Venezuelan capital at a standstill as government fails to break strike
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Your support makes all the difference.The opposition in Venezuela blocked streets yesterday in an attempt to bring the capital to a standstill after the government failed in its latest attempt to break a crippling general strike, now entering its third week.
With positions hardening on both sides, the government mounted an abortive attempt to move the Pilin Leon, an oil tanker whose crew's decision to join the strike 10 days ago has turned it into the flagship of the opposition protest.
Although a judge had confirmed the striking captain's right to command the vessel, President Hugo Chavez sent army and national guard troops to seize it in the early hours of yesterday and replace the crew with foreign nationals.
"I have given the military instructions," the president said on his weekly radio and TV programme, "to apply national power as enshrined in the constitution.We cannot allow a judge, allied with an opposition governor... to impede the application of a presidential decree."
The replacement crew was reported to have left the Pilin Leon after failing to take control.
The opposition umbrella group known as the Democratic Co-ordinator (CD) delivered a letter to the Organisation of American States secretary-general, Cesar Gaviria, accusing the president of violating both the Venezuelan constitution and the organisation's own Democratic Charter.
Mr Gaviria has been chairing negotiations between government and opposition, centred on the need for an "electoral solution". So far the talks have made no progress.
Carlos Fernandez, the president of the business association Fedecamaras and a key member of the strike committee, said President Chavez's "call to defy judicial sentences amounts to a coup d'état". Carlos Ortega, the president of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, said Venezuela would become "an outlaw state" if the president did not reconsider his position.
In Caracas, opposition supporters blocked roads and motorways from 6am to 1pm. Pro-Chavez demonstrators who threw rocks and bottles at their adversaries were dispersed with teargas in one place, but nearer to the centre of town police loyal to a pro-government mayor broke up opposition demonstrations.
"This is no longer a strike," said Henrique Salas Romer, who lost the presidential election to Chavez in 1998, "it is a national rebellion."
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