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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Venezuelan opposition crushed |
| 2004-11-22 |
| Shoppers now crowd Venezuela's shopping malls, two years after they were padlocked during a national strike against President Hugo Chavez. The economy is robust once again. The mass demonstrations that paralyzed the capital are no more. But underneath the veneer of normalcy in this oil-rich nation is deep frustration felt by Chavez's opponents after three efforts to unseat him failed: a coup, a national strike and a referendum. They are in disarray and unable to challenge a president they accuse of steering Venezuela into a Cuba-style dictatorship. As Chavez moves to further centralize power and advance what he calls his revolution for the poor, the risk that extremists will turn to violence was underscored by the assassination Thursday of a state attorney who was intending to prosecute supporters of the failed 2002 coup. Meanwhile, what Chavez calls the "democratic opposition" is at a nadir. "The opposition has no legitimate leadership. Not at this moment," said Alberto Garrido, a leading Venezuelan political commentator and author of several books on Chavez. "We'll see if the opposition finds ways to develop a leadership. It will be a very slow process." Chavez, a former paratroop commander who tried to gain power in an unsuccessful 1992 coup, has done very well using democratic means instead to install his "Bolivarian revolution," named after his idol, Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar. First elected president in 1998 and re-elected in 2000, Chavez won the August referendum that sought to oust him by a 60-40 percent margin. In October, pro-Chavez candidates swept all but two of Venezuela's 23 governorships in regional elections. He is next set to strengthen his sway over parliament in congressional elections in July. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Total bullshit from beginning to end!! "Let's discuss Venezuela's economic growth By Daniel Duquenal 19.11.04 | Today the Venezuelan Central Bank, BCV, issued its third trimester report. In it we find a few interesting things. First the GDP increase in comparison to the third quarter of 2003 (after the devastating oil strike) is 15.8% when that last one had a 7.1% drop respective to 2002. This would be very good on its face value. And indeed things are going much better than one year ago. But let's be a little bit more inquisitive in our lecture of the recent economic numbers. The sector that showed the largest recovery was construction, the one comatose since 2002. It increased in the third quarter by a whopping 40.3%! How come? Well, in the purest of Venezuelan political tradition, the government released a lot of cash to build quickly popular housing that it could have built earlier. But it makes for better photo-ops when the president himself goes to open a few dozen subsidized housing here and there. Yet we can read that the construction sector is still 40% below its 2001 level, which was not that great to begin with. More good news, in large part due to the extraordinary electoral spending so decried through this blog since early this year. General consumer demand increased by 29.2%!!! And the jobless rate is still 14.5% and the underemployed (street vendors and the like) is still hovering at 50%. No big change there. So how come people have money suddenly? Cash grants from a mision or another? Still the BCV is careful and gives a 12% for the whole year in spite of such a gleaming third quarter. Do they know something we do not know? Like a sudden slow down in the 4th quarter? Elsewhere we read that the increase in accounts balances towards a surplus is due to an increase of 37.1% of oil price. Yet the National Assembly issues a new debt emission of 500 million USD against the objections of the BCV! And from CEDICE with have a Cassandra voice announcing that the current oil plenty has a déjàvu feeling all over again. And to reassure your doubts about the good management of the country, the BIV, one of the two "commercial banks" which is state owned, has a bad debt roll of 34.3%, the highest within the Venezuelan banking system whose average is 2.4%. That is, a whopping 1/3 of the loans issued by the BIV (many to associates of the regime) are bad debt that probably will never be recovered. Imagine that! And supposedly we should cheer up the GDP increase in the third quarter. One wonders what would that GDP be if we had a better managed country and not the corrupt mess that we are putting up with." http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200411190407 |
| Posted by: Anonymous4724 2004-11-22 9:05:49 AM |