Posted on 02/24/2003 1:18:03 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela - Every night for two months, Venezuelans knew where to find Carlos Ortega. The labor leader was sure be standing before cameras in Caracas, predicting the imminent downfall of President Hugo Chavez.
"The dictator's days are numbered," Ortega would thunder at his news conferences, flanked by business leader Carlos Fernandez.
Now Ortega, the leader of the strike that failed to oust Chavez, is in hiding, charged with treason and rebellion. Fernandez, accused of similar crimes, was seized by federal agents last week and is under house arrest.
Chavez wants both men sentenced to at least 20 years in prison for inflicting pain and suffering on Venezuelans with a strike that crushed the economy.
"See how the others are running to hide," he mocked in a speech after Fernandez's arrest.
Hiding is uncharacteristic of Ortega, the most visible and pugnacious of Chavez's opponents. He is the only government opponent to claim a measure of victory against Chavez since the leftist president was elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000.
As president of Venezuela's biggest oil workers union, Fedepetrol, Ortega led a four-day strike in 2000 for back pay and a collective contract for 20,000 workers. Chavez ceded on both counts.
Ortega subsequently rose to the top of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation, or CTV, which boasts 1 million members. In a bid to grasp control of the labor movement, Chavez called a nationwide election for CTV leaders over the protests of the International Labor Organization, which argued union elections were a private matter.
Since then, though, Ortega hasn't been so successful against Chavez.
Last year, he joined his labor forces with Fedecamaras, the leading business chamber, and convoked a general strike in April 2002 to support striking oil workers. Workers were upset with Chavez's intervention in Venezuela's semiautonomous state oil monopoly.
Ortega urged thousands to march on Miraflores, the presidential palace. Nineteen people died during the march, which prompted a two-day coup.
Chavez returned to power when an interim government composed mostly of business executives abolished Venezuela's constitution. Ortega seethed on the sidelines.
Ortega was last seen in public Wednesday, a day after a warrant for his arrest was issued. Alfredo Ramos, executive secretary of the CTV, said Ortega is moving from safehouse to safehouse.
"He will stay underground because there is no guarantee for his physical safety. He's received numerous death threats," Ramos said.
Ortega's whereabouts have become a national obsession. Rumors have put him in Aruba, Colombia or in remote ranches on Venezuela's vast central plains.
"He probably left the country already, but that bandit could be anywhere," said Ramon Ramirez, a construction worker who supports Chavez.
The latest strike, which ended Feb. 4 in all but the oil industry, cost Venezuela more than $4 billion, created shortages of food and medicines, and forced the world's fifth-largest oil exporter to import gasoline.
The strike focused attention on Venezuela's simmering political crisis but failed to bring about either early elections or Chavez's ouster.
The future of talks mediated by Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States, is in doubt.
Chavez responded angrily Sunday to foreign critics of the charges against the two strike leaders. He directed warnings at some members of a "Group of Friends" initiative created to bolster the negotiating process.
"Don't mess with our affairs!" Chavez said, singling out Gaviria, the United States, Spain and Colombia.
"Chavez is using the argument of sovereignty as a shield for his authoritarianism," said Pedro Nikken, legal adviser to the Democratic Coordinator opposition movement. He said Venezuela's opposition won't leave the OAS-mediated talks "under any circumstances."
``This is a turning point for Chávez,'' says political scientist and author Anibal Romero. ``The defeat is going to be symbolic, marking a descent in the Chávez myth.''
OLD-GUARD LEADER
Istúriz is widely expected to be trounced in favor of old-guard oil union leader Carlos Ortega, a longtime stalwart of the once powerful Democratic Action party.
Candidates on Ortega's slate, the United Workers' Front, have won approximately 70 percent of the individual union elections that have been held across the country over the past two months in which rank-and-file workers have picked their local leaders.
Thursday's vote is the culmination of the process, with the election of the CTV leadership, which represents workers in labor issues with government and business as the umbrella union organization.
``This is going to be an important factor against President Chávez's hegemony,'' Ortega says.
WORKERS LEERY
Analysts say Chávez's attempt to take over the unions -- despite his support base in the working class -- is backfiring because of workers' natural suspicion of a candidate backed by the country's largest employer -- the government.
``[Istúriz] is the boss' man,'' says Carlos Raúl Hernández, labor expert at the Simón Bolívar University.
Observers also signal the likely defeat as a symptom of Chávez's declining following among the general populace and the growing perception that his revolution is stagnating. Recent polls put Chávez's popularity at 51 to 54 percent, down from around 59 to 65 percent earlier this year.***
November 19, 2001 - Labor Chief: We Won't Destabilize By FABIOLA SANCHEZ, AP - CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - The newly elected president of Venezuela's largest labor union said Monday that his organization won't become a vehicle for the fractured opposition to destabilize President Hugo Chavez's government.
Carlos Ortega was sworn in Monday as president of the 1 million-member Confederation of Venezuelan Workers after defeating government-backed Aristobulo Isturiz.
The union is the only bastion of political dissent in Venezuela, where Chavez's allies have gained control of Congress, the Supreme Court and most state governments in democratic elections. Chavez considers the shake-up the start of a revolution to rebuild Venezuela after decades of corrupt governments.
``The president can relax. It will not be the CTV that fills the void of opposition to the government,'' Carlos Ortega told a news conference. ``We will not be an appendix of any party. We will act in defense of workers and their families.''
But Ortega also threatened to call for ``civil disobedience'' if the Supreme Court annuls the vote in a case introduced by Isturiz. Isturiz argues the elections should be held again because of stolen election materials, numerous fraud allegations and violent scuffles between pro-government and opposition factions. The elections were drawn out over three weeks because of the disorder.
Ortega, an ardent government critic who led a successful four-day oil strike for higher pay last year, won with 57 percent of the votes. Isturiz obtained 16 percent of the votes, and another opposition candidate, Alfredo Ramos, won 11 percent. Two other candidates won less than 10 percent each.
Ortega's victory is a political defeat for Chavez, who had hoped to oust the opposition from a union whose former leaders were accused of representing two unpopular political parties rather than workers' interest.
Some analysts have predicted increased labor unrest under Ortega, as the government struggles with billions of dollars of unpaid state wages and pensions - a debt inherited from past administrations.***
U.S. Says Chavez Remarks Are 'Inflammatory'"
Venezuela's Chavez Tells World to Back Off*** CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned the world to stop meddling in the affairs of his troubled South American nation on Sunday, as police locked up a prominent strike leader on "civil rebellion" charges. The populist president accused the United States and Spain of siding with his enemies, warned Colombia he might break off diplomatic relations, and reprimanded the chief mediator in tortuous peace talks for stepping "out of line."
"I ask all of the countries of this continent and of the world ... are you going (to) stop this meddling?" Chavez asked angrily, during his state-sponsored television show 'Alo Presidente.' "This is a sovereign nation." The tongue-lashing followed a recent flurry of diplomatic communiques expressing concern over Carlos Fernandez, a strike leader and prominent businessman who was yanked out of a Caracas steakhouse on Thursday at gunpoint by police.***
The Destruction of Petroleous de Venezuela*** The new dictatorship indirectly has promoted privatization of the only well run and efficient state industry in Venezuela. The Chavez government has destroyed PDVSA and now is forced to bring in foreigners to restart its major resource. Another irony is that the Chavez Constitution forbids the privatization of PDVSA, and requires it to hold a majority stake in oil sector projects with foreign energy firms. But never mind, Chavez writes constitutions and carries his around in his pocket, but does not follow any constitution.
Having fired over 700 of PDVSA's top executives and most of its middle managers, PDVSA is a company without a brain. With the upper level management removed, PDVSA headquarters in Caracas, in La Campina, has been taken over by the Minister of Energy and Mines, now in place to execute government orders. The new Petroleos de Chavez will try to raise production using foreign companies, whose workers do not strike!
Which foreign companies are willing to come into Venezuela, under the new currency and price controls, unattractive royalties and tax regime, and a country full of potholes and beggars? Will these companies be from the United States, Europe, China, Nigeria or Russia?
The Chavez government is rumored to be preparing an attractive offer to present to foreign companies to come in and restart Venezuela's oil and gas production - using foreign companies' financial strength and technology.
Gustavo Coronel, former PDVSA Board member, wrote the following in a January 28, 2003 article: "With the collapse of PDVSA, we are witnessing the collapse of the country . . . when the time comes, if I am still around, I hope to be a witness for the prosecution. Why? Because when I was building pipelines for a better PDVSA, Ali Rodriguez, the current President of the "revolutionary" PDVSA, was blowing them up, as the main dynamite expert of the Cuban-supported guerrillas which failed in Venezuela during the 1960s." (VHeadline.com)
It is Ali Rodriguez who now has complete control of PDVSA: financially and contractually. Ali Rodriguez Araque not only fires and hires, moves PDVSA funds around, but also can sign contracts like the one with Pepex.com (Herb Goodman, CEO) to take over PDVSA's oil trading. There is no longer any transparency. Those who work for PDVSA now work for Petroleos de Chavez, the fully credentialed People of Petroleum having been replaced by the mediocre, and now led by an "Oil Commander-in-Chief" (Chavez), with no auditing, or transparency.
Venezuelans are living in a war economy - in an internal war - a civil war, which could last a long time. Over 12,000 commercial establishments have closed, and 5,000 businesses are bankrupted. The Chavez government is now using currency controls and price controls to attack the only remaining productive sector remaining.
The Opposition, led by Carlos Ortega, the brave President of the CTV (Confederation of Venezuelan Workers), is going to continue to march, by the hundreds of thousands of families, demanding that Chavez resign. But he will not resign. These millions of brave Venezuelans refuse to live under a corrupt, Cuban dictatorship, and refuse to give up their country to a man who intentionally is destroying Venezuela.***
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