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CounterPunch
December
12, 2002
Bush Administration
Pushes "Regime Change" in Venezuela
by MARK WEISBROT
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.
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