One down – four hundred to go 14th Dec 2005

The wonderful news that Carlos Ortega has been sentenced to 16 years in prison will be welcomed by all those who support democracy.   Trade unions world-wide, who struggle daily for the interests of their members, will be pleased that a person such as Ortega has long since stopped being portrayed as a workers representative.

The trade union CTV he led had a long history of anti-democratic structures and ballots marked by corruption. This house of cards crumbled once the members realized fully the corruptness and dishonesty of the leadership and the impossibility of recovering democracy. The historic creation of the UNT is now recognized by the British TUC and ILO.

Ortega openly incited and attempted to overthrow the government in a bosses lock out crippling the economy and was charged with Civil Rebellion and Incitement to Delinquency under Article 144 (subsection 286 and 322) of the Venezuelan Penal Code. The crime of illegally diverting the opposition march to Miraflores Palace on April 11th 2002 to overthrow President Chavez in a coup is still pending.

Ortega is the first of hundreds of other business and political conspirators who have supported illegal and anti-democratic practices ever since Chavez was elected in 1998, and all will eventually be brought to book.

The role for the international solidarity movement is to resist the attempts by the opposition to portray these criminals as political prisoners. The need for Venezuela's future is to ensure that Ortega is just the first of many to pay their debt to society and defeat the historical impunity which had always favoured the rich and kept them out of the inhuman penal system they created for the poor in which to rot, whether condemned or waiting for trial.

It is worth recalling that the lock out and oil industry sabotage which lasted from December 2 nd 2002 till February 4th 2003 cost Venezuela an estimated US$14 billion in lost oil revenues and a further US$11 billion in lost industrial production. During the lock out, there was hardly any petrol or domestic gas and the poor were reduced to cutting up their furniture in order to cook a hot meals, if they could find basic foodstuffs.

The mass media instituted "terror programming"   24 four hours a day, suspended  regular schedules and advertising and in two months aired more than 17,500 anti government propaganda slots. The content of these included calling on the armed forces to rise up, predicting a famine in Venezuela since they and their cohorts tried to starve the Venezuelan people into submission. Innocent people died during the strike due to lack of fuel for ambulances and lack of oxygen in hospitals as good examples.

This landmark judicial decision will have created a lot of worried people in the Venezuelan ex ruling classes and ex PDVSA technocrats who took part in both the lock out and oil industry sabotage as well the people who signed the dictator for 48 hour decree, Pedro Carmona Estanga. This decree dissolved the Bolivarian Constitution, the National Assembly, state and municipal authorities, as well as the Supreme Court, the Ombudsman and the Comptroller General's office. In other words, a coup d'état was consummated and only the spontaneous mass mobilization of the people nationwide and joint civic-military action managed to rescue President Chavez and restore the constitutional order.

Signing Carmona's decree is classified in the Venezuelan penal code as "High Treason" and carries a maximum sentence of 24 years in prison. Ortega received the maximum sentence of 16 years all but a few days for his crimes against the Venezuelan people and the State.

Following this landmark judicial decision worried people must be Sumate's Maria Corina Machado and her mother, former president of the private banking association Ignacio Salvatierra, Governor of Zulia State Manuel Rosales as well almost 400 other signatories from the "crème de la crème" of the Venezuelan oligarchy. All these files and cases are pending in the Attorney General's office and could be activated at any time.

In January more trials are expected to start and there is little doubt that all these criminals will be labeled "political prisoners" by the local and international press as their trials go forward.

Nothing could be further from the truth since these people are no better than traitors to the Venezuelan state, homeland and Venezuelan people themselves as pawns of US imperialism and the multinational oil companies. With the National Assembly now dominated by Chavez forces, this should help speed up the march of justice and make corrupt judges think twice before being bribed to only dish out "a slap on the wrist" or simply dismiss cases out of hand.

One down – four hundred to go!

Andy Goodall

venezuelasolidarity.org.uk

justice on the march part 2