"Regime Change" in Venezuela

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services - December 2, 2002

BUSH ADMINISTRATION PUSHES "REGIME CHANGE" IN VENUZUELA

It's 10 p.m. -- do you know what your government is up to? It seems 
that Iraq is not the only "regime change" that the Bush 
Administration is working on. The US government has apparently 
decided that President Chavez of Venezuela must go, one way or 
another.

True, Saddam Hussein is a brutal tyrant who has invaded and 
threatened neighboring countries -- whereas Hugo Chavez was 
democratically elected, has shown no ill will toward any of his 
neighbors, and tolerates a steady barrage of virulent, hate-filled 
propaganda against his presidency from the major Venezuelan media.

But these distinctions can be blurred, because both have offended the 
US government, and both are sitting on a lot of oil. So most 
Americans can be forgiven for having similar impressions of the two 
leaders, given what they hear from the US media. A recent op-ed in 
the Washington Post referred to the Chavez government as a 
"dictatorship."

This week the country's main business federation, supported by some 
union leaders, called once again for a general strike against the 
Chavez government. They are apparently following the same scenario 
that led to the military coup on April 11.

In our amnesiac political culture, half a year can be an eternity, 
more than enough time for history to be rewritten and slates wiped 
clean. But it was barely more than six months ago, on April 11, that 
opposition forces overthrew the democratically elected government of 
Venezuela. They installed the head of the business federation as 
president and dissolved the legislature and the Supreme Court.

The Bush administration at first welcomed the coup, retreating the 
next day after it became clear that other countries in the Americas 
were not going to recognize the illegal government. And of course 
administration officials denied having anything to do with the coup.

There is a pile of evidence to the contrary, indicating that they had 
a lot to do with it. There were numerous meetings between Bush 
administration officials and coup leaders in the months preceding the 
coup. We also know that the opposition received money from the United 
States government.

But even more important is the political support and encouragement 
that Washington provides. Those who are trying to overthrow the 
government of Venezuela at this very moment know that the United 
States will do its best to recognize and support any resulting 
dictatorship. They know this because neither the White House nor the 
State Department has indicated that a coup would result in any 
diplomatic or commercial sanctions against an illegal government.

It would be a simple matter for the Bush Administration to make such 
a statement. But even in the recent mobilizations of October 21 and 
December 2, with rumors of coup attempts flying everywhere, our top 
officials have maintained a telling silence, and carefully avoided 
saying anything that would discourage the violent opposition.

The US also supports the opposition's call for early elections. 
Although the Venezuelan constitution provides for a recall election 
halfway through the President's term, the opposition does not want to 
wait until August.

There are two reasons for their impatience: first, the economy is in 
a deep recession right now, and it could very well recover by August. 
Venezuela's economy would get a tremendous boost from an increase in 
oil prices that would likely result from a war with Iraq. Second, the 
recession is prolonged and deepened because investors are essentially 
on strike against the government, taking money out of the country and 
withholding investment in hope of getting a new President. Like any 
strike, it cannot continue indefinitely.

Of course it does not make any more sense for Chavez to hold early 
elections than it would have for President Reagan to have done so in 
1983, when -- due to a recession and high unemployment -- his 
approval rating bottomed at 35 percent.

But the US press -- together with the Bush administration -- pretends 
that this is a perfectly reasonable demand.

A little noticed retraction published in the Chicago Tribune on April 
20 summed up the extreme prejudice of our major news organizations 
against the president of Venezuela: "An editorial on Sunday 
mistakenly said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had praised 
Osama bin Laden. The Tribune regrets the error."

Oops.

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy 
Research, in Washington D.C. (www.cepr.net)

<http://www.cepr.net/columns/weisbrot/Venezuelan%20regime%20change.htm>
-- 
Yoshie

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