American Enterprise Institute

Friday, December 1, 2006

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

9:45 a.m.	Registration
10:00	Keynote:	The Honorable Connie Mack, U.S. House of Representatives
11:00	Panelists:	Gustavo Coronel, former member of the board of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA)
		Thor Halvorssen, Human Rights Foundation
		Roger F. Noriega, AEI
Noon	Adjournment

Proceedings:

Roger F. Noriega:  Thank you very much to all of you for joining us here this morning.  It is obviously a timely topic in light of the fact that elections are going to be held on Sunday.   And we welcome you all here.  This encounter is the first of several that we look forward to conducting here at AEI to reflect a little bit about the course that Venezuela is on.  And in the coming year, we’ll be having a couple of seminars with experts from the region to talk a little bit about the history, the antecedence of the Chávez experience, and where we may be headed.  In particular, of course, the role that the United States has to play, along with its neighbors, in responding to this phenomenon.

We are very, very pleased to have with us this morning Congressman Connie Mack, who represents Florida’s 14th Congressional District which includes the areas of Naples, Fort Myers, and Cape Coral.  He was first elected to the Congress in 2004 and reelected in 2006.  As a member of the House International Relations Committee, Congressman Mack has worked to craft policies that spread the ideals of freedom and security and prosperity around the world, with a special focus on our neighbors here in the Americas. 

As a member of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, he has become one of Congress’s most respected and informed observers of Venezuela today.  He has publicly expressed concern about the policies of President Chávez, including the rapid military buildup and its implications for security in the Americas, as well as the ever-growing anti-democratic and anti-US actions of the Chávez government.  Congressman Mack also previously served in Florida’s House of Representatives.  We are pleased to have him here. He will make some opening comments and then answer questions.  Congressman Mack, the podium is yours.  Thank you.

Connie Mack:  Thank you very much for the introduction, and it’s great to be with you again, Roger, and it’s great to be with all of you this morning.  It’s probably kind of rare to have a Congressman in town this week.  But I am thankful for this opportunity because I believe the topic that we’re discussing today is so very important to freedom and security in our hemisphere.  And so having this opportunity to be with you, to have a discussion about the elections, and maybe, where do we go from here, is one that I very much look forward to.  I also want to say that I appreciate the work of AEI, and I look forward to continue working with AEI on not only issues in Latin America and Venezuela, but on other issues as well.

As a congressman who serves on the International Relations Committee, I’ve had the opportunity to immerse myself in a variety of important issues concerning our nation’s role in promoting the ideals of freedom, security, and prosperity.  I think it’s important, though, that I tell you a little bit about why I come to these ideas.

Connie Mack:  The strength and purpose of Ronald Reagan’s commitment to the ideals of freedom had a strong impact on me as a young man.  And yes, I was young.  In fact, Reagan used to say, “Freedom is a fragile thing, and is never more than one generation away from extinction.  It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.”  That guiding principle, coupled with my father’s belief that freedom is the core of all human progress, had a profound influence on me, and how I view freedom, and the freedoms we enjoy as Americans and the liberty people yearn for around the world.

But around the world, freedom is under attack.  Many in Washington are rightly focused on Islamic fundamentalism and nuclear ambitions in North Korea.  However, I have spoken at great lengths about the threats to freedom and liberty, and the gathering storm that is brewing in our own back yard in Latin America.  For decades, Latin America has been a region where the United States government engaged in local politics, fought communists, and promoted business interests.  Even if the rest of the world wasn’t paying attention in Latin America, the United States was. 

Then came September 11th, and some in the United States seemed to tune out.  But just as the five-year-old war on terrorism or terror showed the necessity for confronting threats where they linger, it also underscores the danger of neglect.  When the United States neglected Latin America, it created a vacuum that was filled by political forces and leaders often hostile to the United States.  Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, together with the likes of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, is spewing a populist, leftist, and strongly anti-American brand of politics that is threatening the entire region. 

Chávez is the most well-known Latin American president since Castro, and seems to be positioning himself to take over Castro’s leadership of anti-United States sentiment after Castro dies.  This Sunday, Venezuela goes to the polls to elect a president.  With Venezuela’s domestic opposition movement trying to revive itself, coupled with Chávez’s increasingly tight grip on power, some say the stakes in this election couldn’t be higher.  A resounding Chávez victory could give him the six years he needs to turn Venezuela into something that more closely resembles Cuba, if not politically, then at least economically.

Let’s reflect for a moment on how we got here.  As the twentieth century drew to a close, Latin America finally seemed to have escaped the military dictators and communist influence.  No Latin American country except Haiti and Cuba had reverted to authoritarianism.  There were coup attempts, ironically one by then Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez in 1992 in Venezuela, but all of them failed.  Then, in 1998, that same Colonel Chávez, who was imprisoned after his failed coup attempt, was elected President of Venezuela. 

When he failed to take by force, he won at the ballot box.  He is now closing in on eight years in office.  In that time, he has concentrated power, harassed political opponents, punished reporters, persecuted civic organizations, and increased his control of the legislature.  With his fiery, anti-American rhetoric, Chávez has become the poster boy for leftists worldwide.  But it is his actions, not his rhetoric, that we must focus on. 

Some believe Chávez should be written off as a mere crackpot.  However, Hugo Chávez is not crazy.  He is a cunning and calculated leader, and he must be taken seriously.  As Venezuela prepares for its Presidential Election this Sunday, it is critical to understand Chávez’s true intentions, and for the United States to craft a proactive policy.  I think this is important because we have been in more of a reactionary policy, and I think we need to really look more towards proactive policies on ways to bring Venezuela back to a true democracy. 

Hugo Chávez rose to power because Venezuelans were looking for an alternative to the corruptions of years past.  However, since Chávez took the reins of power, his grips on the hopes, dreams, and freedoms of the Venezuelan people have tightened, and his efforts to sow the seeds of instability throughout Latin American and beyond have intensified.  He has threatened, intimidated, and marginalized the opposition in his march to a self-proclaimed, Bolivarian revolution.  He has suffocated democratic debate by snuffing out free speech, prosecuting reporters, persecuting political opponents and civic organizations, and stacking the courts with his cronies. 

He has launched a massive military buildup that threatens peace and stability in the region, and is actively building ties with the likes of Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other enemies of the United States.  While Chávez claims to be a champion of democratic values, he has achieved absolute control of all state institutions that might check his power.  In 1999, he led changes to the Constitution that removed checks and balances.  He is an unabashed Commander In Chief, often wearing a military uniform when he speaks to large crowds.  He has personally chosen the people who have supervised the elections in Venezuela by handpicking the national election counsel.  And he uses the state-owned oil company as his own personal piggybank. 

The government of Venezuela is becoming increasingly authoritarian.  In President Chávez’s speech at the Summit of the Americas meeting last year, he talked about the revolutionary goals of communist Che Guevara, and the need for revolution to continue throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.  According to several recent polls, Chávez holds a wide margin over his main challenger, governor Rosales.  Some polls show Chávez leading with nearly sixty percent.  However, most alarming, these polls reveal that many Venezuelans are worried they will face repercussions on how they vote. 

This fear is based on the fact that after the opposition tried to unsuccessfully oust Chávez in the 2004 recall referendum, lists of petition signers for the recall circulated on the Internet, and many Chávez opponents complained they faced discrimination, or were fired from government jobs.  There is growing consensus that democracy in Venezuela is in grave peril.

Last December, more than eighty percent of the registered voters boycotted Parliamentary elections because of distrust in the fairness and secrecy of the election voting system.  Many Venezuelans were very confident that their votes would not be counted accurately, and would likely not be kept secret.  As a result, Chávez now controls the entire National Assembly.  That’s not democracy, it’s the roots of dictatorship. 

This same electoral counsel has also placed several obstacles in the path of Governor Rosales in his bid to unseat Chávez.  For example, the ratio of Chávez’s airtime to Rosales’ airtime on Venezuela’s five national TV stations has been more than twenty-to-one.  While Chávez appears to have paved an easy road to victory this Sunday, the reality is that the country is more divided than ever.  Voters are deeply upset about crime and insecurity.  Many Venezuelans are angry with the way Chávez is giving his country’s oil wealth to other nations.  And, in what strikes at the core of a liberal democracy, a huge majority of Venezuelans believe that Chávez is increasingly authoritarian, and more than half believe that there is less freedom in Venezuela today than there was in the past.

Chávez continues to persecute his political opponents.  Critics have been denied services and threatened with incarceration.  One such person I think we all are familiar with, María Corina Machado, a leader in the Súmate Group, that is a Venezuela vote-monitoring watchdog, faced charges of conspiring against Chávez in the country’s democratic system for receiving a grant from the United States in the National Endowment for Democracy.  Since Chávez took power, he has worked to eliminate the checks and balances of the judiciary and the legislature.  He fought for and won a new constitution that dissolved the Venezuela Senate.  Now Chávez only needs to convince one chamber.  Those members are beholden to him to rubberstamp his agenda.

Additionally, Chávez has expanded the Supreme Court from twenty to thirty-two justices and packed it with like-minded comrades.  Organizations on the left and right have come to the conclusion and condemned this court-packing scheme as a blow to judicial independence.  Chávez has also announced plans that he would like to change the Constitution to allow him to rule until 2021. 

Freedom of expression, freedom of the press, have also been under vicious assault in Venezuela.  Chávez has enacted laws that severely limit content and impose censorship on the media.  Freedom House now ranks Venezuela 34th out of 35 countries in the Western Hemisphere in press freedom.  Only the Cuban press is more censored.  Many Venezuelan journalists believe that Chávez is trying to squelch criticism before it starts.

So the question is, why does Chávez fear a free press and open media?  The answer is simple.  Hugo Chávez fears freedom because a free people with free will will spell the end to Chávez’s regime. 

Chávez has been able to finance his regime with the vast reserves of oil.  In fact, with some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and propped up by oil at roughly $60 a barrel, oil has become Chávez’s personal ATM.  What’s more, he is using his oil reserves as both the carrot and the stick.  On one hand, he is providing low-cost oil to residents in impoverished areas throughout the region, and he has masterminded a public relations campaign to help paint himself as a champion of the poor.  Never mind that poverty has steadily increased in Venezuela since he took control of the government.  On the other hand, Chávez has been able to use his oil money to fan the flames of socialism and regional instability, and regularly threatens to stop shipping oil to the United States.

Chávez has recently been on an arms-buying spree.  In July, Venezuela and Russia inked a $3 billion contract to buy fighter jets and helicopters from Russia.  That on top of the hundred thousand assault rifles, and millions of rounds of ammunition that Chávez had recently purchased from Russia, and the agreement between the two countries to establish factories in Venezuela to manufacture these weapons.  And Chávez continues to receive military and intelligence assistance and training from Castro’s government. 

The rapid militarization of any nation is always a concern.  But Venezuelan’s neighbors, including the United States, do not pose a threat to the people of Venezuela.  And so there can be little doubt that Chávez’s growing militarization is for offensive purposes, posing a real threat to Latin America’s stability.  Chávez is an ally of Iran, a supporter of North Korea, a close friend of Castro, and a good customer of Putin’s weapons factories.  Through actions and words Chávez has left little doubt that he wants to provide a real foothold in our hemisphere for the enemies of freedom. 

After more than two decades of democratic progress in Latin America, Chávez is now at the epicenter of a growing resurgence of leftist movements and causes that jeopardize regional stability in Latin America.  With elections throughout Latin America this year, the stakes have never been higher for the United States.  Chávez’s leadership has inspired many like-minded leaders throughout the region.  Earlier this year, Evo Morales was sworn in as President of Bolivia, a disciple of Chávez and Castro.  Morales won a hard-fought election in Bolivia.  As President, one of his first acts was to use military and commandeer and nationalize Bolivia’s energy industry, and he has worked to undermine the United States’ efforts to eradicate the coca industry in Bolivia. 

Mexico had a hard-fought Presidential election this year, and Chávez played a large role in this race, too.  By the narrowest of margins, López Obrador, an avowed leftist favored by Chávez, was defeated by Calderon.  But since then, Obrador and his followers have done all they could, and all they can, to throw Mexico into a crisis.  And he stands to be a force to be reckoned with, with the Calderon administration.  Just this week, I’m sure we all saw it on television, we witnessed a fistfight on the floor of the Mexican Congress.  While Chávez may have caused Obrador to lose the election, Chávez may have won by creating instability as Mexico prepares to inaugurate their president today. 

Peru also had a presidential election this year.  The top two candidates, former President Alan García, and the Chávez candidate, Mr. Humala, went to a runoff.  In June, García won the election with a slim majority.  While Garcia is preferred to the Chávez candidate, he, too, will be on a short leash, as Humala and his followers seek to undermine his every move. 

And in a blast from the past, Daniel Ortega, the Sandinistan leader, has made a comeback in Nicaragua. In early November, voters elected him as their new president.  Nearly thirty years after he was trained as a violent revolutionary in Cuba, he is back, joining the ranks of other leftist leaders who are threatening America’s interests in our own back yard.  Chávez actively supported Ortega with free and reduced oil, helicopters to campaign in hard-to-reach areas, and bags of cash to hand out to Ortega’s lieutenants.  Make no mistake, Daniel Ortega was resurrected from the political graveyard thanks to Hugo Chávez.

And in a potential blow to the already weakened United States influence in Latin America, just last week leftist Rafael Correa won the presidency in Ecuador.  Correa, like the rest of Chávez’s allies, is not likely to be a close friend to the United States.  Correa has promised to pursue a socialist agenda similar to that of Chávez, his political mentor.  Like Chávez, he has pledged to make sweeping changes to his nation’s political system by convening a new constitutional assembly, and concentrating power in his presidency.  Correa is the fifth left-leaning presidential candidate to be elected in Latin America in a little more than a year.  This victory comes on the heels of the Sandinista’s victory in Nicaragua, and adds to the critical mass and momentum of the pro-Chávez forces in the hemisphere. 

In Latin America, the core of Chávez’s strategy has been to help leftist candidates win elections, write new constitutions, and then promote political cooperation among left-leaning governments.  Oil, and the money that it brings, has been the key instrument used by Chávez to play politics in the hemisphere, and it also has financed his military buying spree.  Some pundits have claimed that Chávez’s influence and power in Latin America have peaked, and is now on the decline. 

I would argue that rather it’s the United States’ policies in Latin America which is more likely in trouble.  There is no doubt that Chávez suffered a major setback in his recent unsuccessful bid for a seat on the U.N. Security Council, despite waging a long and expensive campaign to achieve the goal.  His lack of success at the U.N. was preceded by the defeat of the candidates he had publicly supported in presidential elections in Mexico and Peru.  In those elections, the winning candidates played off the fears of Chávez’s growing influence.  And while the United States lobbied hard to make sure that he did not win the seat on the Security Council, it was Chávez who lost the seat because of his antics in New York. 

But even with these setbacks, Chávez continues to be a major player in Latin America.  The democracies in Latin America are at a crossroads.  The United States must do more proactively to manage our role and influence throughout the region.  Chávez has held sway over Latin America’s smaller economies, and will continue to allow his influence to continue to grow.  Venezuela has rescued the Cuban economy with a $1.8 billion in assistance in free oil, cut a $3 billion deal to bail out Argentina from its financial crisis, and given at least $200 million to Bolivia to support Morales. 

We should and must do more to win this battle of ideas by not turning our backs on Latin America.  Make no mistake, Hugo Chávez is a shrewd leader who hungers for the spotlight and sees a showdown with the United States as his way to be more than just a footnote in history.  Chávez has built a lengthy record of denouncing the United States and assailing our leaders.  His recent outburst at the U.N. was not a one-time shot, it was a call to arms for freedom’s enemies.  It showed the world that he is not interested in being a partner in peace and prosperity.  Rather, he is little more than a champion of oppression, and a sworn enemy of freedom and opportunity. 

Many in Washington and this administration want to dismiss Chávez and his rhetoric.  A number of my friends on the right don’t take him seriously.  And some of my colleagues on the left see him as a champion of their causes.  But I believe it is foolish not to take him seriously, and the American people need to understand the depths of Chávez’s impact on our hemisphere.  Hugo Chávez is a growing strength.  The Bush administration, and the new democratic-controlled Congress, must finally take real steps to confront Chávez and his philosophy.  Ignoring him has not worked.  Instead, we must pursue policies that speak directly to the Venezuelan people and all the people of the region about the future of freedom and prosperity in Latin America. 

Chávez and his like will ultimately fail because socialism, as history has shown, tends to collapse in the long run under the weight of broken promises.  And should Chávez choose to loosen his control over the levers of power, I believe the Venezuelan people will throw him out of power as he fails to deliver the promises he’s made. 

But my fear is that he has consolidated power and snuffed out his political enemies.  Much of Latin America will suffer the consequences of his actions.  Populism is not dead in Latin America.  The region remains fertile territory for politicians who promise government giveaways and a retreat from the free market.  That’s why the United States must have a policy of supporting Venezuelan democracy and the rule of law by working with political reform groups, and offering greater support to pro-democracy Venezuelan exiles in this country. 

We must have a policy that supports an independent media in Venezuela.  The media, free from government influence, is crucial to the reform process.  It will educate the population, reflect public opinion, and keep government officials honest.  The free flow of information is essential to a flourishing democracy.  We must work to prevent the Chávez regime from continuing its military buildup, and to ensure that our friends and allies in the region have the resources they need to defend themselves should that need arise.

This Sunday, Venezuelans will decide whether to reelect President Hugo Chávez to another six-year term.  If Chávez wins an overwhelming mandate for a new six-year term, he will almost certainly accelerate his concentration of power that has already given him personal control over Venezuela’s legislature and judiciary, as well as the state-owned oil company.  That means that Venezuela’s election will be one of the most important in its country’s history.  Many on the left will be rooting for Chávez to win because they see him as a champion of Venezuelan’s poor, and admire his fierce opposition to President Bush.  However, they should recognize him for what he is, and not for what they wish him to be. 

Democracy is more than majority rule.  Democracy is about minority and individual rights, restrain on power, and freedom.  In Chávez’s Venezuela, the flames of freedom and liberty are on the verge of being extinguished.  We cannot sit idly by and let this happen.  America’s always been the beacon of freedom in our hemisphere.  Now we must be the pillar of hope for the people of Venezuela, and our friends and neighbors in Latin America who fear Hugo Chávez and his socialist revolution.

Thank you for having me, thank you for allowing me to share some ideas and thoughts.  I thought being here at AEI, we could be a little more meaty in the speech.  I hope you were able to hear what I’m saying.  I think there’s a lot that needs to be done.  Of course, I think the speech will be on the Website and so you can go back and read it.  If you have questions or concerns or ideas or thoughts, please give us a call. 

I have with me today my Legislative Director, Francis Gibbs.  Francis, would you stand up please?  He works hard.  Francis has been a tremendous support to me as we continue to fight this -- I guess fight the policies that we see as failing.  And so, Francis has been a tremendous help.  I also have a couple of other people with me, but Francis is the guy that you want to get in touch with in my office if you call.  And, of course, I’m available as well, it’s just, you call the office, they get you to him, and then somehow, he finds me.  Again, thank you so much, and I’d be happy to answer any questions.

Roger F. Noriega:  Thank you very much, Congressman, I appreciate the terrific work you’ve put into your presentation, which I think my colleagues here, who are experts in the area, will agree is sort of a seminal discussion of the issues that we’re confronting in Venezuela.  And it is a document well worth reading.  And I’ll make an effort to put it into Spanish so that it’s available not only in Venezuela but elsewhere in the region where I think people need to understand that —

Connie Mack:  Maybe you can give me some Spanish lessons, too, so I can pronounce some things better.

Roger F. Noriega:  Well, you don’t want to learn it the way I learned it.  I could teach you some interesting words.   At any rate, the Congressman has agreed to take some questions.  There are two mikes moving around the room.  If you please, identify yourselves, and ask your question as briefly as possible.  This gentleman --

Mario Loyola:  Mario Loyola, Foundation for Defense of Democracies.  One of Chávez’s campaign stump speech formulations this season has been something along the lines of, “There’s no longer any room in Venezuela for any project other than the Bolivarian revolution.”  That’s the kind of talk that we heard from Fidel Castro in the early 1960s right before he shut down the independent media entirely.  I have friends in the [Indecipherable] and different independent media in Venezuela and they’re already so intimidated that they can’t speak their mind openly. 

Can Chávez realistically shut down the independent media?  It seems clear that he wants to, but can he?  What would the backlash be, and what other things do you think are going to result from the greatly-expanded mandate that he seems to be claiming, that he’s going to claim as a result of an election victory?

Connie Mack: Thank you for that question.  Actually, it’s a great question, thank you, Scott.  The short answer is, “Yes.”  He could be.  One of the things that I’m most frustrated with is the policies that we have in this country is to not really engage Hugo Chávez, and then to kind of dismiss what he says he’s going to do.  But if you look back over the last year or so or two years, he gives a speech, he says what he’s going to do, and then he does it.  So he’s already begun this process, and you’re right, the press is intimidated. 

Like I said, only Cuba is rated with more censorship on the press.  If he wins this election, which we should all be honest with ourselves, it looks like that’s going to happen.  And he is going to claim a mandate, and I believe one of the first things he’s going to do is clamp down more on the press and try to change the Constitution to allow him to be ruler until 2021, or some other number.  He may change that to do away with term limits altogether, or put a number out there. 

We all know that the press -- any press people here?  Uh-oh.  Hi, sometimes they’re not always our friend.  But I appreciate the job that they do.  I mean, if I had to write the stories about me, I’d write them a little different.  But the press has a job to do, and that is to keep the public informed, and to keep the debate honest.  And when you have the press in Venezuela afraid to express the sentiments or write stories or editorialize, that free flow of information is not there, and the people of Venezuela will suffer for it, and ultimately I believe not only Venezuela but the region as a whole will suffer because of it.

Male voice:  Thank you.  [Indecipherable]  I’m a correspondent with the Mexican news agency [Indecipherable].  Congressman, you say in your speech an interesting thing, and that is after September 11th, the United States has forgotten almost completely about Latin America.  The other interesting thing, you seem to imply that for better or for worse, Mr. Chávez has been the decider, or some sort of decider in some of the political processes across Latin America.  You mention Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru, Mexico. 

The question that came to my mind is, if you have taken into consideration the fact that maybe part of the problem – why these people are coming back like in the case of Mr. Ortega in Nicaragua, is because of the increasing dissatisfaction of the people in those countries.  We don’t have to go far, just simply go to some of the [Indecipherable] by the World Bank, who point to the fact that one of the problems is Latin America is this big disparity among poor and rich people.  So, I wonder if Mr. Chávez is just merely taking advantage of the failed policies that some of the institutes like the IMF and the World Bank with the backing of the United States, have been promoting aggressively in the region for the last [Indecipherable].

Connie Mack:  Like I said in my speech, yes, there has been a vacuum and Chávez has filled that.  And what I’m suggesting is we need a proactive approach to remove that vacuum.  You know, I don’t want to leave the impression that the United States isn’t engaged at all, but we certainly have changed our focus and have not had a proactive policy in Latin America.  So I would agree that Chávez has taken advantage of a time when there is a vacuum and he could fill it.  But there’s no doubt that Chávez is playing in the elections in other countries, supporting those that are like-minded to him, so that he can expand his revolution.  And he does that by helping people who are like-minded and friends of his to get elected, and then cooperation between these countries to grow the revolution.  And it’s because of the vacuum that is there that has allowed it.

Male voice:  What happened with the economic aspect? Again, you know, the fact that Evo Morales won in Bolivia, and Ortega won in Nicaragua, is not because they had the backing of Chávez solely.  I think that some people say that it was the result of failed economic policy.  The previous government couldn’t deliver on the promise of better social life for the majority of these people, especially the poor.

Connie Mack:  They’ve also changed the election process, and now you have people being elected with not a fifty percent majority, but they changed the process by which you can be elected.  So, there’s a lot of factors that go into why they’re winning, but I’ll say it again. 

There’s no doubt that Chávez is playing, or manipulating, or involved in the elections in these other countries and supporting candidates.  And he’s doing so so likeminded leftist leaders will be elected that then he can cooperate with to grow his Bolivarian revolution.

Regzeida Gonzales:  Thank you very much for your information, representative Mack.  Regzeida Gonzalez from the Embassy of Venezuela, and regarding your invitation, I request your opinion how it could be the best policy of the United States towards Latin America in this case, towards Venezuela in the case of President Chávez, as you said, if he wins the Presidential election this Sunday?

Connie Mack: I’m sorry, I didn’t understand the question.

Gonzales:  What do you think could be the proactive policy of the United States to Venezuela?

Connie Mack:  What I think what the policy should be?

Gonzales:  Yes.

Connie Mack:  I’m hoping that people like our panel and you will help create that policy.  I think I outlined a little bit in the speech that it needs to be a multi-pronged approach.  We can’t just go in and throw a bunch of money at it.  We can’t.  The first thing I think we need to do is reconnect with the people of Venezuela, and the people of Latin America. 

And let them know that we are, we stand with them.  That we stand for hope and opportunity, not intimidation and manipulation.  That is an argument, that is something that we need to make sure the people of Venezuela understand, that when we talk about Hugo Chávez, we’re talking about Chávez, we’re not talking about the people of Venezuela. 

And I believe that the people of Venezuela want that freedom, and want a democracy, and want to believe in their government.  I think that’s why there was a change when Chávez came in, because they were trying to do away with the corruption of the past.  Unfortunately, we got somebody who is corrupt and also looking to be a foothold for the enemies of freedom, as I said in the speech.  So, I think the policy has to be one, we have to do a better job of speaking to the people of Latin America and Venezuela. 

I also believe that we need to support organizations that promote democracy and freedom.  I think we need to have a policy that encourages Chávez to loosen his grip on the press, so the press, they don’t feel intimidated anymore.  I think there’s a lot of different things we can do, but it’s going to take – regardless of the election, he is going to say he has a mandate – but it’s going to take our allies, it’s going to take the brilliant minds of this country to come up with a policy that then in Congress we can push forward to the administration.  But I think it has to, quickly, to summarize, we have to speak to the people of Venezuela and let them know that we believe in them.  We have to try to bring back the freedom of the press and encourage Chávez to loosen his grip, and we also have to be concerned about the military buildup that Chávez is engaging in.

Antonio Rodriguez:  I’m Antonio Rodriguez with AFP, a news agency. I have a follow-up—

Connie Mack:  I’m sorry, with who?

Rodriguez:  AFP, it’s a newswire, an international newswire for Latin America.  It’s a follow-up on what you just said.  I would like to know if when you say that the United States has to have a more proactive policy towards Latin America --  I’d like to know if this means that you want the American congress to extend in the next weeks the trade preferences for the [indiscernible] countries, and if you think that the ratification of the free trade agreements with Columbia and Peru are the solutions for a more proactive policy.

Connie Mack:  Well, they certainly are part of, but there’s not one policy, there’s not one approach that is going to be the be-all, end-all, and solve all of our problems.  But certainly, free trade and free trade agreements are important as we move forward in Latin America.  It just makes sense, so, yes, I think they’re important.  Yes, I think they ought to be done, but I don’t think that they’re the be-all, end-all answer to all of the problems, and the only proactive solution that we have in the United States.

Robert Copekan:  Robert Copekan, energy analyst/consultant.  You said that oil is the key instrument that Chávez is using for influence.  You said that he is using the PDVSA oil revenues as his own personal ATM or piggybank.  In view of that, what policy can the United States pursue vis-à-vis PDVSA or vis-à-vis Chávez? Should multinationals not continue to invest there?  Should we stop buying Venezuelan oil?  What should we do, if that’s the key source of his influence for petropolitics or petrodiplomacy.

Connie Mack:  Well, it would not be realistic to think that we could just stop buying his oil, and it’s not realistic when he says he’s going to stop selling to the United States.  This is a two-step dance that’s happening.  The real answer is that in the United States, we need to wean ourselves off of the dependency of oil, and start moving towards alternative energy so we don’t empower somebody like Chávez. 

We need his oil, he needs to sell his oil.  And so until the United States moves to become less dependent upon foreign sources of oil, we will continue to have this dance.  One of the things that we could do, it would take a while, but is kind of an easy solution is more refinery capacity in the country, the United States.  That obviously would open up other markets and be helpful to us.  

As far as investing in Venezuela, I’m not in that business.  But from what I know, and what I’ve seen, I would be very skeptical about investing in Venezuela.  Chávez has tried to control and manipulate – he has contracts and he forces companies to go renegotiate contracts, which, by the way, are in favor of the company.  So, my own, just from what I know, what I’ve read, the discussions that I’ve been involved in, I would be very cautious if I was a company or I was an investor investing in Venezuela companies.

Roger F. Noriega:  Are there other questions?

Megan Davy:  I’m Megan Davy, I’m actually here at AEI.  I was wondering if you could comment a bit about -- you mentioned before a kind of sentiment within the Congress, the Senate and the House, this not thinking that this is a big deal.  And I’m wondering if you think that the sentiment has changed, especially after Chávez’s speech at the U.N.  There were in my mind comments from surprising actors in both the House and the Senate that I didn’t expect to react the way that they did in supporting Bush.  Do you think that that’s just a momentary feeling, with regard to his speech, or do you think that sentiment is changing more broadly with regard to how we feel about President Chávez?

Connie Mack:  Honestly?

Davy:  Yes.

Connie Mack:  First of all, the people you’re referring to, the Congressmen that made the remarks, I called them and thanked them for their remarks.  Of course, they’re senior member, I’m a freshman, they said, “Who?”  I also believe it was good politics.  Not to say that they don’t believe what they were saying, but I also believe the timing of what they were saying was good.  So, I don’t think the sentiment really has changed. 

I’ve had an interesting two years on this issue, because, you know, I am a freshman member, and have been eager to really learn and understand and engage myself.  And what is -- hopefully all of you are saying, “Wow, why is it that a freshman member of the International Relations Committee is the one that is kind of out in front or leading on this issue?”  And that’s an important question, and I think that speaks to the lack of interest that we’ve seen in the Congress.  So I’ve been involved in many discussions and have been completely surprised by not only Democrats but Republicans. 

People that I know in the early ‘80s were fighting hard in the Congress on policies in Latin America.  And to hear some of the things that they were saying and the positions they were taking was shocking, frankly.  So it’s not just on the left, it’s not just on the right, it’s not just in the Congress, and it’s not just in the Administration, it’s all throughout.  And so, again, a freshman member is standing before you today, doing his best to outline what I have observed in meetings that I have been in, and that’s precisely the point. 

I want to see the leadership of our Congress, and the leadership in the White House and the Administration, on both sides, take a more active, proactive approach to Venezuela and Latin America.

Roger F. Noreiga:  Thank you very much, Congressman.  Next we have a panelist who has a question, too.

Congressman Mack:  That’s always scary, especially because I understand you write some pretty good editorials.

Thor:  More than a question, what I was going to say is, if you are considered a freshman, let me tell you that, given your knowledge of the subject, and, more specifically, your interest, and your interest is someone who cares about this from a perspective of freedom and human rights, you should be awarded an honorary doctorate.  If the others are seniors, you’re at the doctoral level, I can tell you that.  I —

Connie Mack:  I’m not sure the Dean of the Journalism School at the University of Florida would agree with you.

Thor:  I don’t know if you’re going to stay through the whole thing.  I just wanted to tell you that I salute you for your commitment to these issues.  And the fact that you so humbly say that you don’t have all the answers and that you don’t know necessarily what needs to be done, but you do know that enough attention has not been paid. 

You do understand that this is a crisis situation, that a lot of people believe that this is something that should be laughed at, or believe that Chávez is something that is funny and a caricature on the world stage, when in fact he is extremely dangerous.  And from the perspective, just purely of human rights, he is extremely dangerous.  So I wanted to salute you.  I know that you are very busy, so if you go, I wanted to tell you, “Thank you very much.”

Connie Mack:  Thank you.  I appreciate that.

Roger F. Noriega:  Congressman, I invite you by all means to stay.  It’s up to you whether you are able – I know you have tons of things to do —

Connie Mack:  Well, this is important so I think I’ll stay for a while.

Roger F. Noriega:  Please do stay.

Connie Mack:  Thank you very much.

Roger F. Noriega:  Let me just say, as we transition, a couple of things.  Congressman, I admire you for your speaking out, and as a freshman on this issue.  I am personally sensitive to the fact that there are those who admonished me.  For example, you’re only going to make him mad if you talk about, if you respond to Chávez, if you speak openly you’re going to – the U.S., it’s not going to go down in a positive way in Latin America, and all that. 

How can you go wrong?  It’s never the wrong time to tell the truth.  It’s never the wrong time to speak out and express views, particularly when you’re representing the United States, because I think the majority of Venezuelans who value their personal liberty, who want to know that the United States is with them, and kind of concerned that maybe our only interest in that country is the petroleum relationship, when, in point of fact, it is much more important, and you’ve spelled this out, our broader interest in the region, to confront the Chávez phenomenon in a very straightforward, empirical, dispassionate way, express our concerns. 

This is something where the Latin Americans, and I know there are some here from the region here, have to take a certain amount of responsibility for.  They are just as committed to these democratic values, and I think they need to be prepared to speak out about them.  And then also to understand -- the reporters left as soon as you were done talking, but the Latin American folks need to also reflect on -- learn a little more about us.  It’s a two-way street.  If they knew a little bit more about the social mobility in this country, about our overall commitment to empowering people and all of that, I think that they might be a little more open to our influence in the region.  But thank you again for your great comments. 

I’m going to introduce our panelists, in turn first, Gustavo Coronel, and then Thor Halvorssen Jr., and we’ll ask them to speak either from the podium, or from their seat here.

Gustavo Coronel is a Venezuelan petroleum geologist with a career of more than 30 years in the international petroleum industry in Venezuela, the United States, Holland, and Indonesia.  He has been a field geologist and founding member of the Board of Directors of PDVSA.  Mr. Coronel is currently an energy and public policy consultant specializing in Latin American issues.  He was elected in 1998 as a member of the Venezuela National Congress, representing the State of Carabobo until Hugo Chávez dissolved the Congress in 1999.  He was a Venezuelan representative of Transparency International from 1996 to 2000 and was President of the Agrupación Pro Calidad de Vida, a non-governmental organization dedicated to civil work in Latin America.  Gustavo, por favor.

 Gustavo Coronel:  Thank you.  Well, good morning.  I am very glad to be here, and as Roger said, I am a Venezuelan geologist.  In fact, I am faster becoming a geological specimen myself.  I was born under the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gomez -- imagine, way back in the Pliocene, and I frankly do not want to die under another dictatorship.  I have gone and lived under the Gomez dictatorship, then Marcos Perez Jimenez’s ten-year dictatorship when all my family went to prison.  I was the only male member of the family who didn’t make it, because I was not old enough to be put in prison.  I lived under two years of the Sukarno dictatorship in Indonesia, very sad and tragic and colorless type of life in which he had prohibited dancing, of all things.  He was the only one who could dance. 

Anyway, this is why I believe that in order to appreciate really what freedom and democracy is all about, as Isaiah Berlin said, and quoted by Mario Vargas Llosa recently, “You have to live under a dictatorship.  You have to lack freedom and democracy in order to really appreciate what democracy and freedom really mean.”  So when I see you around, I see young faces.  You have never been able, and I hope you never will be able, to experience living under a dictatorship.” 

And I want to make two comments.  One has to do with a very little known topic which I find is the essential element of what is happening in Venezuela.  You see, the concept of legitimacy.  Everybody here in the US and in Europe abroad will say, “Chávez is a legitimate president because he won the elections in 1998, and they were transparent, reasonably honest elections.  Yes, but if I told my wife, after 47 years of marriage, that I am her legitimate husband because I have this certificate, back in 1959, that says Gustavo Coronel is the legitimate -- the civil authorities have a seal of approval, she would laugh at me, because what really makes a legitimate husband or a legitimate president has to do with how you behave after you are elected. 

How do you follow through with accountability to the electors that voted for you?  How can you protect checks and balances in the institutions of your own country?  How can you respect minorities and tolerate dissidence in your own country?  And this is what legitimacy is all about.  It’s not about winning elections only, although I admit winning elections is a very good start.

Now, the day of his inauguration, January 1999, Chávez committed three violations to his new legitimacy.  First, he swore an oath of allegiance that was totally contrary to the Constitution that he was obliged to respect.  He said, “I am swearing on this moribund.  I think moribund is a word.  Dying, on this dying Constitution, I swear that I will convoke in you assembly to give away this Constitution and refound Venezuela.” 

So, in an article – I don’t remember which one of the Constitutions of the time obliged the new president to swear allegiance to the Constitution.  He started out by violating his oath of allegiance.  You could say if you were chemically pure Constitutionalist, that everything he has done after that is invalid, because he didn’t follow on his oath of allegiance.  But second, he said in a speech, right after he was inaugurated, he said in a speech, “I don’t care about this legal mumbo jumbo, or something to that effect, in Spanish, he said, “I don’t care.  We are here to make history, not to follow stupid rules of law.” 

That’s almost textually what he said.  And then he walked out, and he went to meet a florist, and he should decree number one of his new government, “I convoke a new constituent assembly that is going to write a new Constitution, yes, but it’s also going to “refound” the nation.  This is to say, this assembly is going to have a supra-constitutional authority.  It’s going to be above everything that we have so far.” 

Now, this is only possible under the rule of law.  This is only possible to do if the republic had ceased to exist.  If you had no republic, and you had to start from scratch – but we had a democratically elected Congress, we had a democratically selected Supreme Court of Justice, we had all democratic institutions in place by the time he decided to convoke an assembly that would give away with this and start from scratch.  Now, this has been going under the table, and, in fact, it became a coup d’etat.  It became a coup, just as if you went up in arms against the government, if you change your democratic established institutions, even under a pseudo-democratic pretense, you are executing a coup d’etat. 

He terrorized, [indiscernible] terrorize saying the members of the Supreme Court Justice at the time, and he managed to put his changes through.  He convoke in you, constituent assembly with supra-constitutional powers, and this assembly in December 1999, proceeded to eliminate all of the institutions in Venezuela -- dissolve Congress, dismiss all of the Supreme Court members.  This means all of the establishment, and replaced them with their own people, with his own staff, with his own followers. 

And, in September 1999, a few months before that, this constituent assembly had decided that all judges in Venezuela had to go.  In fact, they were dismissed, and there were provisional judges named by this assembly, which is, in itself, a violation of the existing Constitution that was in effect at that time.  And, even today in Venezuela, a considerable percentage of the judges in Venezuela are provisional judges, named by the regime.  And whenever these judges decide against what the government wants them to decide, they are dismissed.  There are many examples of such a thing taking place. 

So, I just wanted to tell you about the illegitimacy, because I have the conviction, the personal conviction that President Chávez is not a legitimate president, especially as defined by what I just said to you, going beyond the electoral event only.

And a comment on Congressman Mack’s speech.  He suggested that Chávez is very popular in Latin America, and yes, we have to – that’s the first step that we have to take in order to really combat him, because what is happening in Latin America goes beyond electoral fraud, which has taken place, yes, but it’s not the determining factor.  There is an immense mass in Latin America following people who promise them to give them what they never had before.  Power.  Money.  Social inclusion.

And in many ways, what is happening today is that these pied pipers are telling them this, but in fact, are including the poor at a very high price.  They are including the poor at the expense of excluding the middle class.  What is happening in Venezuela is a progressive extension of the middle class that is the backbone of progress in any country.  And combating inequality, according to Chávez, is not for the poor to become middle class.  No, it’s for the middle class to become the poor.  So there is a process of equalizing the poor, the middle class downwards.  That’s a perverse interpretation of what equality means. 

And, what Chávez has done in Venezuela, let me tell you, is going on at this very moment in Bolivia, and it’s going to start very soon in Ecuador, because it’s a very well known choreography.  If you have seen a ballet, the Nutcracker, you know exactly what the dancer is going to do.  He’s going to jump here, and he’s going to jump there, and what happens – this is exactly what is going on in Latin America.  First, you convoke a constituent assembly.  It was done in Venezuela, it’s now being done in Bolivia and Korea, and President Correa said he would do it in Ecuador. 

Now, this assembly, of course, is going to be a supra-constitutional authority, and they are going to do step two, eliminate all existing democratic institutions in those countries, and replace them by their own people.  And this is what is happening in front of -- and in different organizations of American states, this choreography, this ballet, is being played one, two, three times, maybe more now in Latin America because Ortega also is going to call, and he already did say that he would be calling for a constituent assembly.

Now, one of the many examples of where this is leading us is the situation of Petróleos in Venezuela.  That’s what I eat and know most about.  Petróleos in Venezuela came into being in 1976.  That’s a national oil company, and it became one of the three or four leading oil companies in the world.  It was the pride of Venezuela.  It was professionally managed.  It was efficient, it gave the government the money that the government required.  It was credible to the country.  But Chávez changed this.  From 1999-2006, in eight years, the company has had six presidents and six boards. 

Now, can you imagine a big oil company in which you have a president every few months, when you have to compete with Shell, or with Exxon, that have a very well-established bureaucracy, professional, where strategic planning is a main concept.  Now, Petróleos de Venezuela does not have any strategic plan.  The only one that is working now is the one that was left from the pre-Chávez era, and if we had followed that program, that plan, Petróleos de Venezuela today would be producing 5.1 million barrels per day.  In fact, it’s now producing 2.6 million barrels per day, which is half of what it should be producing.  Can you imagine, at today’s prices, the immense loss to Venezuela from this incapacity to produce what it should have been producing? 

In 2002, Chávez created his own crisis, and he said that publicly in Congress.  He was very proud of that.  He said, “In order to take control of Petróleos of Venezuela”, he said to Congress, “I name a president that I knew would be unacceptable to the managers of the company.”  He named a [indiscernible] professor who knew as much about oil as I know about Sanskrit, and the rebellion, of course, predictable rebellion, came up, and, in fact, overthrew him in the process, because the protest of the oil managers in 2002 brought along a popular protest where 700,000 Venezuelans marched.  He gave orders to bring the army to the streets.  The army officers refused to follow orders, and asked for his resignation, which he accepted at 2 a.m. of the following day.  But, anyway, that goes to show that he did bring about this crisis in the oil industry.

Now, the employees of Petróleos of Venezuela today are obliged to wear red.  They go to the office – I hate red.  It’s a color – it’s an aggressive color.  I’m sorry, but your suit is blue.  But they are obliged to wear red, and they have been told publicly by the president of the company that if they don’t vote for Chávez they will be dismissed.  After this was publicized in the video, which exists, and you can access this video on the Internet, Chávez went the next day and said, “I approve and congratulate Mr. Ramirez, the president of the company, for having said that.  He should be saying this one hundred times every day,” which is an open violation of all our laws in Venezuela.  And he added, “Not only Petróleos of Venezuela is red, totally red”, he said, “The army is totally red as well.”  It’s like if President Bush tomorrow said that the army is only responding to his desires and his wishes.  Isn’t this a coup d’etat?  Isn’t this an open rebellion against the democratic institutions of the country?

Now, he has spent $25 billion in buying loyalties in Latin America, in giving money.  He gave, on the television show Impromptu, with Evo Morales, he said, “Evo, I have a gift for you.  I’m going to give you $30 million so that you can start on your normal expenses.  And Evo Morales said a little cynically, he said, smiling, “President, are these $30 million monthly?”  And this is the manner in which the money that belongs to us, the Venezuelan people, are being utilized by the president of our country.  So this is why I say that he cannot be a legitimate president.

Now, what are the results of this tragedy?  Venezuela is at the bottom of the ladder, unfortunately, in all international indices.  If you look at the corruption perception index of transparency international Venezuela, it’s way down there with the African countries, with Haiti, with Paraguay, which are among the most corrupt countries in the world.  In the human development index of the United Nations, Venezuela, in ’75, Venezuela had a higher development index than Mexico, than Chile, than South Korea. 

Now it’s lagging these countries considerably, and this is why – why this is – because Venezuela has been overtaken by these countries, while it remains essentially stagnant in economic development.  And the FAOUN report, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, now shows that Venezuela has an 11% index of undernourishment in 2006 and it was only 4% way back in 2005. 

So you can see that being illegitimate and being under the study of Fidel Castro has not paid dividends for us Venezuelans.  And I want to leave it at this moment at that, and I will be very glad to answer questions whenever you have it.  Thank you very much.

Roger F. Noriega:  Thank you very much, Gustavo, for that terrific presentation.  I want to introduce now Thor Halvorssen, who is a human rights advocate and film producer.  He is president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, an organization devoted to the liberation of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners, and to the promotion of liberal democracy in the Americas.  A lifelong civil liberties and civil rights advocate, Mr. Halvorseen was the First Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, a free speech group he headed from its founding in 1999 until he stepped down in 2004 to create the Human Rights Foundation.  He is contributing author to several books about freedom.  Thank you very much.

Thor Halvorseen:  Thank you, Roger.  I actually prepared a speech about -- essentially everything that Congressman Mack said, I included in a speech, and I decided that if he was going to – if the other panelists were going to address things as obvious as the stacking of the courts, the wholesale elimination of freedom of speech, the corruption issues in Venezuela – I was not going to stand up here and repeat things, and I was actually going to try and focus attention on specific cases, specific issues, so that rather than just some people coming up here and saying they’ve stacked the courts, and journalists are under assault, I give you a more point-by-point definition of what this assault looks like. 

To begin, the Human Rights Foundation is an organization that has only been in actual corporate existence for several months now.  We have an office and a staff of five people.  Our Website, actually, was inaugurated today – humanrightsfoundation.org, and our ideals find their purest expression in the belief that all people have the rights to free speech and free press, to worship in the manner of their choice, to associate with others of like mind, to own property, to move across national borders, to receive equal treatment and due process under the law, and to participate in the government of their country. 

These ideals assert that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile, from slavery and torture, and from interference in matters of conscience.  In the case of Venezuela’s history in the past eight years, I can assure you that all of these rights have been violated by the government of Hugo Chávez. 

I’d like to talk about one case in particular, and that’s the case of a man called Francisco Usón.  Very few people would know who he is, and if you actually did a Google or Nexis search, you would not come up with much about Francisco Uson.  Francisco Usón was arrested on May 22, 2004, on orders of the Venezuelan military intelligence.  He’s a retired general in the Venezuelan Army.  He was held without bail, pending a trial, and he was formally charged by a military tribunal.  What was he charged with?  He was charged with “slandering the armed forces of Venezuela”. 

Anyone who is a first amendment lawyer understands free speech.  You can slander an individual, but you can’t slander a group.  The kind of countries that put laws on the books where you slander a group tend to be countries that are not democracies.  Europe has a long history of situations where if you slandered a group, you could get in trouble, and that is one of the biggest threats against freedom of speech.

On October 8, 2004, note well, he was arrested in May of 2004.  On October 8th, he received his sentence.  This is almost a first, in terms of a situation like this.  Most people who are indicted in Venezuela spend years, and by this I mean two, three, four, five years, without a trial.  The concept of the sword of Damocles, the idea that something is hanging over you is something that the government of Hugo Chávez uses repeatedly, particularly with journalists.  There was an article in the New York Times recently that talked about how no journalists are in prison. 

Well, that’s because most of these journalists have, in some cases, ten, twenty, and in one particular case thirty-two penal investigations open against them for having expressed themselves in a certain manner in a newspaper.  Again, the sword of Damocles.  But in the case of Usón, there seems to have been a need to make an example of him, which is why he received an extraordinarily speedy trial.  He was sentenced to five and a half years in a military prison.  I can tell you that I’ve researched this case.  I’ve gone to see him, I’ve spent hours with him in his prison cell, which was also fascinating considering while in the prison, when you go into this particular prison, you actually become a part of the prison population once you go through the gate, so good luck if somebody in there doesn’t like you. 

But I managed, while inside, to compile masses of testimony of people who had been tortured, some truly horrendous cases of torture in Venezuela, torture that when one criticizes what is going on in Guantanamo, and rightly so, the Venezuelan government -- let me put it this way – the US has nothing on the Chávez government when it comes to allegations of torture.  In my case, I was able to see some of these wounds with my own eyes. 

Back to Usón.  The violations of human rights in his case are numerous, and they are unmistakable.  The charges against him stem from a television show appearance that aired live on the morning of April 16, 2004.  The program was hosted by a well-known journalist by the name of Marta Colomina, and I’m sorry, but I have to keep digressing because it’s really the only way that you can get the specifics of what’s happening in Venezuela.  Marta has suffered two assassination attempts.  They certainly have limited her ability to continue her career considering one of them – they almost killed her.  Who?  One could say it was unknown criminals.  That is the version of the government. 

Marta had two guests on her program.  One was Francisco Usón, and the other one was Patricia Poleo, an investigative journalist.  I’m sorry, another digression.  Since the show, Poleo has been accused of murder by the Venezuelan government, in a setup that is unspeakable.  Murder of a district attorney.  Her case we are currently investigating, and it’s being watched by numerous human rights groups throughout the world.

Back to the show.  So you have Marta, Patricia, and Francisco on the show.  The day before, Poleo had published a story about events that had taken place in the Fort Mada military base.  Her story talked about a fire that happened in a punishment cell that burned eight soldiers, just a couple of weeks prior, March 30, 2004.  Two of those soldiers subsequently died.  Her column stated that the fire was caused, not accidentally but by a flamethrower – that this flamethrower was used to punish these soldiers because some of them had expressed negative comments about the government.  Again, this is what her story said.

During the interview on this television show, Usón talked about what this case meant.  What he said was that – he was a military engineer.  Ironically, he had graduated, and served in the Fort Mada military base, and he understood all the technical aspects of how a flamethrower operates.  He indicated that it’s a weapon that was created in World War II, that it uses a mixture of napalm and gasoline in order to operate.  Because it requires a mixture, if such a weapon was used, it was not accidental – if such a weapon was used to either intimidate these soldiers or punish them, it was premeditated, because one has to make the mixture.  He then stated, in his conclusion, “This is very, very serious, if it ends up being true”. 

On May 10th, the Venezuelan Defense Minister, General José García Carneiro, instructed a military attorney general to immediately prepare charges for the military prosecution of Usón.  A capture order was issued the next day.  You have, in this case, the executive telling the judicial branch, immediately charge this man.  So he has an arrest order against him before, or rather, at the same hour as the investigation begins. 

The capture order was issued, he was detained two days later.  It’s a violation of Venezuelan law that you have the prosecution of a civilian by military authorities.  By this point, Usón had not been a military general for one year.  He was retired.  The International Commission of Human Rights, the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights, the OAS, all of these have, on previous occasions in the last ten years, stated repeatedly to Latin American countries, “You cannot try in a military court a civilian.”  In fact, the United States is currently being criticized for that in Guantanamo.  When it comes to issues of military combatants, are they civilians, are they military?

The intermission of the executive branch into a judicial matter is also a contravention of Venezuelan law, and it’s a violation of due process.  The fact that he would be charged with a crime for stating an opinion is a violation of freedom of speech, an expression that I’m sure everyone in this room understands, given that we stand in a country that has truly enshrined freedom of speech as something that is so central that it is the First Amendment to the Constitution. 

The trial process itself was carried abnormally.  After being captured by military intelligence, he was taken before the military tribunal that charged him.  The judge that charged him directly on orders, by that point, had a chance to look at the evidence.  Judge Alfredo Hernández – and he said, “There’s no way that this trial can proceed.  There’s no evidence.  Judge Hernández was dismissed, impeached, the next day, and the case was assigned to a different military tribunal. 

During his trial, the prosecution focuses again and again on linking the events in Fort Mada, by saying that Usón had said that a flamethrower was used.  At the time, the government of Venezuela was going through an enormous public relations crisis as a result of the Fort Mada case.  So many times, over and over again, the media was saying “This is what happened.  There’s corruption in the military.  How can you literally melt to death two soldiers because they disagree?”  Soldiers who, by the way, were in that punishment call without any due process whatsoever.  And so, the government’s version was this was an accidental fire. 

A lot of opposition people, particularly media, came up with all sorts of conspiracies to say that it was a flamethrower that was used.  The Human Rights Foundation has actually done an in-depth investigation of the Fort Mada case, and, regrettably, we cannot conclude how the fire started, whether it was accidental or not.  We can conclude that there were some very worrying elements to the case, and again, you can download the full report on our Website. 

But in this particular military tribunal, the government was intent on proving that the Fort Mada case was not the result of a flamethrower.  So it didn’t really matter that you were trying a man for something that he had nothing to do with.  It was the question of – he said, “This is a very serious matter.”  Of course, they neglected to put the “if this is actually true” in the court documents, and, by the way, it’s around 17,000 pages.

Usón’s background is relevant to understand why he is in prison and what the atmosphere is like in Venezuela.  Francisco Usón held numerous posts in the Venezuelan government.  Among them, he headed the Office of Management and Budget, he was a member of the Presidential Cabinet.  He was Chávez’s Finance Minister, and that tenure lasted until April 17, 2002.  On April 11, 2002, he tendered his resignation after Chávez indicated that he wanted to activate the Avila Plan. 

My colleague, Gustavo Coronel, mentioned the Ávila Plan, which was a contingency plan by the Venezuelan Army intended to restore order by confronting the civilian population that was protesting in the vicinity of the presidential palace.  Without going into detail about the whole debacle and the coup d’etat that occurred after Chávez’s resignation, when a group of people decided to take power, this has nothing to do with Usón.  Usón resigned, he was invited to come back in, after Chávez was restored to power, and he decided “No, no, I’m done here.  This whole Avila Plan order was enough for me”. 

So, he then took back his job as a brigadier general in the armed forces.  Months later he wrote a private letter to the head of the armed forces stating that he was very concerned about the use of violence against some protesters in the state of Carabobo, in particular some women.  Images were carried on television of military men grabbing some civilian protesters by the hair and throwing them down, and they had slapped some women around.  It was really very jarring.  You can find all of these images on YouTube.  He said that this was a severe problem.  He also wrote a second letter, and then, another private letter, stating he thought that the promotions process within the military was becoming extremely politicized, and he named names and said there are several people who have been ascended who should not have been ascended. 

There are people that did better.  Why have they not been ascended?  The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated that letter to the very people he criticized, who then promptly created a commission on which the people he criticized were the judge and jury, and they forcibly retired him, again, totally violating their own due process.

So, he was not on good terms with the government at this point.  He then became active in civilian political life, and was involved as a security consultant.  He began volunteering for the recall referendum against Hugo Chávez.  This is when he ended up on television, and that is why, to this day, Usón has spent more than two years in prison for one sentence told on a television show.  Of course, that’s not the real reason he’s in prison, but it gives you a sense of the fact that in Venezuela, there is no rule of law.  A country that has no rule of law can expect no prosperity, can expect no democracy to last it no matter how much you want to dress it up.  His military sentence is being served in a military prison, and, again, he is a civilian.  His lawyers have exhausted all of their appeals, and now they are using all the international resources available for this case. 

We’ve established that his arrest, his trial, his detainment, his imprisonment, all of them represent violations of human rights.  A wrinkle in this case is that he suffered from some medical problems for which he had to be interned in a military hospital.  While in the military hospital, a nurse came into his room – this is all agreed upon by the government, they stipulated that this did, in fact, occur – a nurse came into his room and explained that they were going to be giving him an injection with some medicine – Profinid.  This is an analgesic anti-inflammatory. 

She injected him with epinefrin – adrenaline.  Anyone who is injected with adrenaline will have an immediate heart attack.  Unbeknownst to the government of Venezuela, he was on beta blockers, because he suffers from arrhythmia, so the beta blockers stopped the adrenaline from actually functioning properly, and he suffered a severe allergic reaction, but he did not die.  To the great surprise of the government he did not die.  So, the next day, they did it again.  They once more, accidentally, injected him with adrenaline.  This time the excuse was the new nurse was told that he had to be given adrenaline compresses for his wounds, and, in fact, he was given an injection. 

So this is what happens to people who disagree and get on the bad side of President Chávez.  Natan Sharansky states that human rights – you can test whether a country has human rights whether or not you can walk into a public square and criticize the government.  Venezuela has, under the government of Hugo Chávez, a sad history of people who go into public squares and are shot by sometimes random gunmen, in some cases gunmen sporting the insignia of the government. 

So, with that, I would like to close my remarks and thank you very much.  And again, everyone here who cares about human freedom can participate and become involved in what is happening in Venezuela, because what is happening in Venezuela is going to happen in the other countries.  Gustavo Coronel so brilliantly put together the Nutcracker analogy, and it is a reality that what – it was so predictable that Evo Morales would call a constituent assembly, a constituent assembly to rewrite all of the rules.  And Ortega will call a constituent assembly. 

It’s only a matter of time, and once these men are in power, they are not going to let go.  And, of course, they will dress it up as much as they want to, as a democracy, as a place with rule of law, as a place where freedom of speech does exist because, in fact, they keep repeating “The media is allowed to criticize the government in Venezuela”.  Yes, as we can see in the case of many of these journalists – and in some cases, you can have thirty penal investigations opened against you.  But the opposition to freedom in Venezuela claims, “But they’re still free to say what they want to say.”  The chill that is suffered in Venezuela on freedom of speech grounds is undisputable.  So, thank you very much, Roger, for the invitation.

Roger F. Noriega:  Thank you very much.  I’ll be very brief so we can get to questions for the panel which I – actually quite a number of them – going through my mind.  In your packets you will find a publication that we issued earlier this year, “Venezuela under Chávez, the Path towards Dictatorship”, and it lays out my empirical arguments about the efforts that Chávez has made systematically to undermine democratic institutions and concentrate power in his hands.  But the most important thing that I think in that publication is a simple derivation of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which is a document signed, interestingly enough, on September 11, 2001, by all of the nations of the western hemisphere active in the Organization of American States, including Venezuela, which endeavors to lay out what are the essential elements of representative democracy. 

Among these are respect for “human rights and fundamental freedoms, access to the free exercise of power in accordance with the rule of law, the holding of periodic free and fair elections based on secret balloting and universal suffrage”.  Also, pluralistic system with political parties and organizations, “separation of powers and independence of the branches of government”, freedom of expression and of the press, as well as the constitutional subordination of all state institutions to legally constituted civilian authorities.

In each of these areas, I think that there is a very powerful argument to make that Chávez has systematically breached, his obligations, his international obligations, his political commitment to his neighbors in the Americas, and, more importantly, his legal and constitutional commitment to his own people.  Speaking very explicitly of the election that we’re going to be looking at on Sunday in Venezuela, let’s be very, very clear.  International observers avoid, generally, the construction ‘free and fair’ because it generally says very little, and also, most of them, as foreign observers, don’t want to be considered judges of an electoral process. 

But let’s be very clear.  These elections will be unfree and unfair.  Until now, it’s interesting – President Chávez’s defenders in the world were able to dismiss virtually all of his sins, because he was “freely chosen by the Venezuelan people” in a series of electoral processes.  After these elections, I think it will be next to incredible to make that claim in his behalf.  There’s an unlevel playing field that Gustavo and Thor and Congressman Mack have laid out here.  That’s very clear.  All of the instruments of the state, including the electoral apparatus, quite explicitly, are working as cogs of Chávez’s Bolivarian Movement. 

In plain view of the world, as Gustavo has pointed out, he has exacted reprisals against political opponents for exercising their basic political liberties.  Opponents have been harassed, jailed, physically abused, and murdered.  An army of Cuban thugs has been imported to Venezuela to run the state’s security apparatus.  And organized secret gangs who attack opponents in the media, as well, and also to empty pistols into public squares filled with opponents of the Chávez regime.  All of this is a matter of public record.  Where else would a democratic opposition have to adopt as its central campaign slogan, “Risk It” (Atrévate)?  Dare to vote for the opposition.  It’s an extraordinary testament, a simple testament to what’s happening in Venezuela today.

 I have observed over a dozen elections in many, many countries in the Americas, and there are some basic conditions that have to be respected.  A question of whether state resources are at the use of the campaign of the official party, in this case the incumbent party.  That’s very, very obvious in this case.  Massive public expenditures targeted to supporters of the Chávez regime. 

Just as importantly, we’re not talking about buying votes with social programs.  These are also denying these same benefits in a systematic way to opponents of the regime.  We’re not just merely talking about sharing the largess of the state with the population, but using it as a political weapon.  Access to the media – the data are clearly available.  Rosales has had a fraction of the air time that Chávez enjoys, and, just as importantly, the independent media that still exists in the country has to practice self censorship about how it reports all of these issues.  Secrecy and sanctity of the ballot is an essential element to a free election, and in the case of Venezuela, you see the perverse phenomenon where electoral authorities have actually adopted cumbersome practices and opaque technologies with disregard for the confidence of the voter. 

You might actually draw the conclusion if you see all of this – getting electoral machines from folks that have never produced them ever before in any other election, and introducing a silly process of having to put your fingerprint before you vote.  The main purpose of which  -- I think it’s caught maybe fifty voters who tried to vote twice – the main purpose of which seems to be to back up the electoral lines, the voter lines, so that people get tired and go home, and also to suggest that you can marry up the voter list with the electronic votes cast, and that everybody will know, in the state, who voted for or against the Chávez regime. 

There’s a reason for this.  Because, I believe, the regime wants to cultivate doubt, wants to make it very clear to people that we will know precisely how you vote.  There will be no secrecy and sanctity of the ballot.  And that really is an important, really a sine quo non of any electoral process, if you want to call it free or fair. 

We also would hope that any kind of process of this nature would be open to effective international monitoring, and let me just say, with all candor and due respect for the Organization of American States to which I was Ambassador of the United States and served proudly, where I have a lot of good professional friends who are giving me information about what’s going on in the OAS in the case of these Venezuelan elections.  The OAS has played a central role in a couple of cases in the hemisphere in elections.  In Peru, they pulled the plug on the observation mission, and a few months later Fujimori quit.  Could be because he couldn’t steal that election under their noses.  And in other cases, they played an historic essential role.

The OAS mission in Venezuela is too little, too late.  They’re barely even getting on the ground now, and the elections are on Sunday, and when we’ve expressed concern about this, the answer has basically been “too bad”.  In the first time in my memory, the head of the mission of the OAS was apparently nominated by the regime.  These were elections being held in Uruguay, and maybe that would be acceptable, but Venezuela is a country where there’s very little confidence in the electoral process. 

The OAS mission is about half the size of the European delegation that will travel around the world to observe the elections in Venezuela, and the size of the mission matters because you can literally exhaust the resources of the mission if you’ve got very, very few people fielded.  The OAS let the Venezuelan government blacklist any US citizens from participating in the mission, and to blacklist any observers who have criticized past elections in Venezuela.  That’s absolutely astounding. 

The OAS mission is arriving, as I said, just a few days before the process, and its chief of the mission is gagged from saying anything public about the process, and the mission can’t issue its report until the new president assumes office.  These are astounding conditions that the OAS mission has – that the OAS has accepted.  Consequently, the OAS has not uttered a single word about the blatant abuse of state resources or the threats against opposition voters that have been spoken about by all three of the previous speakers. 

Not a single comment about the conditions and the playing field – the level playing field – in Venezuela.  For the first time in my memory, and I use this construction very, very consciously and carefully, we see where an OAS observer mission is literally integrated into the fraud by the government. 

Now, here’s the most important thing I’ll have to say.  Nothing that I’ve said before about these elections matters because Chávez has also made it very clear that he has no intention of surrendering power to his opponents, regardless of the outcome of this, or any other election that he deigns to hold.  If Chávez wins under these circumstances, he will have to be described, and could not be described in any other way, than an undemocratically-elected leader.

The implications for these elections?  Well, we’re witnessing the construction and the consolidation of the Cuban-style dictatorship, which I believe, and this is the good news, is unsustainable in the 21st Century, so I doubt that he will finish his second term, or whatever this term will be.  Chávez will be emboldened in his strategy for undermining democracy in the region, by sowing hate and division and bankrupt solutions.

But it’s also important to note that as he supports opponents, or certain political actors in other countries, what he’s doing is backing people who then undermine the institutions of government in these countries.  It’s not just choosing a friend that he wants to say positive things about, it’s choosing people who are just as committed as he is to dismantling the safeguards on the civil liberties of the people of the Americas.  It’s a systematic campaign, that will, unfortunately, get new energy if he gets away with stealing a victory on Sunday.  And, to be sure, Venezuelans will be the first to pay the price for this conspiracy, but they will not be the last.

In conclusion, the opposition has to insist that the international observers be more outspoken and intrusive, and that’s precisely the word that’s appropriate here – intrusive – in the process, particularly in terms of auditing the vote count.  International observers have some time to redeem themselves if the opposition and the media puts them on the spot, and that’s important. 

The media’s role is critical here.  The international media has got to stop covering Chávez as if they were covering a cartoon character.  Just because they share Chávez’s disrespect for President Bush and the United States does not make Chávez a charming rogue.  What he is doing in Venezuela and would like to do in the rest of the Americas, is not funny, and it’s not harmless.

And finally, I’m going to leave it here – I think Chávez is in for a bit of a surprise on Sunday.  We’ll see how it works out, but I think it’s going to be a very tough day for him, and he may have to make some crucial decisions that may prove very, very dangerous for him.  I’ll stop there, and we’re going to take a few questions.  We have about ten minutes for questions.

The lady in front here, please.  Yes?

Diana Molineaux:  Hi, my name is Diana Molineaux, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.  I have a question for Mr. Noriega and another for Mr. Coronel.  Mr. Noriega, why do you think the OAS has taken this attitude toward the elections in Venezuela as compared to other elections?

Roger F. Noriega:  I think that the Secretary General, for whom I have immense respect, has made the calculation that this was not – there was not enough support among the members of the OAS in taking a tough line in confronting him, that people accept as a fait accompli his reelection, so why agitate him?  Why get in his way, why confront?  Some of his spokesmen have actually made the rather feeble defense that, well, Chávez approved the mission so late, so we don’t have time to do a credible job.  Well, then, they shouldn’t be there at all, in my view.  They should have taken a pass on doing it if they were not going to do a serious job. 

It’s a shame, really, because they’ve had weeks since we’ve identified some of these weaknesses to correct these fatal flaws in the mission’s charter mandate, and it’s disappointing.  He should have done a more credible job, and, perhaps, as things develop in Venezuela during the next few days, you may actually find these international observers playing an important role.

Diana Molineaux:  And for Mr. Coronel, I have a question concerning the quality of the Venezuelan oil because people say, well, can Venezuela stop selling to the United States or not, the Congressman already said that this is unrealistic, but on a more technical point, I understand that the Venezuelan oil is very heavy, it cannot be refined everywhere, and there are very few countries, besides the United States, that have this capability.  And I also wonder how expensive it would be for Venezuela to promote these capabilities to possible customers.

Gustavo Coronel:  Yes, well most of the Venezuelan oil reserves are heavy oils, or, rather, heavier oils, because you have a wide range of qualities.  There is a lot of light oil in Venezuela, and what Venezuela exports to the United States is about fifty percent light oils, and gasoline, which is very important for the United States, and the rest are heavier oils which are processed in U.S.-based refineries, which are made especially for that kind of oil.  If tomorrow, Chávez decided not to send the oil to the US, these heavier oils, it would be difficult for him, impossible for Venezuela, to find alternative recipients of that oil, because, for example, China, although they need a lot of oil, their refineries are unable to process these Venezuelan heavier oils, and anyway, they are working at 95% capacity anyway.  It takes about five or six years to build the new refinery. 

So, the situation for Venezuela in a confrontation with the US would be probably worse than it would be for the US, although I must admit, I don’t want to see the Dow Jones the day after the oil supply from Venezuela is suspended.  No.

Diana Molineaux:  In the production of oil in Venezuela, you say it should be at 5, and it’s at 2.6.  What was the highest production that Venezuela ever had because probably it never reached 5.  It was a projection.

Gustavo Coronel:  Well, Venezuela in 1975, was producing 3.7 million barrels per day, and when Chávez took power, it was producing 3.2 million barrels per day, because the Venezuelan reservoirs are very old, and being old, they lose the capacity for producing.  So you need to invest a tremendous amount of new capital into replacing the production.  Every year, if you don’t do anything to reservoirs, you would lose about 20% of your production.  So like Humpty Dumpty, the Venezuelans have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place every year.  So this is about what the situation looks like.

Peter Whitney:  Peter Whitney, Duke University.  One of the things that Chávez has used to build his popularity are these so-called missiones, and I wanted to know if any of the panel knows how much money, on an annual basis, he spends on these, and whether you could describe – I understand it’s really unsustainable, but I don’t know whether it’s like the Bolsa Familia in Brazil, where it’s a $50-a-month handout.  How do these work, and could you comment on how much does he spend on it?

Gustavo Coronel:  Well, actually, the missiones would be a very good idea if they were complemented with structural policies of education and health, which would be actual answers, long-term answers to poverty in Venezuela.  But as they are now, they are handouts.  They are of a very temporary nature.  The missiones can be of different nature.  They have a medical variety that consists of Cuban doctors.  They have 25,000 Cuban doctors in Venezuela, going into the poor areas of the Venezuelan cities, giving the basic medical aid to Venezuelans – you know, aspirins, antibiotics, things of the first level of medical attention. 

On the other hand, however, the real deep-seated medical attention in the hospitals is totally neglected.  In Venezuela last year, seven patients in the hospital in Caracas died because the hospital had no oxygen for them.  And why?  Because the government had not paid the oxygen supplier, and you can imagine that a country that is getting $200 million in oil income does not have the money to pay for the oxygen in their state hospitals. 

So the missiones give you a temporary illusion of well being, because they give you free food, free transport, free education, and there is nothing more expensive than free education, because what you are producing with free education is a generation of very mediocre – and I used to admit that no Venezuelan government officer today would go to the doctors being graduated in their free universities, but they all go to Boston whenever they really feel ill, they go to Boston or to Houston, but not to see their own Bolivarian-graduated doctors, and that’s the sad part of it. 

Now, how much money is involved?  Nobody knows.  Not even Chávez knows how much money they are spending because there are three parallel budgets in Venezuela, the formal budget, and two more, one coming from the Venezuelan Central Bank, which has been raided of about six billion dollars this year, and another one coming from Petróleos of Venezuela, which is the ATM, as Congressman Mack said of Hugo Chávez. 

So, in fact, I would say that half of the money, half of the $200 million have remained unaccounted for, which is not to say that the other half has been wisely employed.  So this is the tragedy of the Venezuelan financial management under Hugo Chávez.

Roger F. Noriega:  Let me add to that, if I may, very briefly.  It says something that there are people who never got any medical care or saw a dentist or anything until Chávez came to power.  And so I hope that the opposition folks take this to heart.  I think Rosales has, and he’s saying not one more penny outside of Venezuela while there’s poverty inside Venezuela.  He’s also advancing these mi negra cards, these mi negra ATM cards, frankly, where people could access a share of petroleum revenues. 

You know, I’m not crazy about these sort of handouts.  I think there are things that Lula’s doing or that Fox and even the PRI did before, and the Chileans are doing that are integrated into a development.  That’s the problem – these programs aren’t advancing systematically against poverty, so the people are poorer in Venezuela today than they were before Chávez.  Between 1994 and 1998, the average GDP per capita was $5,584, and between 1999 to 2005, it was $5,121.  It’s less.  As a matter of fact, there are just as – the percentage of Venezuela’s population living in extreme poverty today is 48% compared to 50% before Chávez took power. 

So where is all this money going?  I think the Venezuelan people deserve an answer to that.  And hopefully, they eventually will be recovered and invested in programs that help them, over the long haul, help themselves out of poverty.  And, you shouldn’t have to give up your freedom for a dental check-up. 

With that, I think I’m going to bring this to a close.  I want to thank everybody for the terrific presentations that the panelists have made, and for your great questions.  They were really great.  Thank you very much.

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