World Venezuela Newswire Archive

While the world's attention has been focused on the middle east, the inavision and occupation of Iraq and the ongoing conflict over Palestine, few people have noticed the shake up occuring in South America. Everyone knows that the latinamerican countries are generally political unstable and characterised by military rule. Many people are aware that the US has a long history of intervention, installing and supporting complient dictators or replacing those that don't tow the US line. But there has been a shift, the forth largest supplier of oil to the US has excaped the cycle and liberated themselves from the yoke of the elite. However, the odds are stacked against them. Even having survived a coup and a bosses lock out in the last couple of years, and despite every indication that the people will win the recall referendum of their democratically elected president Hugo Chavez, there may be dark clouds on the horizon. Large arms caches have been intercepted entering the country. Large amounts of explosives have gone missing from military stocks and opposition are talking openly of violence and assasination.

[to find out more, visit the rampART (www.rampart.co.nr) this week during Venezuela Solidarity Week for talks, films, food, and art (see www.thenewagenda.org for programme)]

Below is an article from a right wing american publication which gives some idea of the propaganda being released to path the way for US intervention...

On Sunday 15th, Venezuelans are to decide if their President will remain in office during a recall referendum called by the US backed organized opposition. The stakes are hight and interior minister Lucas Rincon has expressed concerns about possible terrorist acts that sectors of the opposition could be preparing to try to trigger a "Madrid effect" that could alter the outcome of the referendum...

Venezuela, sitting on the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East, may be on the brink of major political upheaval. A presidential recall referendum could see the removal of the socialist Chevaz government and the installation of an oldguard power block that proposes repairing relations with Washington, and restructuring the oil industry. This comes after a botched US backed coup in 2002 cost the opposition the trust of many while a two-month general strike last year ruined the economy but left Chavez stronger than ever...

Authorities are ready to arrest people who dump nails on highways, cut down trees, slick streets with oil and burn tires to create turmoil and stop people from voting.

The world's fifth largest producer and exporter of oil will be using a e-voting system produced by an american company in a presidential recall referendum called for by the Venezuelan elite and backed by Washington. Despite the use of a paper record of votes, some people claim to have found security flaws and weak cryptography. "Computers can be made to produce any outcome that you want without anybody really knowing that's what was done," said one US observer. One thing is clear, who ever wins the vote, the use of the untested e-voting system will leave room for doubt from either side about the results...

The cash starved campaign backing Hugo Chevez has turned to selling lottery tickets in order to raise funds. Polls vary, many predicated over 60% support for Chavez while others suggest (and hope for) the opposite. Meanwhile, the info war facilitated by the media in Venezuela apparently favors the opposistion by almost 10 to 1.

There is a beautiful little section in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela: It says that every elected official can be removed from office half way through his/her term of service (Article 72). The Constitution became the law of the land after being given a 70% voter approval in December 1999...

The president, Hugo Chavez, will face a revocatory referendum on his tenure on August 15th. The date was announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE) on June 8th, after it ruled that a campaign by the opposition to garner signatures from 20% of the electorate in support of a petition demanding a referendum had been successful. The result of the referendum is uncertain, as are its implications for the Chavez regime. Whatever the outcome, there is a high probability that the losing side will challenge it, either in the courts??whose neutrality is disputed by both government and opposition??or on the streets. Political instability and a policy environment subservient to the government's priority of self-preservation therefore appear likely to persist for some time...

In this year's U.S. presidential elections, electronic voting systems will be used by an estimated 30 percent of those who vote. If you were the type to validate the partical political system by voting, would you trust your vote to these systems?

This year, a US company sold 20,000 of its election machines and licenses for their software to Venezuelan authorities for $63 million and won a $27-million contract for service during the recall vote against Hugo Chavez which takes place in August. This controversial and critical referendum may end up putting the technology on trial...

It took a while for Venezuela’s political opposition to figure out the best way to get rid of a president it doesn't like. First it tried general strikes, then a coup last year, then the shutdown of the country’s main industry, then an unconstitutional petition drive. Now, about two years after its campaign began, it's opting for the only constitutional way to oust an elected president: a recall referendum...

On August 14, 2004, Venezuelan voters will decide on a referendum, which has the utmost world historic and strategic significance. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of the energy world, the relations between the US and Latin America (particularly Cuba), and the political and socio-economic fate of millions of Venezuela's urban and rural poor. If Chavez is defeated and if the Right takes power, it will privatize the state petroleum and gas company, selling it to US multinationals, withdraw from OPEC, raise its production and exports to the US, thus lowering Venezuelan revenues by half or more. Internally the popular health programs in the urban "ranchos" will end along with the literary campaign and public housing for the poor. The agrarian reform will be reversed and about 500,000 land reform recipients (100,000 families) will be turned off the land. This will be accomplished through extensive and intensive state bloodletting, jailing and extrajudicial assassination, and intense repression of pro-Chavez neighborhoods, trade unions and social movements. The apparently "democratic" referendum will have profoundly authoritarian, colonial and socially regressive results if the opposition wins.

Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, expressed again that US project of completing a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is definitely dead. This time, the Venezuelan president made this balance at his arrival to Puerto Iguazu, in Misiones, Argentina, where he will participate on the Summit of MERCOSUR presidents.

* Facing the situation created by the referendum of 8/15/2004 to recall the president, the Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas and its newspaper El Libertario call for a radical rupture with those candidates for authoritarian power, presenting to the Venezuelan people ways out of the actual crisis based on mutual aid, direct action and self-management.

A referendum to recall President Chavez as well as a number of anti-chavista elected officials is being called for August. US pressure to overthrow President Chavez and get its hands on the oil of the venezuelan people is greater than ever. We demand that the media report what is happening in Venezuela rather than act as employees of the hated and unelected Bush administration

Colombian opposition leaders allege that the Uribe government is preparing another military agression against Venezuela. Paramilitaries aided by the Colombian Army have several times attacked targets in Venezuela. The White House is accused of wanting to exploit an armed confrontation between the two countries to gain control of Venezuelan oil.

Russian is Arming: Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile and Uruguay

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TODAY'S SHOW: Wednesday, March 17

* A study of the current situation in Venezuela demystifying the image sold by the media and promoted by the current rulers or by those who aspire to take their place. Originally published in El Libertario # 36, the bimonthly newspaper of the Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas

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Thursday, March 4th, 2004

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