Wording is vague, but critics see trouble in journalist's legal loss

 BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

 CARACAS, Venezuela -- In the red-hot climate of President Hugo Chávez's contentious rule, a fuzzy legal decision has sparked an avalanche of allegations that he
 means to strangle freedom of the press in Venezuela.

 The June 14 ruling by the Supreme Justice Tribunal ``is aberrant and erases the word democracy in this country,'' thundered former Supreme Court Justice Cecilia Sosa.

 ``It opens the door to judicial censorship,'' complained constitutional law expert Allan Brewer Carias, adding the ruling violated the Venezuelan constitution as well as international treaties on human and civil rights.

 The ruling in fact does less erasing than door opening -- if anything at all, since its wording is so ambiguous and rambling that even repeated and thorough readings fail to clarify some crucial points.

 But with the leftist Chávez and his foes at each others' throats, virtually any move that the former paratrooper's government makes is quickly attacked by critics as another disguised step on the road to dictatorship.

 In turn, Chávez, who staged a bloody military coup attempt in 1992 and was elected in 1998, regularly denounces media criticism as a ``conspiracy'' to obstruct the
 ``peaceful revolution'' that he has promised Venezuela's poor.

 ``Both sides tend to see everything in black and white, but there's a lot of shadings,'' said Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the newspaper TalCual, who nevertheless called the ruling ``stupid and misguided.''

 At the heart of the brawl is an 18-page ruling rejecting a lawsuit by Elías Santana, an opposition politician and columnist, demanding time in Chávez' weekly Aló
 Presidente radio program to answer his criticisms of Santana in a segment last year.

 CHALLENGE

 Chávez had challenged Santana's contention that Venezuelans were growing tired of the president, saying, ``You call your civil society to one street corner, and I'll call mine to the other.''

 The Tribunal's decision said journalists do not have the right of reply -- presumably because they have other means to reply -- and seemed to argue that Chávez's
 comment was in any case an opinion, not a refutable fact.

 Outraged critics immediately charged the ruling gave journalists second-class status and said it would allow Chávez to continue his harsh verbal attacks on the media
 without any restrictions at all.

 But in 16 pages of additional "commentaries,'' the ruling rambled over some of the hot-button issues of media laws in ways that sparked alarm among Venezuelans who already see Chávez as a dictator in the making.

 Its mere mention of the fact that media enterprises are not exempt from taxes -- an issue not in dispute in the Santana suit -- raised concern that the government might use taxes to pressure critical media.

 A comment that media in which most commentators espouse one political line should ``declare themselves'' part of that line -- whatever that means -- triggered complaints the Tribunal was ordering more balanced commentaries.

 And a reference to the Venezuelan constitutions' section that says citizens have a right to ``truthful and impartial information'' was taken as a sign that Chávez could
 sanction journalists by accusing them of disseminating biased or false information.

 `NEW STEP'

 ``We fear that . . . this may be a new step towards the creation of a new `Ministry of Truth,' '' the Miami-based Inter-American Press Association said a week after the Tribunal issued the ruling.

 The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters without Borders in Paris also fired broadsides against the ruling, calling it a danger to freedom of the media and recalling Chávez' history of harsh verbal attacks on journalists.

 Supreme Justice Tribunal President Iván Rincón did little to assuage the concerns when he told a group of foreign journalists last week that the complaints were ``part of a campaign orchestrated to discredit the government.''

 But other Venezuelans, including Chávez critics, have recently come around to the belief that while the ruling is ambiguous and perhaps dangerous in the long run, it's not the disaster it was at first believed.

 ``We have to put the paranoia aside,'' said Gerardo Blyde, an opposition member of the National Assembly and constitutional law expert.

 ``When the scandal started I downloaded [the ruling] from the Internet and studied it well, and I realized that it had a number of positive things,'' added Hildegard Rondón, a former justice of the Supreme Court, replaced by the Supreme Court Tribunal under a new constitution adopted in 1999.

 Rincón told the foreign journalists that the Tribunal's decision and the constitution in fact protect their Venezuelan counterparts in much the same way as the U.S.
 constitution and laws.

 Anyone who files libel or slander suits can only collect damages if they prove malice or reckless disregard for the truth by the journalists, and the bar is even higher when public officials sue, Rincón said.

 LESS PRESSURES

 He also noted that the Venezuelan government is now exercising less pressures on the media than at many times in the past -- an argument grudgingly acknowledged by several local journalists.

 Past governments have often silenced media critics by withdrawing state advertising, hiking the costs of imported newsprint or threatening to withdraw government
 television and radio broadcasting licenses.

 But there are signs that the Chávez government is beginning to move beyond verbal attacks and into rough play with its media critics.

 Venezuela's largest private television network, Venevisión, canceled the popular current affairs program 24 Hours in May, apparently following government complaints against the show's criticisms of Chávez.

 And there are reports the government is demanding the cancellation of the program Justice First, where opposition politician Julio Borges uses a make-believe courtroom to dispense Judge Wapner-type rulings on personal disputes as well as sharp-tongued attacks on the Chávez government.

 ``We live a situation of intolerance,'' Mérida Bishop Baltazar Porras, president of the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference told reporters last week.

 Venezuela needs ``that each person feels at ease and not constrained from issuing opinions,'' Porras added. ``Sentences like those of the Supreme Justice Tribunal affect the possibilities of a full liberty.''

                                    © 2001