Mind your own business, Venezuela foreign minister tells Jackass
Alexandra Ulmer, Reuters, May 26 2014
CARACAS – Venezuela’s foreign minister on Monday rebuked Jackass Kerry for criticizing the handling of street protests and reiterated accusations Washington wants to topple the socialist government. Jackass said last week that Venezuela’s government had shown “total failure” of good faith in now-suspended talks to stem the unrest. In Venezuela’s worst violence in a decade, 42 people have died during months of daily protests demanding Pres Maduro’s departure and solutions to economic hardships. The Maduro government is particularly angry at some Usaian Congress critturs’ calls for sanctions on officials, though the Obama administrations has expressed reluctance for fear of curbing attempts at political reconciliation within Venezuela. At its weekend meeting, the UNASUR group of South American governments explicitly condemned the sanctions proposal as “violating the principle of non-intervention.” Foreign Minister Elias Jaua told reporters on Monday after returning from the regional UNASUR bloc’s meeting in Ecuador:
This is not an issue that concerns Mr Jackass Kerry. It’s not Bolivarian paranoia. These are real facts that clearly violate international law.
Venezuela made a formal complaint of Usaian interference at the UNASUR meeting, in the Galapagos islands, and journalists at Monday’s news conference were given a booklet of comments by Jackass and other Usaian officials to bolster the Venezuelan government’s case. Washington has scoffed at the accusations, saying they are a smokescreen to hide the government’s domestic problems. The Maduro government constantly reminds Venezuelans how Washington appeared to back a brief toppling of Chavez in 2002. Demonstrators say they have no foreign masters and are simply complaining about food shortages, rampant crime and one of the highest inflation rates in the world. The protests failed to spread significantly from middle-class bastions and have ebbed in recent weeks, leading Maduro to assert he survived an attempt to oust him. The protests, which ranged from thousands-strong marches to night-time barricades of major avenues with burning tires, also fractured the opposition movement. Some moderates deemed them useless or even counter-productive, as they fomented government allegations that activists are elitist coup-seekers. Hard-line protesters, who are vowing to carry on, retorted that institutions and courts are skewed against them, so taking to the street is the only way to make their grievances heard.
Wives of jailed opposition mayors win Venezuela ballots
Deisy Buitrago, Diego Ore, Reuters, May 26 2014
CARACAS – The wives of two opposition mayors jailed over protests against Pres Maduro won landslide victories in elections on Sunday for their spouses’ vacant posts. Though the women’s victories were widely expected in cities that are hotbeds of opposition to Madura, they still brought some cheer to a movement divided over the strategy of protests and smarting from repeated defeats in national elections. Patricia Ceballos, whose husband Daniel Ceballos was sacked in March and received a 12-month sentence for failing to remove protester’ barricades in the streets of San Cristobal, took the mayorship there with 74% of votes. The western city near the border of Colombia was the birthplace of demonstrations that began in early February and quickly spread across Venezuela, causing the OPEC nation’s worst unrest in a decade and leading to 42 deaths. Rosa Scarano, whose husband Vicencio Scarano also lost his job and received a 10-month jail sentence in March for the same offence in central San Diego city, won an even larger 88% of votes to take the vacant mayorship there. Both women represented the opposition Democratic Unity (MUD) coalition against ruling Socialist Party candidates. The MUD said in a statement:
The result of these elections has shown that power and abuse have received a big lesson.
The socialists still control about 70% of Venezuela’s 335 local mayorships, however. Maduro, who seems to have weathered the worst of the protests, said he would recognize the new mayors, but warned he would not tolerate more unrest in their cities. He said:
If they go crazy and start burning the municipality again, the authorities will act, and elections will be called every three months until there is peace.
Maduro says this year’s wave of protests are a cover for a Usaia-promoted coup attempt against him. Opponents say that is nonsense, and protests are borne out of Venezuelans’ frustration with a repressive government and economic hardships including scarcities of basic products and the highest inflation in the Americas. At the height of the protests, masked youths faced off daily with security forces. But numbers have dwindled in recent weeks. Though hardline student activists vow to stay on the streets, the MUD’s more moderate leaders believe their best strategy now is to focus on a possible recall referendum to try and oust Maduro constitutionally in 2016. He won a six-year term last year, which would take him to 2019. The opposition would need nearly 4 million signatures to trigger a recall referendum in two years’ time.
Miami commissioners denounce Venezuelan TV owners
Nadege Green, Miami Herald, May 21 2014
Miami commissioners have declared the owners of Venezuela’s Globovisión television station “persona non grata” in the city. The resolution, drafted by outspoken former Miami Mayor Joe Carollo, who was recently fired as Doral’s city manager, was presented at Thursday’s City Commission meeting. In the resolution, Carollo wrote that Miami should have an interest in denouncing Globovisión because its principals use the city as their playground, spending millions of dollars on high-end properties and cars, while remaining quiet on human-rights abuses in Venezuela. Carollo, who attended the commission meeting, claims the television network ignores student-led protests in Venezuela, refusing to broadcast objective news about the protests and stifling information about human-right abuses by Pres Maduro’s government. Carollo said:
We are going to make clear that we don’t appreciate people oppressing human rights.
The presence of station owners Raúl Gorrín, Gustavo Perdomo and Juan Domingo Codero in Miami and any other individuals complicit with the Venezuelan government should be declared “hypocritical, unwelcome and repugnant to the residents of Miami,” Carollo wrote in the resolution. Commissioners voted unanimously. Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who was absent for the vote, wrote a letter that was read at the meeting supporting the resolution to snub Globovisión station owners. The Globovisión owners could not be reached for comment. The resolution is purely symbolic. A declaration of “persona non grata” is traditionally used by national governments to oust foreign diplomats. It is not the first time the commission has inserted itself into an international issue to “send a message” with symbolic declarations that have no real effect. Shortly after the February protests erupted in Venezuela, the commission passed a resolution that condemned the Venezuelan government “for using violence and intimidation against its political opposition” and urged the Usaian government to take diplomatic action. In Mar 2010, the commission passed a resolution urging Congress to oppose cultural exchanges between Cuba and Usaia, citing the Cuban government’s violation of basic freedoms and human rights. Commissioner Wifredo Gort said:
Some people may ask why the city, a local entity, gets involved in international matters. Many of Miami’s residents are in exile from their homeland because of oppressive regimes, or are children of those in exile. We understand what the people of Venezuela are going through.
The city’s symbolic stances have stirred controversy in the past. In the early 1990s, the City Commission rescinded a resolution honoring Nelson Mandela after the late South African leader said he appreciated the support of Fidel Castro during his 27 years of imprisonment. The snub came days before Mandela visited Miami Beach. The move was seen as disrespectful to the black community and led to a prolonged boycott of Miami by black-led firms and organizations. This latest symbolic gesture was embraced by the commission and members of the public who showed up Thursday in support of the Venezuelan protesters. One group held up a banner that read “SOS Venezuela” and a Venezuelan flag in the commission chambers. The Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister paper, El Nuevo Herald, reported this week that Gorrín and Perdomo own properties in ritzy Cocoplum, with two homes valued at more than $4m each. State records show the pair also own corporations registered to a two-bedroom-one-bathroom home in Miami. After Carollo read aloud the address of the home with 14 corporations registered at that location, commissioners said the city’s code enforcement department will look into any possible violations. Commissioner Francis Suarez said:
I think it is incumbent upon us as a city, as a city that represents Hispanics around the world, to speak up.
Mayor Tomás Regalado said:
Globovisión is being used as a tool by Maduro’s government. The first step that a government takes to become a totalitarian regime is to take hold of the independent media.
A suggestion by City Attorney Victoria Méndez to tone down the language of the resolution by removing the term “persona not grata” was struck down by the commission.
Venezuela Reaches Deals With Six Airlines to Pay Dollar Debt
Corina Pons, Bloomberg News, May 26 2014
Venezuela reached deals with six airlines to pay dollar debt and may devalue the bolivar for ticket purchasers as it works to normalize flights and prevent airlines from leaving the country. The South American country will pay Colombia’s Avianca Holdings for money accumulated by its Avianca and Taca airlines in 2012, Finance Minister Rodolfo Marco Torres said. An agreement has also been reached with Grupo Aeromexico, Curacao’s Insel Air, Ecuador’s Tame and Aruba Airlines for debt accumulated in 2013, he said. Marco Torres tweeted today:
We’ll keep supporting the airlines.
Airlines had the equivalent of $3.9b stuck in bolivars as of April as they struggled to repatriate revenue from ticket sales, according to the IATA. At least 11 carriers cut capacity, sales or routes to South America’s largest oil exporter in the past year, with Air Canada becoming the first airline to stop flying to Caracas in March. Avianca Chief Executive Officer Fabio Villegas said today in an e-mailed response to questions that he was informed about the government decision to pay 2012 debt. The company had about $319m in cash in the country through the first quarter. The value of revenue trapped in bolivars is being whittled away by the world’s highest inflation rate and frequent devaluations. Annual inflation hit 59% in March, after the government carried out the biggest devaluation since currency controls were instituted in 2003 with the introduction of the SICAD II exchange rate system. Venezuela’s government informed airlines that airfares starting in July will be based on a weaker SICAD II rate of about 50 bolivars/$ compared with the official rate of 6.3 bolivars/$, Humberto Figuera, president of the Venezuelan Airlines Association, said today in a telephone interview. Sea and Transport Minister Hebert Garcia Plaza tweeted today:
We’ve worked with airlines to reduce the dollar price of tickets. We’ll work to place a realistic price on air tickets before they are moved to SICAD II.
Airline tickets were moved to a secondary rate of about 10 bolivars/$, known as SICAD I, in January. Asdrubal Oliveros, director of Caracas-based Ecoanalitica, said today in a telephone interview:
The devaluation gets bigger as the government moves more sectors to SICAD II. This measure will affect the middle class and business people who had been benefiting from a rate far below the black market rate for dollars. It could help regularize the sale of tickets in Venezuela.
Panama’s Copa Airlines said May 8 that it would start cutting routes to Venezuela this month as it struggles to repatriate funds. The Panama City-based airline, which has routes connecting Usaia, the Caribbean and Latin America, said it’s owed $488m by the Venezuelan government, valued at the official bolivar rate of 6.3 bolivars/$. Venezuelan Pres Maduro said on May 22 that any airline that pulled out of the country would not be allowed to return. He said airlines were not cutting flights to the country and were rather reprogramming flights to Brazil to meet demand for the World Cup next month.
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