The straw that broke the camel's back appears to have been TV coverage of widespread acts of violence and intimidation!

VHeadline Venezuela News reports: Channel 33 Globovision -- Venezuela's 24/7 television news channel -- is threatened with closure according to the TV stations managing director Alberto Federico Ravell speaking just after 9.00 p.m. local time Thursday. The opposition-allied broadcaster is to be subject to closure according to a decision handed down by the Venezuelan National Telecommunications regulatory body CONATEL although Ravell says he believes it comes on orders handed down directly from President Hugo Chavez Frias himself.

Globovision has long been a thorn in the flesh of President Chavez who has accused the TV channel of conducting a vilification campaign against his government and himself.

• The broadcaster counters saying that they report what's happening "just as it is!" and without the kind of censorship it claims is exercised by the state-owned channel 8, Venezolana de Television (VTV) which constantly broadcasts heavily slanted pro-government material.

The closure may come as a personal embarrassment to already-divorced Communications & Information (MinCI) Minister Andres Izarra who had had a secret "assignation" with one of the channel's prettiest presenters, and married her when she fell pregnant! She was forced to leave her well-paid job at Globovision when the news broke of her liaison with the MinCI Minister, and was harassed and had her car tires slashed.

Among the complaints laid against Globovision's broadcasting are claims that it has incited continuing violence by its on-air reporting direct from the streets of Caracas where wholesale looting and violence is sweeping the city despite a heavy police and military presence on the streets.

The straw that broke the camel's back appears to have been TV coverage of widespread acts of violence and intimidation over last weekend's local and regional elections where marauding motorcyclists from the President's own United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) were rounding up voters like cattle to the polling stations and hunting down anyone caught without indelibile ink on their fingers (showing that they had already voted!).

Ravell says that Chavez "has finally dares to show his true face as an authoritarian dictator! There is no longer any separation of executive powers in Venezuela -- what the President says he want, the President gets done for him, unquestioningly!"

According to Venezuela's Constitution it behoves the National Electoral Council (CNE) to penalize any broadcaster found in breach of electoral rules such as is now claimed by Conatel. Ravell says he is indignant over how the President simply went on VTV to broadcast instructions to his PSUV party faithful during the election run-off and that CNE president Tibisay Lucena was "quite unable to prevent him from breaking all the rules!"

"To justify the closure of this channel they would have had to invent all sorts of calumnies and invent new rules, new legislation and new jurisprudence ... but its easier for them to send National Guard (GN) to close us down. The loss of face and the shamelessness that this government has must be paid by someone and they are paying it by clamping down on us just because we let two (opposition) governors go on air to denounce electoral fraud."

The Chavez government's next step, Ravell continues, "will be to decree that Henrique Capriles Radonski will not be able to take over the Governorship of Miranda State that he won democratically in the election; that they will ban Antonio Ledezma from using the Avila TV channel and they will try to "inhibilitar" (disable the democratic functions) of Eduardo Lapi, Leopoldo Lopez and Enrique Mendoza."

Contacted by telephone late Thursday evening, Venezuela's former ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Milos Alcalay (a Constitutional lawyer) said "it's true, the Chavez government is assuming dictatorial powers that are totally outside any concept of the law or the Constitution ... he speaks about freedom of expression and press freedoms in Venezuela, but the only freedoms that are guaranteed are to those who are willing to play lap-dog to everything he says and does. That is not freedom, that is authoritarianism, dictatorship!"

VHeadline Venzuela News
vheadline@gmail.com

____________________________________

Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.

HELP US TO KEEP BRINGING YOU THE TRUTH
http://tinyurl.com/n4fg