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The woman in the photograph, a diminutive (5'2"), 37 year-old mother of two, marched up to a line of Guardsmen to demand that they allow the perfectly legal, passive and peaceful protest march pass. She was repeatedly thrown to the ground by her hair, beaten with batons and kicked by several Guards. She was interviewed on TV a few days later, and has to wear a neck brace.
The general officer commanding the armed forces, who is also the Minister of Defence, publicly praised the gallantry and noble manner in which the Brigade of Guards had defended the country from the terrorism and violence of the opposition. No, of course this is not a real English scenario. But it is exactly what happened in Caracas, and is happening at this moment. The Venezuelan Foreign Service has a new Chancellor (Foreign Secretary) who has ordered that all ambassadors must follow the imperatives of the Revolutionary Process, and not the norms of the State as was the case before. The Venezuelan Ambassador to the United Nations resigned yesterday, saying he could no longer serve a government that denied the people all democratic process and was abusing human rights daily.The President, Hugo Chavez came to power legally, by a majority in a general election in 1998. A majority of people, not happy with the choice between him and a retired general who was a friend of Chavez, made the monumentally grave and foolish error of abstaining. There was a strong belief at the time that abstention was a valid protest. Chavez won 82% of the lowest turn out at a general election. But it was enough for him to claim a landslide, he was swept to power! The magic 82% has been bantered around as if it were 82% of the entire population. He was elected for a single five-year term (with no option for re-election). Even so, he was given the benefit of the doubt by many, many people, certainly the majority of the population gave him a chance to be what he said he would be. He talked big, reduced the fleet of government cars, said he would clean out the corrupt justice system and suspended over half the judges, sold off half the airplanes owned by the state-owned oil company, said he would get the children off the streets or change his name in six months, said he would bring soldiers and churchmen into public service to replace all the crooked public employees who had been ripping off the country. The media in general supported him. But Chavez had his own secret agenda. First thing, while riding the wave, he wrote a new constitution and held a referendum for the people to approve it. Included in the new constitution was a six-year term for the president, with the option to be re-elected. It did away with the senate, leaving only the National Assembly. The turn out at the referendum was even smaller than for the election, but again, it had a decent majority. Chavez inmmediately said that under the new constitution, he would have to be re-elected, and called a new general election. Again, an even smaller turn-out, but a win for Chavez. So, two years after being elected for a five year term, he was starting a six-year term. The media and the church were getting a bit windy about Chavez by now. The soldiers he had appointed to key jobs were stealing left right and centre. There had not been a single prosecution for corruption. The entire expenditure and all activity by the government was of a political nature; nothing was spent on change for the people. A tremendous natural disaster caused by a terrible storm on the coast (causing great loss of life in horrendous mudslides), had been used as an excuse for theft and corruption. Of the $35 million donated by foreign countries after the disaster, only $5 million reached the area. The governor of the area was not a Chavista, therefore he got no financial help at all. Chavez is a man who thrives on having enemies. He decided to pass a truth-in-publishing law for the press, which meant a party censor sitting in every newspaper office in the country: the honeymoon with the press was over. The media became an enemy. The Catholic church criticized the corruption and lack of action - only words - and the priests became devils in skirts, faggots misleading the innocent, and evil. It was the end of the honeymoon with the church: another enemy. And so it has gone on, with Chavez making allies but losing them because of his endless tirades of slander and hate, lies and failures to deliver. Today, three years into his first six-year term, the economy is in ruins with gross national product declining significantly every year, unemployment at an all time high, crime going virtually unchecked - for there is no effective law and order in the country at all. Chavez has personally abused/broken/gone against 27 articles of the consitution, saying he is above the law. He is the law. He is Venezuela. The opposition worked on an item in the constitution that says if more signatures asking for a referendum to recall a public official are collected than that were gained at the last election, then there must be a referendum on whether to recall him from office, or leave him in power. In the case of Chavez, 2.4 million signatures were needed. The opposition, in an open and magnificently organized manner, collected 3.6 million. The Consejo Nacional Electoral, a supposedly independent body that rules on all electoral matters, ruled that it had the right to verify the signatures as authentic. It has taken four months for them to finally say that only 1.8 million of the signatures are valid. They propose an idiotic scheme whereby the 0.8 million signatures that are in suspension and offered by the CNE for reaffirmation, are checked personally by the person involved who then signs again. An NGO here that specializes in electoral matters says the scheme is open to such abuse that possibly no more than a quarter of the verifications would be accepted. The opposition has rejected this as just another delaying device and they refuse. Effectively, the referendum is dead. Democracy is dead. It remains only for the people to protest in every possible way they can - and the resignation of the ambassador to the UN is a sterling example, in the hope that pressure from the Organization of American States, the Carter Centre, the European Union, a group of countries known as Friends of Venezuela, and the people themselves will force the referendum. It is unlikely that Chavez will give in. He outlasted a general strike that lasted two months, and has shown only delight in the destruction of the middle class and the economy. His new best friend is Robert Mugabe, whom he welcomed here last week as a brother, the two fighting the same just cause against the tyranny of the north. He is so close to Fidel Castro as to be unhealthy, and there is no doubt that Castro is his mentor. Castro has proclaimed that Chavez is the heir apparent to assume his mantle of leader of the oppressed and downtrodden of the New World. While the people of Cuba are broken by increasingly desperate poverty, there are at least 20,000 well-armed Cuban mercenaries here, training Chavez followers in guerilla warfare and other awful things. They are running the secret police and directing Chavez protection. They are acting as teachers and medics in the poorest parts of the country. Cuba is getting more oil and all kinds of help, at give-away prices for which it is paying in kind (the teachers, medics, etc) than it ever had in its hey day with the USSR. And on the streets there are masked DISIP with AK47s, shooting at apartment buildings and passing cars, seemingly at random. The National Guard is out in force, arresting protesters, who disappear, arresting political leaders, and so on. By some miracle we still have a comparatively free media - although reporters and photographers are now being targeted by snipers at protests. Barricades across the city are stopping distribution of newspapers among other things. The party had announced it will pass the censorship law, and if that happens it will truly be the end of freedom here. In my experience and judgment, we are passing from a political system not very different from that in Italy in 1939 to that in Germany in 1939. There is no persecution of Jews here, but the middle classes are being destroyed very effectively. And the economic system is becoming like that in Russia under Stalin. Mind you, this is only how I see it. Most people here say we are becoming Africanized. What a thought. We'll become like Zanzibar, with the hope that the oil might raise us to the level of Nigeria. Wild Goose |
