Monday, January 5, 2004

 

Venezuela’s Chávez wants the spotlight in Mexico

 

By Barnard R. Thompson

 

A Special Summit of the Americas will be held in Monterrey, Mexico, on January 12 and 13, a prelude to the planned 2005 Fourth Summit of the Americas, in Argentina.  During this particular event, officials have indicated that the focus will be on economic growth, social development and democratic governance in the Western Hemisphere.

 

George W. Bush will attend, and sidebar to the summit he is scheduled to meet with Mexican President Vicente Fox Quesada to further discuss immigration and binational security matters according to Fox’s office.

 

Altogether the Special Summit will assemble 34 heads of state from all of the perceivably democratic countries in the hemisphere — that more bluntly means Fidel Castro of Cuba is not invited.  Still, it appears that Castro will be represented by a perchance and/or wannabe successor, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

 

Chávez continues to be under heavy fire at home, where opponents are advancing the drive for his recall.  On December 19 opposition leaders delivered recall petitions with 3.46 million signatures to Venezuela’s National Elections Council, a sizable number over the requisite 2.4 million signatures needed to initiate a referendum.  However due to holiday vacations, the counting and verification of the signatures are to begin on January 5.  Once the counts officially begin, the council will have 30 days to decide if a referendum on Chávez remaining in office will be held.

 

Supporters claim that Chávez has given the poor a voice in Venezuela, whereas his detractors charge him with ruining the economy and wanting to change Venezuela into a Cuban-style communist dictatorship — with the help of best buddy Fidel Castro.

 

Since even before the signature drive began Chávez has been crying foul.  Using terms like “mega-fraud, gigantic fraud” and more colorful invectives, he charges that people signed petitions more than once and that unregistered voters were given fake identification cards so they too could sign.  He also is accusing private business, entrepreneurs and some unionists of threatening to fire workers if they would not sign the petitions.  And the ex-paratrooper is warning that discharged military officers, who participated in the failed 2002 coup, are again plotting against him.

 

Chávez says that he will fight recall virtually beyond extremes, plus he has vowed to verify each and every signature on the petitions.  Part of this latter strategy, if needed, is undoubtedly to delay a possible referendum until after August — when the less than two-year date before the 2006 elections comes around.  After that the president could be removed, but legally there could not be a presidential election and the vice president would takeover (while Chávez campaigns for 2006).

 

On December 22 Fidel Castro made a hurried trip to Venezuela for secretive talks with Chávez, supposedly on healthcare and education issues.  Also in Venezuela for the meetings was Evo Morales, Bolivia’s outspoken anti-capitalist congressman who heads both the Movement Toward Socialism party and organized coca growers in his homeland.  (Morales has also been meeting with Jimmy Carter, a common denominator joining Castro, Chávez and Morales.)

 

Soon after the meetings Chávez started to talk about forthcoming plans and “his” international agenda.  In this regard, it should be noted that there is growing concern in Washington and certain other western capitals that Chávez and his coconspirators are up to no good.

 

Chávez says that he will visit a number of countries in 2004, starting with Mexico in order to attend the Special Summit of the Americas.  In late December, on his weekly radio and TV “Aló Presidente” program, Chávez said that he plans to speak against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) during the summit.  Likening participation in a FTAA to “committing suicide,” Chávez expounded on his rhetorical argument that such an accord would further impoverish Latin Americans by subjecting them to unfair U.S.A. and Canadian competition.  News reports say that Chávez, while in Mexico, will also call for governments to support a redistribution of wealth through a new hemispheric social contract.

 

Saying that the world cannot have a single pole, Chávez told Prensa Latina that he would travel to Russia this year.  “The objective of the visit to Russia will be to raise the level of bilateral relations, that have already been moved forward with the visit of Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov to Caracas, when several cooperative agreements and letters of intent were signed,” Chávez told the Cuban news agency.  Chávez also talked about plans to visit France and several other European nations.