Tension came to the surface as security forces carried out President Hugo Chavez' orders to take a tough line with demonstrators protesting against his plan to reform the constitution to remove a ban on successive re-election.
Students had assembled Tuesday to march on the Supreme Justice Tribunal (TSJ) to demand that Venezuela's senior judges rule in favor of keeping the electoral registers open until the eve of the February 15 referendum on Chavez' plan. The TSJ is located at the top of Avenida Baralt in the north of the old center of the capital.
The students didn't get within even spitting distance as the Metropolitan Police barred their way, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to dissuade the march from moving any further forward. Protesters ran into shops to take shelter as it became clear that the police were fully prepared to follow the president's order to the letter. He had threatened to fire officers who didn't.
March organizers decided to call a halt in Plaza Brion in the district of Chacaito. Given the evident determination of the police and others to stop them going further, this looked like good sense in the circumstances. David Smolansky, a spokesman for a student group opposed to Chavez' proposed lifting on a constitutional ban on successive re-election, said that the security forces had "once again violated our rights."
Government supporters on motorbikes had hovered on the fringes of the protesters from the very start, Smolansky was reported to have stated. Some of the men on motorbikes had been carrying guns and opened fire on the students, it was alleged. No gunshot wounds were immediately reported. Gunshots were reported to have been heard in Las Mercedes, a middle class district in the geographical center of the capital - a center of anti-government sentiment.
Officers from the Chacao municipal police force were said to have arrested four people on motorbikes for bearing firearms after this incident. The identities and whereabouts of the detainess wasn't disclosed. The legality of the march was in question even before it began. Student leaders claimed they had secured approval from the authorities, but all the indications suggested this wasn't the case and never would have been.
Even as protesters against the president's re-election plan had gathered in the Plaza Venezuela district preparing for the march, signs were that Chavez' appointed Interior and Justice Minister Tarek El Aissami was far from sympathetic towards the students' cause. He said he hadn't heard of any such march - and anyway, the protesters were intent on causing trouble. By then, Libertador Municipal Mayor Jore Rodriguez had said that the planned route of the march had been allocated for other purposes. This was an indirect way of saying he hadn't approved the march. Rodriguez is a powerfull figure in the president's ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
Earlier, the opposition party Causa R claimed that a ceremony marking its anniversary at El Ateneo in Caracas had come under attack from a group of the president's supporters, or chavistas. It said some of the attackers were carrying firearms. Spokesmen for Causa R said that tear gas canisters had been thrown at the building, and that party members and employees were trapped inside the building. Claiming that the building was "surrounded" by hardline chavistas, Gabriel Ponte Puerta of Causa R told reporters by telephone that squads from the National Guard and the Metropolitan Police had done nothing to halt the disorder. Ponte Puerta pointed the finger at Lina Ron, a voluble superchavista who founded her own little party because she felt that the top echelon at Chávez' ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and before that, the Fifth Republic Movement )MVR), had gone soft on the revolution.
Ron, it was alleged, had been seen snatching a camera from a woman who was taking photographs. The identity of this individual and whether she was working for the press, or what happened to her afterwards, were not disclosed. For her part, Ron claimed that "ultra right groups" had taken over El Ateneo. The implication of this was that she and her sympathizers were trying to regain the building.
The students purpose in marching to the TSJ had been to push the judges into reversing a ruling by a majority of the board at the National Electoral Council (CNE) that the electoral register when it was last updated last December is to be used for the referendum. The rationale for this is that there isn't time to update the register, but critics for whom the CNE has long been an object of suspicion say that as many as 400,000 young people who recently became eligible to vote are in effect being disenfranchised in the run-up to the referendum.
The ambush at El Ateneo was the latest of a string of threatening incidents since the campaign officially got under way last Saturday. Shortly after dawn on Monday morning, five tear gas canisters were thrown at the office of the Papal Nuncio in Caracas. This attack was attributed to a shadowy group known as El Piedrita (Little Stone), which has claimed responsibility for similar attacks before.
Other targets of aggression have included the residence of Marcel Granier, proprietor of private media conglomerate 1BC, and the headquarters of Globovisión, the private all-news channel that makes no secret of its opposition to Chávez. Two journalists well known for their outright opposition to the Chávez regime, Globovisión anchorman Leopoldo Castillo and Marta Colomina, are also said to have been on the end of unwanted attention from chavista groups.
The Caracas headquarters of the opposition Social Christian party, Copei, also came under attack from men on motorbikes armed who similarly threw tear gas canisters. A car belonging to Ricardo Sánchez, president of the students' Federation of University Centers at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) in Caracas, was set on fire late Saturday. Men on motorbikes were said to have thrown Molotov Cocktail homemade gasoline bombs at the vehicle. Sánchez, who was not inside the car at the time, afterwards said the president would be responsible if anything happened to him or "any other student." Asked about this incident, Rodríguez said he viewed the incident with "suspicion," implying that the car-bombing was a deliberate own-goal by the opposition.
Chávez last weekend called on the security forces to bring a heavy hand against anybody intent on "destabilizing" the referendum campaign. He and senior government officials have labeled students opposed to his bid to "indefinite" re-election as "fascicts."
Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma has been the object of several dubious incidents. He says his office in downtown Caracas was "invaded" last weekend by "paramilitary groups" with links to the president. When Ledezma first arrived at his offices after winning the November 23 election, he found his way barred by men who smashed windows and swore they weren't going to work for him. They were said to be municipal employees.
Then Ledezma found himself prevented from entering the building that used to house the old Supreme Court to hold the first meeting of the new city council. The building had been used for that purpose for the previous eight years, when the capital was controlled by Chavez' PSUV and its allies. Ledezma claims that "a plan of indefinite violence" is under way at the instigation of the government. He has raised several allegations of misconduct against his predecessor as city chief executive, Juan Barreto, and claims that last weekend's attack was aimed at removing evidence of Barreto's alleged misdoings in office, which are under investigation.
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