Venezuelan Protest Shuts Stores, Slows Oil Deliveries

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
 

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 9 -- A national strike in support of protesting oil workers closed much of Venezuela's private
industry today and slowed petroleum deliveries to the United States in a broad show of disgust with President Hugo Chavez's
three-year-old administration.

Although most businesses were shuttered, government officials insisted that the work stoppage failed to demonstrate broad
opposition to a president whose popularity has slipped dramatically in recent months. Chavez, whose leftist agenda is at the
heart of the widening unrest, required private television stations to repeatedly broadcast statements that the country was not
affected by the protests.

"The majority has not responded to this call by the subversives because that's what they are, subversives," Chavez said during a
visit to the downtown Plaza Venezuela, mobbed with crowds of rival protesters. "Venezuela is in order, in democracy, and on
the move. Right now we are in a media war."

The protests, coming four months after the first national strike designed to force the president from office, posed a grave new
challenge to Chavez as the disruption reached for the first time into the country's vital petroleum industry. Since his 1998
election with a broad populist mandate, Chavez has promised to use Venezuela's oil wealth to help its poor majority. But he is
confronting an increasingly powerful opposition that now includes Venezuela's largest labor and business groups, the Catholic
church and the media.

The strike, which organizers decided late today to extend through Wednesday, was called by labor and business groups in
support of a lingering protest by managers at the country's state-run petroleum industry. Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA,
provides the government with 80 percent of its revenue and the United States with almost 2 million barrels of oil a day.

Managers began their protest six weeks ago after Chavez appointed five board members who share his leftist ideas about how
the company should be run. The company dissidents, seven of whom were fired by Chavez on Sunday, have demanded that he
replace the new directors with experienced business leaders better able to manage one of the world's largest oil companies.

At its heart, however, the dispute is whether Chavez should be allowed to use Venezuela's lifeblood industry on behalf of his
leftist domestic agenda. Although owned by the state, the company has always enjoyed a measure of independence, which
under Chavez has been steadily eroded.

On taking office, Chavez threw out the strategic plan PDVSA adopted in 1997 that sought to increase oil revenue by doubling
production. Chavez decided instead to cut production, seeking to drive up prices. He urged fellow members of the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, now led by his former energy minister, to adopt a similar policy.

"Who pays for this? The private sector, because economic activity is reduced as a result," said Guaicaipuro Lameda, a former
army general whom Chavez fired as head of PDVSA in January after appointing him 16 months earlier. "I was told, 'You do
not understand. This way the government gets most of the money and the government has the responsibility to look after the
people's wealth.' What we are getting now is a project pretty close to communism, drop by drop."

The white-collar work slowdown at PDVSA has reached into the production and refining sectors. At least two refineries,
including the Amuay-Cardon refinery complex that is a major source of U.S.-bound oil, were shut down or working at reduced
capacity.

Chavez, who maintained that the oil sector was operating normally, on Sunday compared the striking oil workers to terrorists
and said the protests represented resistance to reforms that would take away the "luxury chalets," large salaries and other perks
from PDVSA executives.

"PDVSA has long been the hen that lays the golden egg, but today it is eating more than half of the eggs it is producing,"
Foreign Minister Luis Alfonso Davila said in an interview. "We are trying to bring some order to this company."

Oil analysts watched the situation with concern a day after the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, said he would suspend petroleum
exports for 30 days to protest the Israeli military campaign in the West Bank. If both Iraq and Venezuela stopped shipping oil
-- a combined 5 million barrels a day -- it would be the biggest disruption in supply since the Persian Gulf War.

Despite increased security on Caracas streets today, anti-Chavez protesters clashed with pro-government groups known as
Bolivarian Circles in front of PDVSA headquarters and the Venezuelan Workers' Confederation, the largest labor organization.

Government ministers said most Venezuelans worked and repeatedly broadcast that message on television stations seized by
the government for that purpose more than 15 times today. The constitution grants the government power to order such
seizures in certain circumstances. But legal scholars said what happened today was an abuse of that power. The
Inter-American Human Rights Commission today expressed concern over the government's "abusive use" of private television
stations to broadcast its view of the strike.

Public transportation ran as usual and banks remained open for business. But leading business groups said more than 75
percent of private businesses remained closed, and most shops and restaurants along the capital's usually congested streets had
their shutters down. The national airline companies suspended flights because of lack of passengers and fuel.

                                 © 2002