January 30th., 2008

Chávez In The ALBA Summit

No one will stop us in our effort to give shape to a new world in order to save the human species from the threats of Capitalism, affirmed Chávez in the ALBA Summit (ALBA= Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), wherein Dominica was incorporated and seven declarations were signed, one of which supported Evo Morales.  Chávez stated that he had received attacks by confessing that he “chews cocaine paste every morning”, and asked Morales if he had not brought him more cocaine leaves, since he had run out of them.  Evo gave him a bag, from which Chávez took out several leaves.  The government´s TV cameras made a close-up of the President while he was chewing them.  “This is the sacred leave of the Aymaras”, he expressed.  Daniel Ortega was invited by Chávez to accompany him in his Sunday Aló Presidente.  He proposed to integrate the Armed Forces of both countries, as a first step for the unification of the army forces of ALBA.  “We are almost 68 million inhabitants, invincible in a joint strategy”.  He added that Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica and Venezuela must articulate their armed forces and intelligence bodies to confront an aggression from the United States or from any of its Latin American allies. 

Ortega supported the proposal and warned that “touching Venezuela is firing up the region”.  “If they meddle with any one of us, they meddle with all of us, we will respond as one”, commented Chávez, just as The Three Musketeers.

Regarding domestic policy, he expressed that if the opposition wins important Governors´ or Majors´ Offices, a war would occur.  He forbid his followers to advance any candidacies.  “There are many who are in a position and use it to divide the popular movement, we have to expel them from the party (PSUV) for being traitors to the Revolution, we have to unmask the greedy ones that have personal and premature projects”.  Before the program was over, he manifested that he awaits January 10, 2010, to propose a popular consultation that authorizes his indefinite re election.  “it is only three words that have to be stricken from the Constitution”.

As common as it has been in his interventions, and upon the “freezing” of relations with Colombia, he used harsh expressions against President Uribe and stated that if the neighboring country signed the free trade agreement with the US, it would become a “gringo colony”.  He denounced that the “Colombian oligarchy, supported by the US, has plans to create a warlike conflict with Venezuela”.  Minister Rodríguez Chacín, who became well known upon his solidarity message to the FARC, when they delivered the two ladies kidnapped (Venezuela Hoy, January 15, 2008), declared that media from the Venezuelan oligarchy, in tune with the Colombian oligarchy, such as El Tiempo and RCN, distorted the information regarding a recent kidnapping case to create the image of an insecure country, with an inefficient government.  In a press conference he stated that it was all about a media conspiracy, and that the figures show that criminality is being addressed, to the point that Caracas is a city wherein its inhabitants may enjoy the tranquility that is seldom enjoyed in other cities of the continent.

VIOLENCE IN VENEZUELA

Chávez has been calling to the “battle against criminality that whips our people”.  Weeks ago he questioned, before the National Assembly, “Why, after nine years of a revolutionary government, is insecurity still such a grave problem in the streets, in the towns and in the slums?”  There were numerous answers.  The Parliamentarians pronounced in favor of a National Police Law, that the President must issue within the exercise of the legislative attributions conferred to him.  The Taxi drivers have demonstrations to protest against the daily killings of their fellow colleagues:  “We are being killed and the police does nothing”.  The Caracas morgue collapsed upon 107 homicides in one weekend.  Major Barreto, ideologist of the Revolution, requested that the national government take over the handling of the Metropolitan Police (PM).  Bernal, also a Major, one the men most committed with the government, denounced that in every major crime, an agent of the PM is involved and that there are officers that lease their weapons to criminals.  “The problem of insecurity, he stated, has been disclosed to the central government, but they have done nothing”.  In the media, including those in favor of Chávez, evidence has been presented of many kidnappings, which have become the new industry for criminals, and they are prepared with the complicity of police and the military.  Insecurity, which had never appeared in the President´s  rhetoric, has become a frequent issue after the December 2 defeat.  It is the problem that is felt most by the people, according to all the surveys. Chávez ordered the new Minister of Interior and Justice to constitute a commission that analyzes and formulates proposals for the establishment and execution of the special security plan.

 He was transferred control of the PM.  The Minister announced a special plan called Caracas Segura (Safe Caracas), upon the conversion of the PM to a “community police”.  After a few weeks, he affirms that the objectives of the plan are already met.  Will this be true?

10 years ago Venezuela had the same homicide rates as Brazil and Mexico, who maintain the same rates or have in turn decreased them.  In Venezuela, the rate has increased by three times.  In 2006-2007, four out of ten homes were victims of some violent crime.  Caracas is the most insecure city of America, with rates that exceed one hundred homicides for every one hundred thousand inhabitants, winning over Río de Janeiro, Bogotá and Medellín.  These are figures offered by the Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV).  With a strict scientific methodology and surveys, press information, as case studies, the sociologists Roberto Briceño-León and Olga Avila Fuenmayor published the report “Violence in Venezuela”, following the idea that true information is indispensable if you want adequate answers.  The scientists, without premeditation, have answered to Chávez and have contradicted the corresponding Minister.  According to Briceño-León, the President has kept a speech and a policy ambiguous upon crime and violence, on one side tolerant and even permissive, “the President himself has said that it is understandable that the people steal if they are in need”, and on the other side, brutal repression, to the point that according to a government spokesperson, police has eliminated two thousand “pre criminals”, a novel concept of criminal law.  The OVV was constituted by academics and university investigators in 2005, when the access to government figures was restricted.  “The homicide information is not available to the public opinion, nor for the press or the investigators.  Maybe there are officers that think that the homicides will be over if they are not published by the press, nor if they are studied by investigators”.  “The victims are required to maintain a major silence, to become somewhat like anonymous, they have already lost their lives and their names, and now they can not even be figures”. 

LATIN AMERICAN PUBLIC DANGER

Chávez stubbornness for a Constitutional modification that authorizes him to continue as President indefinitely has been encountered by a frontal rejection from the sectors that voted negatively to the December 2 proposal.  Its spokespeople coincide that this is a new mode of a Constitutional fraud, that looks for, by way of a plebiscite, to modify the opinion of the citizens that expressed themselves, and which the President acknowledged himself.  They affirm that the continuous re election is a closed chapter, and that the debate is presented to distract attention from the anguish and desperation lived by the population.  The same objective is attributed to the crisis created in the relations with Colombia.  They affirm that upon the political defeat, the message from the surveys, ever more adverse, the internal crisis within the Chávez followers and the incapacity to resolve the lack of supplies and the 5% inflation jump produced in the last month, makes the international theme a mechanism to call to unity upon an external enemy.

For El Universal and for independent analysts, Chávez´ confrontation with the Colombian government is inscribed in his foreign policy of continental expansion of the Revolution, of alliance and strengthening of the far left movements of the continent.  In Seminars undergone with the participation of Colombian personalities, it is concluded that on each side of the border, there is concern for the renewed closeness of Chávez with insurgents and a concrete alliance with the FARC, whose declarations now appear first in the press agency of the government than in the drug- guerrilla web page.

Last Wednesday, Raúl Reyes, known as the second in command of the FARC, broadcasted a declaration whereby, once again, he expressed his ideological affinity with Chávez and the coincidence of the belligerence of the guerrilla organization.  For international experts, if it is duly evidenced that the Venezuelan state gives material help to the Colombian insurgency, the internationalization of the armed conflict will be inevitable,  “The last declarations of Chávez towards Uribe and what Chávez denominates as Colombian oligarchy put back on the table and old hypothesis, according to which, in order for the Revolution to survive, a war with Colombia is necessary”.  The sensible Venezuela does not consider it possible, but psychiatrists that have been studying the characteristics of the Lieutenant Colonel warn that, from a narcissist personality, with signs of schizophrenia, any irrational act is possible, since in the specific disassociation of the psychic functions, delirium is included, hallucinations and the loss of control from reality.  In Aló Presidente, Chávez irritation has been manifest upon the European welcome to Uribe, which was not overlooked by Venezuelans, Colombians and Europeans.  According to El País from Madrid, “Uribe found satisfaction in all the fronts, which irritated Chávez even more, at a time when he is no longer a diplomatic nuisance, but has progressively become a public Latin American danger”