washingtonpost.com
Venezuelan Military Says Chavez Is Ousted Generals Assert Control After Day of Deadly Protests
By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, April 12, 2002; Page A20
BOGOTA, Colombia, April 11 – The head of Venezuela's National Guard said tonight the military had taken control of the country from President Hugo Chavez after a day of protests against the government that left at least 12 people dead.
In a televised address, Gen. Alberto Camacho Kairuz said the Chavez administration had "abandoned its functions." A few hours earlier, Vice Adm. Hector Ramirez, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, condemned the attack on protesters who were marching on the presidential palace on the third day of a national strike. About 50 senior officers from all sectors of the armed forces joined in calling the act "undemocratic," and opposition leaders said 90 percent of the troops had declared themselves against the president.
As there was a flurry of rumors regarding the president's fate, opposition sources said Chavez remained in the presidential palace tonight, holding conversations with the Cuban ambassador to Venezuela. The sources said the president was being protected by members of Bolivarian Circles, pro-government civic groups that have attacked protesters in recent days, and Cuban security agents.
Chavez allies insisted tonight that the president remained in charge of the country, and that a "conspiracy" to topple his government had failed. But the reports of the meeting with the Cuban ambassador fueled speculation that Chavez was arranging to leave the country for Cuba, whose leader Fidel Castro has benefited from cut-rate Venezuelan oil under Chavez's government.
At least 12 people died in the streets of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, in a surge of violence that followed Chavez's decision to remove from the air local television channels covering the protests. The decision prompted an immediate reaction from Venezuela's armed forces, an institution that Chavez, a former colonel, was once a part of, but which has shown increasing resistance to his leftist rule in recent weeks.
"All of the country is under the control of the national armed forces," Camacho said in a televised address. "The government has abandoned its functions."
The announcement culminated a confusing day that started with a large protest march on Miraflores, the presidential palace, by several hundred thousand protesters demanding Chavez's resignation. The march was part of a national strike led by country's largest business and labor groups, ostensibly in support of a managerial protest at the state-run oil company that evolved into a movement to end Chavez's administration.
Since his 1998 election on a broad populist mandate, Chavez has angered the United States as well as the powerful domestic opposition that had enjoyed power for the previous four decades. His foreign policy, which turned Venezuela, a leading supplier of oil to the United States, toward such countries as Libya, Cuba and Iraq, generated frequent friction with Washington and spawned criticism at home that he was putting in place a communist government.
The vocal if largely peaceful demonstration today, which was joined by several hundred thousand protesters, turned violent after Chavez pulled the country's private television stations off the air late in the afternoon. Only the government channel stayed on the air, and an assortment of radio stations continued to broadcast. Chavez said his decision to block television broadcasts, which was immediately denounced by opposition leaders and the first wave of military dissidents, was a response to false television reports that he had been arrested.
"They want to create panic, to create hate throughout the country," Chavez said in a televised address.
The president called on his supporters to surround the palace in defense of his government. But the ranks of his supporters have thinned in recent months as his three-year-old administration has failed to deliver on many of its populist promises. He asked the military to join the cordon around the palace, even as a group of high-ranking officers issued a statement denouncing the president.
"Chavez has shown his true face," said Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena, once the president's chief of staff and now among his leading critics.
The strike had closed many private businesses throughout the country over the past three days, and slowed down Venezuela's lifeblood petroleum industry that supplies the United States with more than 2 million barrels of oil a day. The strike started in support of a white-collar protest at the oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, over Chavez's appointment of five allies to the board of directors.
But strike leaders acknowledged today that their goal had moved beyond demanding the removal of the new directors, setting the stage for the clash between a coalescing opposition movement and an increasingly unpopular president who had pledged to continue with his self-declared revolution.
After winning in a landslide in 1998, Chavez engineered a new constitution that concentrated more power in his hands, purged corrupt judges, and packed ostensibly independent branches of government with political allies. But his fervid class rhetoric and heavy-handed style repelled first Venezuela's most powerful business and political class before reaching into his own support base among the poor majority.
In recent weeks, alarmed by his government's leftist orientation and friendships with Libya, Iraq and Cuba, five military officers publicly demanded his resignation. The statements, characterized by U.S. officials as the "tip of the iceberg," signaled growing unrest within the military, which is widely respected in Venezuela. In Washington, the White House would not comment tonight on the reports that the military had taken over the government.
"There is no accommodation possible," said Gregorio Rojas, an official with Fedecamaras, the nation's largest business group. "What we're seeking if Chavez's resignation."
Rolling clashes between police in riot gear and protesters flared up on downtown streets throughout the late afternoon, leaving the air filled with smoke. Witnesses described seeing a number of bodies on the Plaza Bolivar, the main square in the government district, but it was unclear who fired on the protesters.
Witnesses said shots seem to come from rooftops, and protesters cast the blame on government soldiers and the government-sponsored Bolivarian Circles. Chavez deployed hundreds of National Guard troops to the capital streets late in the day, but military officers appeared hours later to declare open rebellion against the president.
"We ask the Venezuelan people's forgiveness for today's events," said Gen. Efrain Vasquez Velasco, head of the army. "I was loyal to the end, but today's deaths cannot be tolerated."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company