-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Anti-Chavez Sentiment Builds With Appointment 05 February 2001 Summary The surprise appointment of Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel as Venezuela's new defense minister may lead to increased tensions with Colombia and the United States. Rangel's appointment, however, is also the beginning of the end of President Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian revolution. High oil prices, plus more than $21 billion in foreign exchange reserves, will keep Chavez afloat economically for a while, but public confidence in his government has dropped significantly in the past year. Meanwhile, conservative elements of the armed forces are increasingly unhappy with Venezuela's growing international isolation. Analysis President Hugo Chavez recently reshuffled his Cabinet, appointing Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel as Venezuela’s first civilian defense minister in nearly 50 years. Rangel replaced army Gen. Eliecer Hurtado, who was appointed minister of infrastructure. Chavez said he appointed Rangel to signal the “union” of the armed forces and civil society in his democratic Bolivarian revolution. In actuality, relations between Chavez and the armed forces have reached their lowest point since he was elected president in December 1998. During a Feb. 4 military parade to celebrate the ninth anniversary of his failed coup attempt in 1992, Chavez also said Venezuela never again would experience a military coup. Chavez, however, may have been putting a positive spin on a bad situation. Chavez put Rangel in the Defense Ministry shortly after Venezuelan newspapers reported senior and mid-level military officers recently held several closed-door meetings in different parts of Venezuela – without Chavez’s prior knowledge. Chavez may have appointed Rangel as defense minister to show his government will not tolerate clandestine meetings within the military – meetings such as those Chavez conducted during his career in the military. More likely, Chavez tapped Rangel because he no longer trusts his senior military commanders and he is hobbled by a shrinking pool of trusted political allies. In effect, his Cabinet reshuffle was an exercise in circling a handful of wagons. Venezuela's new Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel. In addition to putting Rangel in the Defense Ministry, Chavez brought septuagenarian leftist Luis Miquilena back into his government as interior and justice minister (MIJ), and moved Luis Alfonso Davila from MIJ to the Foreign Ministry. Davila, a former military officer, is an inflexible “chavista” who as interior and justice minister failed to contain the terrible rise in violent crime that Venezuela has suffered since 1998. With this reshuffle, Chavez has peopled all of his key political, security and economic ministries with Marxists who oppose free-market policies and view the United States as an enemy. The choice of Rangel, a lifelong anti-American Marxist who admires Fidel Castro and is despised widely within the Venezuelan armed forces, may be Chavez’s greatest political mistake since he launched his Bolivarian revolution in 1998. Typically, the active-duty military establishment has not responded publicly to Rangel’s appointment as defense minister. The response from retired senior officers, however, was strongly negative. Retired army Gen. Fernando Ochoa Antich, a former defense minister and foreign minister, warned Rangel’s appointment was “counterproductive for the armed forces and for the government.” Vice Adm. Ivan Carratu Molina dismissed Rangel as “a genetically anti-American Marxist” and a longtime enemy of the Venezuelan armed forces who will widen the breach between Venezuela and the United States and create security problems with Colombia. Rangel dismissed these criticisms but acknowledged strengthening security along Venezuela’s border with Colombia will be his first priority. Rangel said he will immediately tour all of the military bases and outposts on the border with Colombia and, within a month, will convene a bilateral Venezuelan-Colombian military commission to develop a joint response to border security problems. Rangel’s relations with Colombian defense and military officials will be frosty at best. As foreign minister of Venezuela, Rangel sympathized openly with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), providing guerrilla representatives with transportation, office space and security details in Venezuela. Additionally, Rangel often has sparred verbally with the government of President Andres Pastrana. Moreover, Gen. Fernando Tapias, the commander of Colombia’s armed forces, has publicly accused the Chavez government of arming FARC and ELN rebels. Rangel said he would maintain close relations with Venezuela’s new foreign minister because foreign policy has a security and defense component. If Rangel’s past actions and sympathies in the Foreign Ministry are any indication, as defense minister he will likely continue to favor the FARC and ELN, while adopting a hard line with the Colombian government on halting refugee displacements and cross-border incursions by Colombian army and paramilitary units. Rangel also pledged to strengthen and modernize Venezuela’s armed forces. In fact, modernization under Rangel likely will seek to strengthen pro-Chavez currents in the armed forces while preventing any individual officers from gaining sufficient prestige to be seen as alternative to Chavez. This could exacerbate tensions between the Chavez government and the traditional military establishment. The increased tensions between Chavez and the armed forces come at a time of weakening public confidence in his government. A poll of 2,000 Venezuelans conducted last November by Datos Information Resources, a respected independent polling company in Caracas, found only 42 percent of Venezuelans think Chavez is capable of solving their country’s social and economic problems. About a year ago, polls consistently gave Chavez approval ratings of between 65 percent and 80 percent. Datos President Edmond Saade said Chavez has not lost his popularity, but has lost “a considerable portion” of the people’s confidence in his ability to handle the country’s problems. Chavez is not a coalition builder. Instead, he has based his government almost entirely on his personal appeal to poor Venezuelans. For two years, and through seven referendums, Chavez has projected a Messianic aura of political invincibility, always presenting himself as the incarnation of the people’s will and mixing his personal charisma with bitter contempt for traditional political institutions. At the same time, however, Chavez has systematically repudiated every organized sector in Venezuelan society, including many of his former allies and friends. Chavez has been successful at consolidating power in his hands, yet he has grown increasingly isolated without strong political or institutional foundations to support his government. Instead, his main pillars of support have been the public’s approval, the military’s cooperation and high oil prices. Two of the three pillars look wobbly, however, and oil prices will not stay high indefinitely. The Venezuelan economy’s prospects are tied to the vagaries of the world oil market. Thanks to sharply higher oil prices, the Venezuelan economy grew 3.2 percent in 2000 and is projected to grow 5 percent this year. Moreover, since 1998, the government deficit has shrunk from 4.1 percent of GDP two years ago to 1.8 percent of GDP in 2000. At the same time, the current account changed from a $2.56 billion deficit in 1998 to a $14.3 billion surplus last year, enabling Venezuela to accumulate more than $21 billion in foreign exchange reserves. The economy’s underlying structural weakness has increased, however. The non-oil economy grew only 2.7 percent last year despite the oil windfall and a public spending increase of nearly 50 percent. Moreover, non-traditional exports increased 29 percent last year, but the overall export mix shrank more than 13 percent. Official unemployment remains at about 15 percent and more than 53 percent of the country’s work force is employed in the informal economy. The purchasing power of the average Venezuelan worker covers only 44 percent of the cost of the basic food basket in a household with two employed adults. Since 1998, more than $9 billion in private capital has fled the country. High oil prices have enabled the Chavez government to keep inflation in check, but the currency is overvalued now by more than 50 percent, according to Venezuelan economists. High oil prices are the only thing keeping the Venezuelan economy and the Chavez government afloat. Miquilena, the new interior and justice minister, acknowledged Venezuela is increasingly at risk of a “social explosion” due to high levels of unemployment and violent crime. He also cautioned several years may pass before Venezuela feels the first widespread glimmers of economic recovery. A sharp and prolonged drop in oil prices, however, could plunge the fragile Venezuelan economy into crisis, fracturing the public’s confidence in Chavez and fueling increased military discontent that could force his early departure from the presidency. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! 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