Venezuela: Right-wing opposition clamours for another US-backed coup

[Aidoneus]

(note: doesn't quite pass for LBN, would be virtually ignored in Editorials or F/A, so.. have at it here.)

“Bye-bye Aristide, Chavez you’re next!”
Venezuela: Right-wing opposition clamours for another US-backed coup
By Mauricio Saavedra
9 March 2004

A wave of political unrest and violence now unfolding in Venezuela bears all the hallmarks of a “made in Washington” destabilisation campaign. In the wake of the US-organized overthrow of Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide, this campaign is aimed at creating an atmosphere of chaos in the oil-rich South American nation, setting the stage for a military takeover and a wave of terror against the working class.

The most recent unrest flared when the country’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that it could verify only 1.8 million of the 3.1 million petitions a right-wing alliance claimed it gathered to oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. A total of 2.4 million signatures are needed to force a plebiscite on Chavez’s presidency.

The CNE ruled that 1.1 million signatures needed further verification, while it rejected 140,000 signatures outright, including repeated signatures and the names of long-deceased voters, non-nationals, children and members of the armed forces. The disputed petitions includes ones in which details appear to have been completed in the same handwriting.

News of rioting in a country which is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter sent jitters through global markets and drove the price of world crude up to $33.44 a barrel, its highest level since the US-led invasion of Iraq last year. Oil prices shot up on fears that last year’s management-provoked three-month-long oil shutdown could be repeated. Oil exports, which account for almost 80 percent of Venezuela’s earnings, were brought to a standstill then, resulting in the country’s worst-ever economic crisis— GDP contracted 9.2 percent last year, after shrinking 8.9 percent in 2002.

Since February 28, the political violence has left 10 dead, dozens injured and several hundred arrested. Thousands of anti-Chavez forces from the wealthier suburbs of Caracas barricaded the capital’s major highway with litter and tyres set alight and battled hundreds of thousands of people who streamed down from poorer quarters to rally in support of the government.

Unable to rely on a police force under the control of opposition politicians, the government has mobilised national guard and army troops, equipped with heavy armoured vehicles, tear gas and rubber bullets. AFP reported that police “have patrolled without stepping in as demonstrators burned trash, hurled Molotov cocktails and in some cases opened fire with handguns.” Several police officers have since been arrested. The government has also suspended the right to bear arms until March 14, ostensibly to prevent a bloodbath.

--snip--

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/ven-m09.shtml

[rumguy]

1. good luck with that - Chavez is ready for them

[thingfish]

2. "Coup me once, shame on... shame on you? Coup me won't get coup'd again!"

x

[AP]

3. That's pretty funny.

[bkohatl]

4. I couldn't have said it better

I was just wondering if everyone else figures that Georgie is just a plain bully, going around the world proving he's a man.
In high school, I had a retired Marine Drill Sergeant as my PE Coach. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam. I remember his most famous quote.
If you have to prove that you are a man then you aren't one....

Gee, maybe the men were the black kids from Harlem, the Chicanos from LA; while Georgie and his rich snotty friends in The National Guards were the boys, and now bullies...

[newyawker99]

5. Hi bkohatl!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[madfloridian]

6. And Georgie gets a little help from some friends of ours.

http://casavenezuela.org/05persp/articles/economia_stupid.html
It's the Economia, Stupid!
SNIP...."by Marc Lifsher
The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2003

Venezuela's embattled private sector is banking on the colorful U.S. political consultant James Carville to help oust leftist President Hugo Chavez. The hire may herald an effort by the anti-Chavistas to focus more on the issues than on personality.

According to several individuals with knowledge of the matter, a group of business executives contracted with Mr. Carville this year to craft a strategy that will unify a fractious and frustrated Chavez opposition and resonate with voters in a possible recall referendum. The executives are hoping that Mr. Carville the folksy, 59-year-old Democratic Party consultant from Louisiana known as the Ragin' Cajun {b]will push a variation of his "It's the economy, stupid" theme that helped propel Bill Clinton to victory in 1992. But analysts say Mr. Carville and his clients face a formidable challenge.

Mr. Chavez has strengthened his hand since surviving a military coup in April 2002 and defeating a recent two-month national strike led by oil executives, labor leaders and business organizations. Despite a deepening economic recession, the business elite here and its middle-class allies are finding it hard to persuade core Chavez supporters in urban slums and the countryside that the president isn't delivering on his populist promises.

They have another hurdle to jump in blaming all the country's economic problems on Mr. Chavez after their own ill-starred strike accelerated the economy's slide. "These business owners are arrogant. They can bring Carville or anyone else, but they don't stop to understand what everyday life is like for the people," says Patricia Marquez, an anthropologist and academic director of the Institute for Higher Administrative Studies, a graduate school of management here in the capital....."END SNIP

All kinds of good Democratic friends help Georgie.

[madfloridian]

7. Doggone it, I killed another thread with that article.

I will just have to quit doing that.

[AP]

8. I wish the poor people in the slums could afford to hire political...

...consultants.

[AP]

9. The answers to your questions about motivations lie in economics, not in

psychology.

It's all about money.