SAY NO TO HEALTHCARE REFORM…
EVERYDAY I WRITE TO CONGRESSMAN MURTHA, CASEY AND SPECTOR TO SAY THIS AND MORE…
I AM SO HAPPY THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE WAKING UP…PLEASE GET A NEW CONGRESS …PLEASE SAVE OUR COUNTRY….DO YOU REALIZE THE PEOPLE THAT THEY ARE CALLING TERRORISTS, MOBS, RADICALS, AND CONSPIRING ARE THE VIETNAM VETS, WWII PEOPLE, PEOPLE FROM THE 70′S WHO RALLIED TO FINISH UP nAM WITH NIXON…I OWN A BUSINESS IN JOHN MURTHA’S COUNTY…I WAS AFRAID TO SPEAK OUT…OUR MANUFACTURERS ARE GOING UNDER LEFT AND RIGHT….OBAMA AND FRIENDS CAUSED THIS ECONOMY MESS…I GUESS THEY THOUGHT IT WOULD COME BACK ON COMMAND…IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY….
YOU CAN CALL YOUR PEOPLE TERRORISTS AND EXPECT THEM TO TAKE IT SITTING DOWN…THEY ARE NOT PART OF ANYTHING BUT STANDING UP FOR THEMSELVES…I HOPE IT CONTINUES….I HAVE NOT BEEN WRITING THO THE REPUBLICANS BUT WHO SHOULD I WRITE TO WHO IS IN FAVOR OF THIS HEEALTHCARE REFORM….THEY DID THIS TO SARAH PALIN IT WAS BAD ENOUGH – BUT WHEN THEY DO IT TO THE PUBLIC…IT’S A WHOLE DIFFERENT STORY….I CANNOT BE QUIET ANYMORE ON MY OWN…FRAN DECKER DECKER DIAMOND JEWELERS – IN BUSINESS 33 YEARS AND GOING TO LAY EVERYONE OFF IF THIS ALL GOES THROUGH…9 OF THEM

WE ARE NOT FAR FROM THIS I AM AFRAID…..

Summary on Venezuela 39

Enrique ter Horst

Caracas, 8 August 2009

“Diosdado Cabello, estoy esperando”, President Chávez told his Minister of Public Works and Housing and President of Conatel, the radio and TV regulatory agency, “I am waiting”. He did not have to wait too long, as last Saturday in the early morning hours Cabello ordered 32 radio stations and 2 TV stations to stop their transmissions and close their operations. No administrative or legal procedure preceded the closure, in order to forestall any “on the air’ defense by the broadcasters. “Let them go to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice”, Cabello said, in his usual arrogant style. It is part of a broader, fast-track strategy to saddle the country with a new, Marxist Leninist legal and political framework before the end of the year.

Five of the stations are owned or linked to the CNB (Circuito Nacional Belfort) broadcasting system, clearly in the opposition camp, and which retransmitted nationwide the popular Globovision “Alo,Ciudadano” news and instant analysis talk-show hosted by Leopoldo Castillo, who has a talent of inviting the most articulate critics of the regime and has (had?) a very large audience in the entire country thanks to the CNB circuit. Clearly also intended to intimidate Globovision, the last TV station openly critical of the regime has however been denouncing the measure in the strongest terms, and was “rewarded” last Monday with a tear gas attack on its premises by a group of hoodlums led by Chávez loyalist Lina Ron personally. Chávez condemned the attack the next day, explaining that it played into the hands of the “counterrevolution”, and informing that Ms. Ron had been detained after turning herself in. Was it because of what she did or because it hurt the revolution?

Most of the stations are located in Caracas, Valencia, and the states of Zulia, Tachira and Falcon, and it is probably no coincidence that in the last elections opposition candidates made a strong showing in all of them. The decision is clearly political, although it was explained after the fact as having been based on either the death of the original holder of the authorization to transmit, or on it having lapsed. PSUV Vice President Escarra declared that it had been previously discussed in the party, and Chávez congratulated Cabello on the measure and stated that “we have not closed any radio stations, we have recovered them. …stations that now belong to the people, not to the bourgeoisie”, adding that the measure was part of “the struggle against the media war (sic), against the lies of the bourgeoisie and the oligarchy”, adding in the third person, as he is fond of doing, that the media is “trying to distance Chávez from the people”. The retaliation might also include confiscation of the transmission equipments.

Last March Chávez had declared that “support for the government is between 60% and sometimes touches 70% (sic). If it was not for these media in the hands of the oligarchy, that attack, lie and manipulate so much, support for the government, for the revolution, would be much more than 80%. But there still is a group of people who are confused”. The measure has led to localized, rather small protests and shows of solidarity, as well as statements by the relevant private radio and TV organizations denouncing its arbitrary nature. The opposition parties grouped in the “Mesa de Unidad” also denounced the decision and blamed Chávez personally.

A week before Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega had addressed the National Assembly in order to present a draft law “against media crimes” as her “humble contribution”, she said, towards the “protection of national security, which when put next to the freedom of expression, must prevail”. The draft allows for a very broad interpretation of what would constitute a media crime, which is left to the regulation of the law to be approved (an attribution of the Executive branch) and to the judgment of the prosecutors’ office. The objective, according to most analysts, is to force the media into self-censorship. The text was quietly dropped, as its political cost was escalating daily, and the standing of Ms. Ortega has suffered accordingly. Opposition spokesmen denounced that its main objective has however found itself into other draft texts, in particular into the draft law on education.

The latest development, and which acquired critical importance only yesterday, is the above mentioned draft law on education that was circulated in the last 24 hours among the members of the National Assembly Commission on Education and which, “without mentioning the word socialism”, as Education Minister Navarro underlined, would give the government total flexibility to reform the national education system. The draft also foresees severely curtailing the traditionally large autonomy of public and private universities, imposing a system of social control in evaluating the performance of professors, and giving wide attributions to the Consejos Comunales. An attempt to reform the education system in the early years of the regime led to the first street protests that ended in the 11 April 2002 massacre.

Only last Tuesday Chávez said again that he was going to floor the revolution’s accelerator (“Voy a meter a fondo el acelerador de la revolucion”), and the urgency to establish the legal framework of a Marxist dictatorship shows in the National Assembly’s work programme. Indeed, it has before it four critically important draft laws that would fundamentally alter the basic tenets of a this still formally liberal democracy and its market system; one on Social Property (propiedad social), abolishing private property of means of production; another on Workers Councils (consejo de trabajadores), regulating the management of expropriated private industry; a third on Public Planning (planificación publica), which will ensure that central funding (oil income) will flow mainly to governors and mayors that implement the socialist model and, lastly, one reforming the Organic Law on Work (Ley Orgánica del Trabajo), which in its present form would become inapplicable in a socialist economy. All these laws are in furtherance of the Simon Bolivar Socialist Plan for 2007-2013, which spells out the intended Marxist objectives with remarkable clarity. Discussions on these draft laws are to start this month, and the intention is to approve them before the end of the year. The National Assembly also has before it a new tax law, new laws on the sale and rental of real estate, and new banking and insurance laws. The new Electoral Law eliminating the proportional representation of minorities is expected to be promulgated already next week.

These new laws will represent a watershed in moving Venezuela to a totalitarian society. As if these new laws were not enough, on 26 July President Chavez, at the commemoration of the 10 years of the Constituent Assembly (half of its members did not participate) announced his intention to accelerate the “move to the proletarian state”, and that by 15 December “not a single counterrevolutionary law” should remain valid. “We must finish demolishing the structures of the bourgeois state and create the new structures of the proletarian state”, he stated on the same occasion. He added that for that purpose he might request a fourth delegation of legislative authority from the National Assembly. Chávez had announced in early 2008 that had the constitutional reform been approved, he had 100 “socialist laws” ready to be promulgated under his third delegation of legislative authority. Apparently their time has now come.

The situation of the labor sector continues to deteriorate. According to Andrés Velázquez, the Secretary General of la Causa R and a respected labor leader, also citing the Labor Observatory of the Catholic University, labor conflicts have increased from 45 in January to 59 in February, 113 in March, and now total over 400. They affect the aluminum, steel, iron briquetting plants, electricity, iron ore mining, health, education, salt mining, oil, car assembly and the judicial sectors. A separate, very disturbing development is the announcement of the creation of PSUV “Patrulleros”, or Patrols. Consisting of between 20 and 30 party members, they are supposed to act as roving groups that promote the revolutionary gospel and verify its compliance. They are expressly not to have a leader.

*

Chávez has always been mindful of the close relationship between his national political objectives and his international ambitions. Generally he has succeeded in establishing with most governments in Latin America and the Caribbean political and economic ties which are strong enough to secure him a fairly free hand internally. They cover an array of sweeteners ranging from the purchase of depressed public debt (Argentina and Ecuador), assistance in the nationalization of gas fields (Bolivia), balance of payments support tied to the price of oil (Caricom and Central America), large infrastructure projects and purchase of arms (Brazil, China, Russia, Byelorussia and France), and privileged access to oil reserves and oil production (Spain, China, France, India, Brazil, Russia, Argentina and Chile). The purchase of these “insurance policies” has worked quite well for him up to now – the Inter-American Democratic Charter is not likely to be invoked against him any time soon – but sometimes accidents happen, like when the Colombian army discovered the computers of FARC Commander Raul Reyes in the Ecuadorian jungle. Now there apparently is also physical proof that confirms much of the information found in them.

Chávez has apparently been caught red-handed in support of the FARC, with the discovery of three highly effective Swedish AT-4 missile launchers (and their missiles) in a FARC camp, and which were traced by the manufacturer to the Venezuelan army. He is now strenuously trying to direct world attention to the Colombia-US agreement on the use of 7 Colombian military bases by US forces, which undoubtedly is a real substantive issue. The agreement on the bases came however two months after Foreign Minister Maduro of Venezuela had been informed privately by his Colombian counterpart of the discovery of the missile launchers – says the Colombian government, and not denied by Venezuela – and to which the Venezuelan government never replied.

The information on the AT-4s was made public by Colombia the day after Chávez violently attacked the agreement on the bases. Last Tuesday he said that the “imperial bases in Colombia” were “a threat to Venezuela and the revolution” and, a day later, that the rocket launchers had been taken in 1995 by “the Colombian guerrilla” in the attack on a company of the Venezuelan Army in Cararabo, close to the border with Colombia, and which ended in the gruesome death of 8 Venezuelan soldiers. That was three years before he came to power, but “the guerrilla” of the attack in Cararabo were the ELN, not the FARC. Why did the Caldera government in power at the time not inform the Swedish manufacturer about their loss? “We have no alternative other than to further strengthen ourselves”, Chávez concluded.

Although a Chávez-Uribe reconciliation cannot be excluded entirely – as the pragmatism of both has shown in the past – this time it will be much more difficult. This type of rocket launcher is normally kept under such tight surveillance that only orders from very high up could allow them to find their way over the border. Uribe has good reason to feel threatened by the now (at least politically) proven support Chávez provides the FARC with, and is, in his mind, now better able to justify his agreement with the US, both domestically and internationally. To plant these devices in a FARC camp, as Chávez has clearly insinuated, would be rather foolish if you are risking yearly exports of some $ 6 billion that, in addition, benefit almost exclusively your core political base.

As he becomes increasingly radical and as the two questions are now inextricably linked, Chávez has also reason to feel threatened by the larger US presence next door, expected to double from its present level of 1.200 shortly. He has again referred to Colombia as the Israel of Latin America, and he also has started attacking the US again, even if he still makes a difference between “the empire” and its president. It must be stressed that the Colombia-US agreement has generated concern in all of South America, and it could not have come at a better moment for Chávez. Only the extreme right here finds it a good idea, but opposition spokesmen have remained silent on the issue, a fact exploited by the regime.

Given the strong commercial and investment ties between the two countries this unhappy turn of events is bound to prove very damaging to both sides. Colombia will in all likelihood have to find new markets for the bulk of its large exports to Venezuela, and its investors here are in for a rough ride. Chávez will be able to substitute his food imports with Brazil and Argentina, as he has already announced he will. Last but not least, his Russian and Byelorussian arms providers, those that sell him the most dangerous weapon systems, are surely rubbing their hands. Venezuela is already the first buyer of arms in Latin America, and the 8th in the world. Studies based on official figures put total purchases between 2000 and 2008 at $ 15 billion, but informed sources estimate that it is about double that amount.

Chávez has attacked the Arias mediation effort, portraying it as a US maneuver, and he certainly must not like the 7 point package to which Zelaya agreed. However, it does not seem likely that he will see his Honduran ally restored and his political approach vindicated after Zelaya’s recent interview in “Der Spiegel”, in which he practically confesses that if he were to return to the Presidency he would pursue the same course of action that finally led to his pajama exile. However, the ways of the OAS are very mysterious these days.

**

Chávez knows that his support by a majority of Venezuelans is slowly but inexorably melting since his last reelection in December of 2006, his highest electoral score ever with 62% of the popular vote. A year later he suffered his first important defeat when his constitutional reform proposal was rejected by a margin that was kept small with the complicity of the electoral authority he controls. Since then he has been able to reverse the trend for short periods after winning elections by small margins and at an increasingly stiff financial and political cost. When asked if they would vote for him today, 37% said Yes in the latest Consultores 21 poll taken in June, and 49 % replied that they would vote in favor of any candidate with the best chance of defeating him. A 12% difference would be difficult to bridge even for a campaigner as formidable as Chávez, if free and fair elections were ever to be held again under his rule.

For Chávez , as Teodoro Petkoff says, imposing his radical political project has become a question of “now or never”. In addition, Chávez is sufficiently advanced in that direction for the internal logic of his accelerated radicalization to now force him to rapidly move out of the no-mans’–land lying between a market and a centrally planned economy. After each of these bulldozing exercises towards an all-powerful state and a totalitarian society he has less to loose, and the pace accelerates. This one certainly looks as if it is the last, decisive one. With the exception of his electoral origin, he has lost all his democratic credentials and his slide into an open dictatorship in which to voice dissent will be a crime is accelerating. True, he is an exceptional communicator, but it will be difficult even for him to avoid a downward spiral of plunging popularity and increasing repression.

Chávez is clearly taking full advantage of President Obama’s decision to reinitiate US relations with Latin America (and with Venezuela and Cuba in particular) with a clean slate. Obama has “extended his open hand”, and Chávez initially had no choice but to play along, but he absolutely needs an adversarial relationship with the US in his attempt to impose on Venezuela and in the region his anachronistic political paradigm, predicated as it is on ending the exploitation of Latin America’s poor and of its natural resources by the collusion of the US and the local oligarchies. He has used the first opportunity, the agreement on the use by US forces of the Colombian bases (which Chávez has been able to portray as the establishment of US military bases in South America), to wiggle out of the friendly US embrace that risked destroying his epic continental ambition.

The bases agreement was an unnecessary, big mistake. Undoing the agreement is not in the cards, and promises to keep political relations with Colombia at a very low level for a long time, allowing Chávez to continue to support the two guerrilla movements, discreetly but more actively, while permitting bilateral trade to gradually recover. He probably calculates that this could keep the Colombian government sufficiently happy not to retaliate, as well as prove useful in pursuing his national and continental objectives by playing on the old Latin American nationalist resentment against US intervention in the region.

Things here are likely to become very difficult come September, when the country returns from the July-August vacation. The country is sitting on a powder keg and the fuse has been lit, no one really knowing how long the fuse is. Three scenarios appear possible. The first would consist in massive street protests that lead to a roll back of the Marxist-Leninist legislation and to a new governance agreement based on strict observance of the Constitution by Chávez, necessarily brokered by the hemispheric community of nations. The problem with this scenario is that it would require street protests of a magnitude that does not appear feasible any longer.

The second scenario, consisting of violence that could originate almost anywhere and in any manner, is the one to be avoided, even if historically it has been the manner in which Venezuelans have dealt with similar situations. Things are very different now, however. It is more likely that a good part of the polarized population would continue to support the elected President and that another significant part of the very well equipped Armed Forces would be prepared to fight for him. It would be tragic indeed if this were to become the only manner by which the democratic nations of the hemisphere finally addressed the systematic destruction of democracy in its midst. Also, this activation of the hemisphere would probably only happen in the case of a massive rejection of Chávez’ rule that included a majority of the poor. The trend is in that direction, but a repetition of the black and white approach adopted in the case of Honduras cannot be excluded, even if the learning experience should lead to a more subtle approach in the future.

A third scenario would see countries like Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Chile and Spain, maybe the US, very soon take the bull by the horns and in a decisive manner carry out a strategy of reining in Chávez’ continental ambitions, his arms race, as well as his anachronistic totalitarian project, by persuading him to respect the Constitution under which he was elected and not to stand for another term in 2011. In addition, they would observe the municipal, legislative and presidential elections, ensure that the OAS elects a respected and effective Secretary-General, and that UNASUR’s democracy mechanisms are up and running in the near future. Democratic governance having thus been restored, Chávez could then conclude his mandate in peace while ensuring that his social approach is not dismantled after he leaves power. Naïve? Maybe at this stage, but probably the obvious elements of a package to protect peace and democracy. Left to ourselves, we Venezuelans are no longer in a position to achieve it. The clock is ticking.

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