Latin American Herald (Jeremy Morgan): Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma revealed that his Cultural Secretary, Victor Carrillo, had been "detained in an irregular manner" by hard line government supporters last week. Ledezma said he had been given a video purportedly showing a group of individuals taking Carrillo away. He linked those people with the Tupamaros, one of several shadowy groups on the fringes of President Hugo Chavez' powerbase.
The Mayor said Carrillo had been taken to the offices of the Metropolitan Prefecture, which has been occupied by armed men who also appear to be supporters of the president, or chavistas. Then, as Ledezma put it, Carrillo was "supposedly rescued" by officers from the Policia de Caracas, the local force in the Libertador municipality in west Caracas.
The Mayor attributed the bizarre incident to Carrillo's earlier decision to enter a building housing Radio City. It, too, has been forcibly occupied by chavistas, and is legally the property of the Metropolitan Mayor's Office. Ledezma hails from the opposition, and was chief executive of the capital for a term during the 1990s. He won last November's election for city Mayor by beating former education and sports minister Aristobulo Isturiz of Chavez' ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
The municipal Mayor of Libertador, who wields political control over Policia de Caracas, is Jorge Rodriguez, a former head of the electoral body, vice president and key player in the PSUV. He is the only surviving pro-Chavez Mayor in the city after the opposition's near clean sweep at last year's elections. Ledezma has been the target of disruptive and at times violent conduct by groups of chavistas since becoming Mayor. Furthermore, there's suspicion that the security forces in downtown Caracas are in cohorts with the disorderly elements ranged against Ledezma. He accused the government of trying to "destabilize" the run-up to the referendum on February 15 on Chavez' proposed reform of the constitution to remove a ban on successive re-election.
When Ledezma first arrived at his offices as Mayor, he was prevented from entering by men claiming to be municipal workers who were smashing windows and damaging other property. Days later, the National Guard barred Ledezma from entering a building which used to house the old Supreme Court but where city council meetings had been held for the last eight years. Ledezma had called the first meeting of the newly elected council, which is now under opposition control. With the old Supreme Court still barred and bolted, the council at present assembles wherever it can.
Apart from the Prefecture, several other premises used by departments under Ledezma's control have been taken over by unruly individuals, some of them with firearms. Employees have been threatened and told to get out. The Libertador municipal police, the Metropolitan Police and the National Guard have done curiously little to rein in these clearly unlawful activities. After the Carrillo incident, Ledezma vowed that he wouldn't be provoked or distracted from doing his job as Mayor.
"Somebody who's winning doesn't play with violence," he said. "We are armed with patience. This is a provocation, what they're looking for here is for people to lose their tempers. I call on all the civil sectors for us to continue going forward, taking part on February 15 to ratify what was decided on December 2, 2007."
That was the date of a referendum which rejected an earlier attempt by Chavez to lift the ban on repeated re-election. His proposal lost by a margin of about two percentage points of the votes cast, in what was his first electoral reverse since first coming to elected power in 1999.
Students aligned to the opposition held a "consultation" on Chavez' proposal at universities in the capital on Friday. Ricardo Sanchez, a student leader at Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), said the turn-out had been "massive."
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