Bush
Administration Pushes "Regime Change" in Venezuela
by Mark Weisbrot
Dissident Voice
December 12,
2002
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 (www.cepr.net), a nonpartisan think-tank in the nation's capital. Readers
may write him at CEPR, 1621 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC
20009-1052 and e-mail him at Weisbrot@cepr.net