader out of office in 2003.
But the populist president said he was winning the fight against an opposition strike squeezing the oil-rich economy.
Blowing whistles, waving national flags and setting off a thunderous barrage of fireworks, the anti-government protesters packed a multi-lane highway in eastern Caracas, clamoring for former paratrooper Chavez to resign and hold early elections.
Earlier, the outspoken president told the nation in a New Year's broadcast his government was defeating the month-old strike, which has strangled oil output, gasoline supplies and crude shipments by the world's No. 5 petroleum exporter.
Opposition leaders have vowed to maintain the crippling shutdown of the strategic oil industry, now in its fifth week.
It has caused alarm abroad, cutting off the United States from the source of more than 13 percent of its oil imports and helping to keep world oil prices close to two-year highs.
In Venezuela, the strike disrupted fuel and food supplies over Christmas. But it has so far failed in its aim to force the combative president to quit.
"We are ending the year ... battling away ... winning against another attempt to break Venezuela. They are not going to achieve it," Chavez said in his half-hour broadcast.
Invoking "Christ, my commanding officer," he brandished a small silver crucifix and displayed a small working model of an oil well pump to illustrate his efforts to break the strike.
"A VERY STUBBORN MAN"
At the opposition rally, the protesters danced to music.
"We all want Chavez to go, preferably through elections," said Maria Pinto, whose family runs a clothing shop that has stayed shut for more than a month in support of the strike.
"He's a very stubborn man ... but the time has to come when he must realize that we don't want him," another protester, publicist Nadezwda Aponte, told Reuters.
Chavez was scheduled to fly to Brazil to attend the formal inauguration on Wednesday of fellow left-winger President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Foes of Chavez, who was elected in 1998 and survived a brief coup in April, accuse him of ruining the economy with leftist policies and stirring up social hatred with his revolutionary rhetoric. They say he is trying to drag the country toward Cuba-style communism.
The opposition hopes to hold a nonbinding referendum on Chavez's rule on Feb. 2 but he has said he will pay no attention no matter what the result. He is sticking to a date in August, halfway through his current term, when he says the constitution allows for a binding referendum on his mandate.
Chavez insisted in his New Year's broadcast that he was turning the tide against what he called the oil strikers' "attempt to stab at the heart of the nation." He condemned them as "bad sons (of the nation), conspirators, saboteurs."
He has sacked dissident oil executives, used troops to help restart idled tanker ships, wells and refineries and also imported gasoline from abroad for the first time in 40 years.
Earlier, Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told the nation the government was gradually restoring strike-hit oil output, exports and refining. The shutdown has cost South America's biggest oil producer millions of dollars of lost revenue.
FACING ECONOMIC DIFFICULTIES
Ramirez said oil production, which had stood at 3.1 million barrels per day in November, had been brought back to 800,000 bpd and he added this would reach 1.2 million bpd in the first week of January. But strike leaders rejected the government claims, saying the country was pumping a mere 150,000 bpd.
Chavez acknowledged the strike had damaged the economy.
"Let's be prepared to face difficulties in the first quarter of the year, economic difficulties," he said.
The oil-reliant economy, which depends on oil sales for 80 percent of its export revenues, has already contracted sharply in 2002 and inflation and unemployment have been rising fast. It now faces a bracing fiscal crunch at the start of 2003.
Despite signs of frustration in the opposition ranks, leaders have vowed to pile up the pressure against Chavez in January with bolder street protests, including a possible march on the Miraflores presidential palace.
Miraflores has been off-limits to protesters since a coup was triggered in April by a demonstration that ended with 19 people shot dead by gunmen and more than 100 injured. Both government and opposition blamed each other for the killings.
Chavez says his opponents belong to a rich, resentful elite opposed to his self-styled "revolution."
He says his reforms, which include a nationalistic oil strategy, increased state intervention in the economy and cheap credits and land grants for the poor, are aimed at eliminating minority privileges and distributing oil wealth more fairly.
No one ignores that his efforts helped in the rebuilding of OPEC, whose head, Alí Rodríguez, -a man of his trust- was his choice for the position. To bring OPEC back to life he went to Baghdad to talk to Saddan Hussein andto condemn the embargo against Irak. He went to Libya to meet with Gaddafi at the residential ruins because of U. S. missiles in 1989 and to offer his fraternal solidarity. He brought Mohammed Khatami to Caracas and later visited him in Teheran, in the process of reaching concrete and strong agreements with Iran. The most important was the making of the axis of a powerful alliance to turn oil into a strategic element against globalization.
A momentous choice is before him. As President he has journeyed the entire planet blaming globalization and neoliberalism as the root of the pain of peoples. In all scenarios he has said that savage capitalism breeds on the power of an empire who practices it and imposes it on others. A new balance in world power is indispensable to humanize globalization and slow down neoliberalism. He believes to have conquered universal admiration in the frontal, daily battle against unipolarity. Does the empire hope to have us bring down the flags?
In the 48 hours following the terrorist attack he vanishes from sight. He would later say that he was in meditation. How can he forget that Fidel has delivered to him the relay symbols, ushering him as the rising leader in the battle against the empire? How can it be forgotten that Ghadaffi has pointed to him as the head of a new movement to conquer the dignity of imperialism's oppressed peoples? How not to recall that wondrous day in Malaysia, when rulers of 77 countries asked him to lead Southern nations in their renewed efforts towards justice and equity? Or the mail exchange with famous fellow Venezuelan Carlos Ilich Ramírez -"EL Chacal"- for whose extradiction so much has been done by the Ambassador to Paris? In his lonely reflection he turns his sight onto a magazine on his desk: The New Yorker with the 22 page report written by Jon Lee Anderson. The President has read it several times. He reads again the final paragraphs.
"Chávez acknowledged that there is still misunderstanding and confusion in the U. S. over his policies. On this he said: "Until recently, what was under discussion, here and abroad, was to appease Chávez." Let's be nice to him to see if we can tame him" easily.
But it seems this beast is not too easy to tame." He lowered his voice and, this time, he did not smile. "This is an ideological conviction of mine and nothing will change that."***
Fidel, Saddam and Hugo --An improbable but growing friendship of three military revolutionaries*** Mr. Chávez is the most intriguing new leader to emerge in Latin America since Mr. Castro - and he is the lynchpin between Mr. Castro and Mr. Saddam. Although Cuba had been sending doctors and health workers to Iraq for years, there had not been any major contacts between the two countries until Mr. Chávez appeared on the scene. This fall, Mr. Chávez became the first democratically elected foreign head of state to visit Iraq since the Gulf War, ostensibly to invite Mr. Saddam to a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. But it also was an in-your face gesture toward the United States.***
Crude oil prices decline, but worries remain*** The threat of simultaneous supply disruptions pulled world oil prices to two-year highs on Monday, but news that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was ready to raise output sparked a selloff that some analysts said was to be expected. "You have war and Venezuela premiums of $6 to $8 dollars built in," said analyst Bill O'Grady with AG Edwards. "Eventually, someone is going to take their money off the table." After markets closed, the American Petroleum Institute reported that crude inventories and imports fell sharply last week, sending a strong signal about the impact of the nationwide strike in oil-rich Venezuela.***
9/11: Chavez financed Al Qaeda, details of $1M donation emerge***The day after the attack, September 12, Chavez supporters publicly burned the Stars and Stripes in the main square of Caracas in an outburst of gleeful satisfaction over the attacks. The organizer of the Plaza Bolivar protest, Lina Ron (a.k.a. "Rosa", born 9/23/59 in Anaco, Anzoátegui state), received public praise from Chavez. Unknown to the press, Lina Ninette Ron Pereira had been on the payroll of Caracas governor Hernan Gruber Odreman, ever since Chavez appointed him head of the Distrito Federal in 1999. She is still employed by Chavez, today working for Caracas borough mayor Freddy Bernal of Chavez's MVR party. There, she is in charge of a "cultural center" which mobilizes masses for pro-Chavez demonstrations and is active in breaking up opposition events.
$1M for Al Qaeda to fight against the United States
But Chavez did not stop at merely praising the attacks and having his support groups burn the American flag. He wanted to do more. He wanted to help Al Qaeda and the Taliban in their coming war against the United States. Juan Diaz Castillo from Venezuela's Air Force, was given that job. The private pilot of Hugo Chavez, Major Diaz Castillo has since defected and has started to talk. As the trusted insider who flew the president's Airbus, he was an eye-witness to secret meetings between Chavez and some of the top dictators in the world. He was also in charge of organizing one million dollars worth of assistance from Chavez to Al Qaeda.
" - Chavez trusted me completely. So right after 9/11, when he decided to help Al Qaeda, he turned to Jorge Oropeza and to me. Jorge was my boss in the presidential air support unit, but he is just a political appointee, so I did all the actual work." The work, as ordered by Chavez, was to help Al Qaeda but to make it look like he was helping the Taliban, using humanitarian grounds as the excuse.***
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