The Guardian 28 November, 2007
Coup d’état rumblings in Venezuela
Stephen Lendman*
The Bush administration tried and failed on three previous occasions to oust Hugo Chávez since its first aborted two-day coup in April, 2002. Since he took office in February, 1999, and especially after George Bush’s election, Chávez has been a US target. Credible sources now point to a new plot to assassinate him. The CIA and other foreign secret service operatives (including anti-Castro terrorists) aim to destabilise the Chávez government by using "at least three concrete plans" to destroy the country’s social democracy and kill Chávez.
It involves infiltrating subversive elements into the country, inciting opposition within the military, ordering region-based US forces to shoot down any aircraft used by Chávez, employing trained snipers with shoot to kill orders, and having the dominant US and Venezuelan media act as supportive attack dogs.
Chávez is targeted because he represents the greatest of all threats to US hegemony in the region — a good example that’s spreading. Venezuela also has Latin America’s largest proven oil reserves at a time when supplies are tight and prices are at all-time highs.
Venezuelans go to the polls in a referendum on December 2 to vote for or against Constitutional changes.
The Venezuelan newspaper, Diario VEA, also weighed in, saying "anonymous students planned to commit acts of destabilisation" as the December 2 vote approaches. Venezuelan Radio Trans Mundial provided proof with a recorded video of a youth dumping gasoline into an armoured vehicle, ramming metal barricades into police.
The threat of street protest violence
For weeks, protests with sporadic violence have been happening on Venezuela’s streets as anti-Chavistas use middle and upper class students as tools to destabilise the government and disrupt the constitutional process. The aim is to discredit and oust the Chávez government and return the country to its ugly past with Washington and local oligarchs in charge and the neo-liberal economic model reinstated.
"We know the whole scheme", Maduro added. He should, as it happened before in 2002, again during the disruptive 2002-03 oil management lockout, and most often when elections are held. These are standard CIA operating tactics used many times before for 50 years in the Agency’s efforts to topple independent leaders in South America and kill them. Chávez understands what’s happening, and he’s well briefed and alerted by his ally, Fidel Castro, who has survived over 600 US attempts to kill him since 1959.
Chávez has widespread popular support throughout the region and from allies like Ecuador’s Raphael Correa and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who expressed his "solidarity with the revolutionary people of Venezuela and our friend Hugo Chávez, who is being subjected to aggression from a counter-revolution fed by the traitors from inside the country and by the empire (referring to the US)." He compared the situation to his own country where similar efforts are being "financed by the United States Embassy" in Managua to support elements opposed to his Sandinista government, even though it’s very accommodative to Washington.
Brazil’s President Lula chimed in by calling Chávez’s proposed reforms consistent with Venezuela’s democratic norms.
What are the Constitutional Reforms?
Last July, Chávez announced he would send a proposed list of Constitutional reforms to Venezuela’s National Assembly to debate, consider, and vote on. Under Venezuelan law, the President, National Assembly, or 15 percent of registered voters (by petition) may propose Constitutional changes. They must be debated three times in the legislature, amended if needed, and then submitted to a vote that requires a two-thirds majority to pass. Finally, within 30 days the public gets the last word in a national referendum. It represents the true spirit of democracy that’s unimaginable in the US where elitists control everything.
Proposed reforms will have little impact on the nation’s fundamental political structure. They will, however, change laws with regard to politics, the economy, property, the military, the national territory as well as the culture and society and will deepen the country’s social democracy.
The most important changes include:
extending existing constitutional laws that guarantees human rights and recognises the country’s social and cultural diversity;
building a "social economy" to replace the failed neo-liberal model;
officially prohibiting monopolies and unjust consolidation of economic resources;
extending presidential terms from six to seven years;
allowing unlimited presidential re-elections so that the option is "the sovereign decision of the constituent people of Venezuela" and is similar to the political process in countries like England, France, Germany and Australia;
strengthening grassroots communal councils, increasing their funding, and promoting more of them;
lowering the eligible voting age from 18 to 16;
guaranteeing free university education to the highest level;
prohibiting foreign funding of elections and political activity;
reducing the working week to 36 hours to promote more employment;
ending the autonomy of Venezuela’s Central Bank to reclaim the country’s financial sovereignty the way it should be everywhere. (Today nearly all central banks are controlled by private for-profit banking cartels. The Federal Reserve Bank in the US is neither federal nor does it have reserves; it is owned and run by Wall Street and the major banks);
adding new forms of collective property under five categories: public for the state, social for citizens, collective for people or social groups, mixed for public and private, and private for individuals or private entities;
territorial redefinition to distribute resources more equitably to communities instead of being used largely by economic and political elites;
prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination and enacting gender parity rights for political candidates;
redefining the military as an "anti-imperialist, popular entity";
in cases where property is appropriated for the public good, fair and timely compensation to be paid for it;
protecting the loss of one’s home in cases of bankruptcy; and
enacting social security protection for the self-employed.
The National Assembly also approved 15 important transitional changes. They relate to how Constitutional changes will be implemented if approved until laws are passed to regulate them. One provision is for the legislature to pass 15 so-called "organic laws" that include:
a law on "popular power" to govern grassroots communal councils (that may number 50,000 by year end) that Chávez called "one of the central ideas....to open, at the Constitutional level, the roads to accelerate the transfer of power to the people (in an) Explosion of Communal or popular Power." Five percent of state revenues will be set aside to fund them;
another promotes a socialist economy for the 21st century that Chávez champions even though he remains friendly to business; and
one relating to the country’s territorial organisation, plus others on education, a shorter working week and more democratic changes.
Coup d’état rumblings must be taken seriously
Now battle lines are drawn, opposition forces are mobilised and events are playing out violently on Venezuela’s streets. The worst so far was a CNN report which falsely claimed that "80,000" anti-Chávez students demonstrated "peacefully" in Caracas to denounce "Hugo Chávez’s attempts to expand his power." The actual best estimates put the demonstrators at between 2,000 and 10,000, made up of the "privileged middle and upper middle class university students."
In their anti-government zeal, CNN and other dominant media ignore the many pro-Chávez events which one writer called a "red hurricane" sweeping the country.
US corporate media on the attack
On November 12, The Venezuela Information Office (VIO) reported that growing numbers of "US print newspapers lodged attacks against Venezuela" using "outdated cold-war generalisations" and without explaining any of the proposed democratic changes. Among others, they came from the Houston Chronicle that claimed Constitutional reforms will "eliminate the vestiges of democracy" in Venezuela when, in fact, they’ll strengthen it, and that the people will vote them in or out.
It said that Chávez controls the electoral system when, in fact, Venezuela is a model free, fair and open democracy that shames its US equivalent. The Chronicle also falsely said reforms will strip people of their right to due process. In fact, that is guaranteed under article 337 and that won’t be changed.
The Los Angeles Times wrote editorially, comparing Chávez to Bin Laden. It compounded that whopper by claiming reforms will cause a global recession due to higher oil prices that, of course, have nothing to do with changes in law. The LA Times inverted the truth by falsely claiming a public majority opposes reforms.
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal weighed in as well with its lead anti-Chávez attack dog and all-round character assassin extraordinaire, Mary Anastasia O’Grady.
Like most of her other articles, this one drips with vitriol and outrageous distortions like calling Chávez a "dictator" when, in fact, he’s a model democrat.
Once again, she’s on a rampage, but that’s her job. She claims Chávez is a "demagogue," waging "class warfare," and that increased opposition to reform "has led to increased speculation that (his) days are numbered."
The Forbes magazine, not to be outdone, talks in an article about "Latin Sinkholes," and that Cuba is the largest open-air prison in the Americas. "His [Chávez’s], revolution’s enemy is the marketplace." The journalist cites a World Bank report saying "Venezuela is tied with Zimbabwe as this year’s champion in smothering economic freedom."
In fact, Venezuela and Argentina have the highest growth rates in the region and are near the top of world rankings in recent years. Following the devastating oil management 2002-03 lockout, Venezuela’s economy took off and grew at double-digit rates in 2004, 2005 and 2006 and will grow a likely 8 percent this year.
There is a lot more criticism like this throughout the dominant media along with commentators calling Chávez "a dictator, another Hitler and a threat to democracy." This type of media assault is part of a prelude to what often follows — attempted regime change.
On November 15, Venezuela’s Information Office issued a statement to dispel media inaccuracies. They listed:
Caracas has a student population of around 200,000; at most 10,000 participated in the largest protest to date;
the major media ignore how the government cooperates with students and made various accommodations to them to be fair to the opposition;
Venezuelan police have protected student protestors. Article 68 of the Constitution requires they do it affirming the right of all Venezuelans to assemble peacefully;
student protest leaders linked to opposition parties were granted high-level meetings with government officials to present their concerns;
on November 12, Minister of Interior and Justice Minister, Pedro Carreño, met 20 university presidents to assure them the government respects university autonomy and the right of students to assemble peacefully.
Venezuelan business is booming — so why complain?
Business in Venezuela is indeed booming. In 2006 the Financial Times said bankers were "having a party" it was so good. So what is the problem? It’s not good enough for corporate interests wanting it all for themselves and nothing for the people the way it used to be pre-Chávez.
Last June, Business Week magazine captured the mood in an article called "A Love-Hate Relationship with Chávez". It said "companies are chafing under the fiery socialist. But in some respects, business has never been better." Writer Geri Smith asked: "Just how hard is it to do business in Venezuela", and then exaggerated by saying "hardly a day passes without another change in the rules restricting companies." Hardly so, but what is true is that new rules require a more equitable relationship between government and business.
They provide more benefits to the people and greater attention to small Venezuelan business and other commercial undertakings like the explosion of cooperatives (100,000 or more) that under neo-liberal rules have no chance against the giants.
Events are coming to a head
Through the dominant media, Washington and Venezuelan anti-Chávez elements are using Constitutional reform as a pretext for what they may have in mind — to arouse the military to intervene and oust Chávez.
The rich and privileged fear Constitutional reforms because they will have to grant a greater share of their (considerable) profits to the working class, lose their monopoly over market transactions to publicly owned firms, and see political power evolve towards local community councils and the executive branch.
As December 2 approaches the remains of the multi-class coalition embracing a minority of the middle class and the great majority of (workers) is disintegrating. Some political defections have taken place and it is believed that the former Chávez Defence Minister, Raul Baduel may be an aspirant to head up a US-backed right-wing seizure of power.
The situation is ugly and dangerous, and lots of US money and influence fuels it. One journalist put it this way: "Venezuelan democracy, the Presidency of Hugo Chávez and the great majority of the popular classes face a mortal threat." An alliance between Washington, local oligarchs and elitist supporters of the right are committed to ousting Chávez and may feel now is their best chance. Venezuela’s social democracy is on the line in the crucial December 2 vote and the entire region depends on it solidifying and surviving.
*Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago.
His article is substantially abridged for reasons of space.
The full text in English can be found at www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2855