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Venezuela murder-rate quadrupled under Chavez -NGO

11 Mar 2010 17:49:08 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Caracas most violent capital in Western Hemisphere

* Chavez's popularity affected by crime wave

CARACAS, March 11 (Reuters) - Homicides in Venezuela have quadrupled during President Hugo Chavez's 11 years in power, with two people murdered every hour, according to new figures from a non-governmental organization.

The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), whose data is widely followed in the absence of official statistics, said the South American nation has one of the highest crime rates on the continent, with 54 homicides per 100,000 citizens in 2009.

That rate is only surpassed in Latin America by El Salvador where 70 in every 100,000 citizens were murdered last year, the OVV said, citing official statistics from that country.

Crime repeatedly comes first on Venezuelans' list of worries. It has also begun to drag on Chavez's traditionally high approval ratings as well as scare tourists who come to Venezuela.

"The problem is not so much the criminals, but rather the government's inaction and lack of policies," OVV director Roberto Briceno Leon told Reuters.

Chavez says he is doing his best to combat crime, which he blames on wealth inequalities caused by former governments.

He accuses foes of exaggerating the problem to foment fear, and has recently hiked pay for police officers, as well as launching a new national force.

The Interior Ministry, which last gave official crime statistics in 2004, declined comment on the OVV's new figures.

Briceno, a criminology professor at the Central University of Venezuela and at the Sorbonne in Paris, blamed a weak judicial system and ineffective and corrupt policing in Venezuela, where he said 91 percent of crimes go unsolved.

He collates his figures from police sources and media reports. When Chavez came to power in 1999 there were 4,550 homicides whereas in 2009 there were 16,047, the OVV said.

That means Venezuela experiences every month about as many deaths as occurred in the Gaza Strip during Israel's early 2009 offensive, Briceno said.

With a murder rate of 140 per 100,000 citizens, Venezuela's capital Caracas has the highest murder rate in South America, only exceeded in the hemisphere by Mexico's Ciudad Juarez.

Most of the deaths occur in crowded slums, but crime impinges on all sectors. In richer residential areas at night, cars shoot through red lights on often deserted streets and few people are willing to risk walking outside. (Reporting by Eyanir Chinea; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

The Associated Press May 15, 2010, 11:51PM ET

Venezuela's Chavez orders takeover of iron-makers

CARACAS, Venezuela

President Hugo Chavez announced Saturday the expropriation of a group of iron, aluminum and transportation companies in Venezuela's mining region.

Among the expropriated companies is Materiales Siderurgicos, or Matesi, which is the Venezuelan subsidiary of Luxembourg-based steel maker Tenaris SA.

Venezuela's socialist president said in a televised that his government was going to take over Matesi because "we couldn't reach an amicable and reasonable settlement with the owners."

Chavez said production at the company has been paralyzed since midway through last year, when Venezuela's president announced plans to nationalize it.

Chavez said he was also going to expropriate Venezuelan-owned Orinoco Iron and aluminum-maker Norpro de Venezuela C.A., which is an affiliate of the U.S. company Norpro in association with France's Saint Gobain, among other companies.

As well, Venezuela will take over transport companies that ship raw materials in areas southeast of Caracas. He did not name the companies.

Since coming to power more than a decade ago, Chavez has nationalized major companies in the electricity, oil, steel and coffee sectors, as well as other private businesses.

Chávez reports gas platform has sunk off Venezuela coast

By Daniel Cancel, Bloomberg | May 14, 2010

CARACAS — President Hugo Chávez said yesterday that a natural gas platform sank off the eastern coast of Venezuela because of a faulty flotation system. The incident comes three weeks after a catastrophic oil rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The gas platform Aban Pearl sank a few minutes ago,’’ Chávez said in a message on his Twitter account. “The good news is that its 95 workers are safe. They were evacuated and in this moment two patrol ships from the Navy are headed to the area.’’

Chávez is trying to tap offshore gas reserves to power thermoelectric plants amid an energy crisis. Repsol YPF, Eni, and Chevron are also exploring offshore.

Petroleos de Venezuela, the state-owned oil company, said a failure in the floatation system of the Aban Pearl caused the rig to sink after a “massive’’ inflow of water. Technicians sealed the gas well with a security valve before the platform sank, the company said yesterday in an e-mail.

Venezuela, which has Latin America’s largest natural gas reserves at 170 trillion cubic feet of gas, is certifying reserves and expects to reach 400 trillion cubic feet, which would give it the fourth-largest reserves in the world, behind Russia, Iran, and Qatar, according to BP data.

Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela’s oil minister and president of the company known as PDVSA, said that the platform, which began to tilt late Wednesday, sank at 2:20 a.m. local time. Ramirez, speaking on state television, said workers closed the valve connected to the well to avoid a gas leak.

PDVSA had forecast that production would reach 600 million cubic feet a day in the offshore area near Trinidad and Tobago where it is drilling for gas.

The platform was leased from an Indian company called Aban Offshore Ltd., Ramirez said. An investigation will be conducted to determine the cause of the accident, he said. Telephone calls seeking comment from Aban’s headquarters in Chennai, India, weren’t answered.

“Fortunately, the well poses no environmental risks,’’ Ramirez said in an e-mailed statement from the Information Ministry. “We’ve contacted the owner of the platform and the experts are studying the cause of the unfortunate incident.’’

Chávez said last month that the drilling in the Dragon gas fields, where the rig was located, is historic for PDVSA because it was the first offshore project developed by the company without foreign partners. “Everything was done by PDVSA on its own,’’ he said. “We already have pipelines, remote-controlled robots, and underwater technology that our PDVSA is doing on its own.’’

The accident will delay PDVSA’s plans to boost gas production, Diego Gonzalez, former head of the oil company’s natural gas division, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

“This is a big setback for the company’s plans, since the equipment is lost and they’ll have to hire another platform,’’ he said.

Venezuela is Crumbling

BY Jaime Daremblum
May 14, 2010 12:00 AM


Recent weeks have brought more depressing economic news from Venezuela, where populist leader Hugo Chávez seems intent on destroying not only democracy but also the last remaining vestiges of private enterprise.

On April 21, the Latin Business Chronicle predicted that Venezuela would post the world’s highest inflation rate in 2010, ahead of even the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

On May 5, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean reported that foreign direct investment (FDI) in Venezuela dropped from $349 million in 2008 to negative $3.1 billion last year, “mainly as a result of nationalizations.” In other words, the Bolivarian Republic experienced a net FDI outflow of $3.1 billion in 2009.

On May 7, the Venezuelan central bank released data showing that consumer prices rose by 5.2 percent from March to April. As Bloomberg News noted, this represented the largest monthly increase since 2003. Meanwhile, the annual inflation rate hit nearly 32 percent.

On May 11, the Chávez-controlled National Assembly introduced legislation designed to clamp down on currency trading and strengthen the bolívar, Venezuela’s national monetary unit. “This is a very negative measure for the Venezuelan economy,” Barclays Capital economist Alejandro Grisanti told Dow Jones. “It will increase the pressure on prices and will deepen the contraction of the economy.” In January, Chávez devalued the bolívar in order to facilitate greater social spending. Since then, the currency has plummeted, making Venezuela’s already dire inflation problem even worse.

The Bolivarian Republic is gradually crumbling, and Chávez seems intent on speeding up the process. According to International Monetary Fund projections, Venezuela is the only major Latin American country that will experience an economic contraction in 2010. Inflation has reached staggering levels: As Bancaribe economist Adrian Aguirre told Bloomberg News after Venezuela’s central bank unveiled the April price data, “The fact that food prices rose by more than 11 percent is something we’ve never seen in the last decade.” Venezuelan importers are also grumbling about the new two-tiered exchange-rate regime, which was implemented as part of the devaluation back in January. The higher rate (4.3 bolívares per dollar) applies to “non-essential” imported goods. But the Associated Press reports that “the government has not distributed enough dollars at the official rate to satisfy demand, forcing close to half of Venezuela’s importers to buy much more expensive greenbacks on the black market.”

Venezuela’s economic misery has inflamed anti-Chávez sentiment and fueled large-scale protests. Ordinary Venezuelans are mad about food and water shortages, power outages, and surging crime rates. There are national legislative elections scheduled for September; unfortunately, many Venezuelans fear those elections will never take place. It’s possible that Chávez will manufacture a phony “security crisis” and suspend the voting indefinitely. It’s also possible that he will permit the elections to go forward but disqualify certain candidates from running or preemptively arrest them on trumped-up charges.

If the elections are canceled, the last remnants of Venezuelan democracy will collapse. Opponents of Chávez may eventually decide they have no peaceful choice. I sincerely hope this scenario does not come to pass. It is still possible that Chávez can be defeated at the ballot box—but only if he allows the elections to proceed. The Venezuelan strongman has been organizing regime-backed militias to subjugate the democratic opposition and protect his socialist revolution. In essence, he is creating his own version of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (who are committed to defending the theocratic dictatorship in Tehran).

Chávez’s paramilitary supporters effectively serve as a private government security force. They seek to intimidate the likes of former Venezuelan defense minister Raúl Baduel, who was recently sentenced to nearly eight years in prison. Baduel has been sitting in jail since 2009 as punishment for turning against the regime. Earlier this year, he published a letter with several other former Chávez loyalists calling on the Venezuelan president to resign. The letter condemned Chávez as “totalitarian” and argued that he “has neither moral nor material authority to rule the country, since he can not meet people’s demands satisfactorily.”

With inflation and crime spiraling out of control, more and more Venezuelans are coming to that conclusion. Rather than address their concerns, Chávez is building an enormous militia movement to squash the unrest. As the September election date draws closer, the paramilitaries will seek to terrorize opposition candidates and discourage them from campaigning. There is a very real threat of bloody street violence. Is the international community paying attention?

Jaime Daremblum, who served as Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United States from 1998 to 2004, is director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Hudson Institute.

Parts of the UK have water rationing almost every summer - ffs - it pisses down over here.


Devalued currency? Have you seen the state of the pound recently?

The people keep electing Chavez, so he must be doing something right... oh no wait???

If you install more deregulation, you will increase the power of those corporate owner utilities, and then you will increase their monopoly.