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The Venezuelan Supreme Court’s Aug. 14 vote to drop military rebellion charges against four senior armed forces officers has dealt President Hugo Chavez a potentially devastating political blow. The high court’s absolution of the officers -- and the text of the decision, which blames the government for coup-related violence in April -- means that Chavez likely will face an impeachment fight after annual judicial vacations in mid-September.

Chavez’s position is in more danger now than it was last April, when he was briefly removed from power after an anti-Chavez protest ended in gunfire that killed 19 and wounded nearly 150. Although Chavez still controls the military, and his political opponents remain disorganized and lack any truly unifying leaders, the recent decision of the 11 justices shows that Chavez has lost control of a Supreme Court whose 20 members were originally chosen on the basis of their political pliability.

The high court’s newfound independence is mainly being stoked by former Interior and Justice Minister Luis Miquilena, who has emerged since April as the president’s most dangerous political foe due to his influence over the Supreme Court, National Assembly, and the National Electoral Council, where he has many supporters.

It is also likely that the military would withdraw its tenuous support for his regime if Chavez were impeached because of several current lawsuits against him. A lack of military backing would make it impossible for Chavez to ignore a Supreme Court impeachment vote.

In one case, the Supreme Court is hearing a suit against Chavez that claims Venezuela’s oil supply agreement with Cuba, signed in October 2000 by Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, is illegal and unconstitutional. Critics of the deal contend that it was never debated and approved by the National Assembly, as is required by all three official versions of the 1999 constitution that Chavez helped rewrite after he was elected. A majority of the court’s members likely will vote that the oil supply deal is unconstitutional due to the absence of an assembly vote, which is grounds for impeachment.

Also, the Supreme Court likely will hear a case charging that Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria contributed $1.5 million to Chavez’s election campaign in 1998 and 1999. Chavez has publicly denied ever receiving funds from the bank.

However, senior bank executives as well as Miquilena and the Electoral Council all have recently certified that Chavez did receive the money in question. Since Chavez’s campaign never reported the contribution to the Electoral Council, as required by law, he is also at risk of being impeached for accepting illegal campaign contributions.

The Supreme Court is hearing another suit that alleges the president and other senior government officials conspired to violate the human rights of the protesters killed and injured during the April 11-13 violence. Based on congressional testimony, videotape and eyewitness reports, most if not all of the shooting was instigated by supporters of the Chavez regime and sharpshooters that STRATFOR sources on site identified last May as members of the president’s security detail.

The recent decision to excuse the four officers indicates that the Supreme Court will take a much stronger stance against Chavez in the lawsuits as well. The court’s independence is not a sign that it is now autonomous, but is instead a reflection of the multiple enmities Chavez has created among former supporters like Miquilena and others who have now joined the opposition’s drive to remove him. The court’s members originally were appointed as a result of political negotiations between Chavez, Miquilena and others.

A potentially complicating factor for Chavez is the fact that two of those killed during the violence in April were citizens of Spain, and their families could charge the president and other senior Venezuelan government officials with human rights violations, according to recent news reports from Madrid.

To counter the very real threat the Supreme Court represents to his regime’s survival, Chavez has launched a pre-emptive political and diplomatic offensive aimed at neutralizing the court and buying more time to reinforce his government’s shaky foundation.

Chavez announced Aug. 19 that he would ask a special commission of "constitutional experts" to reform the constitution to make it a "more perfect" charter for the country, Reuters reported. Moreover, Chavez endorsed the ruling Fifth Republic Movement Party’s announcement of a National Assembly "investigation" of the Supreme Court’s members to determine if they forged the professional credentials they used to win their judicial appointments to the court.

Over the past two weeks, Chavez and senior ruling party leaders also have been making repeated public calls for the Venezuelan people who support the president to take the streets in defense of his so-called "Bolivarian Revolution" and repudiation of the Supreme Court.

A small number of pro-Chavez demonstrators -- estimated at no more than 3,000 people -- engaged in sporadic violent demonstrations in downtown Caracas during the first three weeks of August, when the Supreme Court rejected two writs of indictment against the four military officers and then voted to approve a third writ urging their acquittal. However, the huge crowds that turned out for Chavez two and three years ago have disappeared -- if not permanently, at least for now.

Internationally, Chavez sent Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton to Washington, D.C., this week for meetings with senior Bush administration officials at the State Department. Chaderton was mending fences in an effort to secure a face-to-face meeting between Chavez and U.S. President George W. Bush. Although Chavez is unlikely to receive an invitation to visit the White House anytime soon, the State Department did announce that Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich would visit Caracas in the near future. No dates were specified.

There also are troubling indications that Chavez and some of his supporters are prepared to use violence if the government’s political and diplomatic offensive fails to stop the Supreme Court from impeaching him.

For example, on Aug. 2 units of the Caracas Metropolitan Police were ambushed and pinned down for hours by heavily armed gunmen in western Caracas. Subsequently, a new group calling itself the Carapaica Revolutionary Movement held a clandestine press conference to take credit for the engagement and declare its willingness to shed blood in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution.

The Carapica Movement denied any links to the Chavez regime, but military sources in Caracas told STRATFOR that the group consisted of about 40 former armed forces officials who were financed, equipped and controlled through the Interior and Justice Ministry’s political police.

However, a more troubling indicator of the Chavez regime’s potentially violent response to head off the president’s impeachment came from German Bula, Colombia’s ambassador to Venezuela, who said Aug. 18 that preparations are underway in Venezuela to provoke a cross-border incident with Colombia. Bula said the objective was to distract public attention in Venezuela from the country’s growing domestic political difficulties, but he declined to say more when pressed by Venezuelan reporters.

The Chavez regime did not respond to Bula’s explosive remarks, which also have received very scant coverage in the Venezuelan news media. However, military sources in Caracas told STRATFOR Aug. 21 that the Colombian ambassador’s allegations appear accurate, and that if any incident does occur it likely will involve Venezuelan army units based in Tachira state across the border from the Colombian department of Norte de Santander, where Colombian rebel and paramilitary groups are very active.

The alleged scheme is so fraught with potential domestic and international risks for the Chavez regime that it sounds harebrained. However, Chavez’s recent public threats against the Supreme Court, and speeches calling for a popular uprising against the court, suggest that he is getting more desperate as the country’s economic crisis worsens, his popular support evaporates and Miquilena maneuvers to secure a Supreme Court impeachment vote.

In fact, military sources in Caracas said the apparent objective of any deliberately triggered cross-border incident would not be to start a war with Colombia, but rather to distract the armed forces and keep factions within them from scheming to topple Chavez.

Since Colombia has historically been perceived as one of the greatest potential threats to Venezuela’s national security, according to the defense doctrine taught in the armed forces’ military academy, the Chavez government may be gambling that a cross-border incident sometime in the next few weeks would divert public, political and military attention away from toppling Chavez and buy more time to neutralize the threat posed by the Supreme Court.

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VENEZUELA’S SUPREME COURT VOTE A POLITICAL SETBACK FOR CHAVEZ

Date Added: Thursday, August 15th, 2002
Contributed by: RCN Administrator