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Revenge haunts public servants in Venezuela

Those who signed a petition seeking a recall referendum on the president say they are being fired for their views.

CARACAS, Venezuela - With unemployment running at 21 percent, Vanessa Roca considered herself lucky to find a secretarial job earlier this year in Venezuela's massive state-run oil company.

Her good fortune was short-lived.

After her employers found out she signed a petition calling for a recall referendum to remove the country's controversial leftist president, Hugo Chavez, she was abruptly fired.

"When I signed (the petition) I never gave it much thought," the 31-year-old said. "I didn't think it would be so important."

It comes as no comfort to Roca that in a country bitterly polarized by two years of political strife, hers is not an isolated case.

As Venezuela's government tries to cling to power, public sector employees who signed the referendum petition, or who are suspected of harboring anti-Chavez sympathies, are being purged from their jobs, according to dozens of interviews with dismissed workers, trade unionists, lawyers and opposition politicians.

In an effort to discredit the referendum, public servants whose names appear on the petition are being encouraged by the government to sign legal complaints alleging that their signatures were forged.

"There is enormous pressure on public employees," said opposition Congressman Gerardo Blyde. "They are trying to snarl up the referendum by any means possible. The referendum sentences Chavez to leaving office, and they know that."

The government denies the allegations, saying instead that the referendum petition was itself a violation of the constitution, and the signatures were marred by fraud. Government supporters claim they have uncovered 6,000 forged signatures so far. Some 175 formal complaints are being investigated by a public prosecutor's office in the capital, officials say.

During a visit to Cuba this week, Chavez declared the signatures "illegal" and warned the country's autonomous National Electoral Commission (CNE) not to validate them. Were it to do so, he said, the CNE would risk "destabilizing" the country, and prove itself "morally disqualified" from carrying out its functions.

Chavez, a former army lieutenant colonel who led a failed military coup in 1992, was elected to a five-year term in December 1998 on a wave of popular outrage over decades of political corruption and squandered oil wealth.

On taking office, Chavez declared a sweeping revolutionary process to overhaul the state, drawing inspiration from Venezuela's founding father and independence hero, Simon Bolivar.

But his once sky-high popularity has since plummeted to only 30 percent. After a year in office he held early elections in 2000 under a new constitution, and was elected to a six-year term, which expires in 2007.

Foes accuse him of seeking to impose a communist-style dictatorship, while igniting class hatred with his fiery revolutionary rhetoric.

Mass demonstrations against his rule culminated in a two-month general strike earlier this year, paralyzing the country's $46-billion-a-year oil industry.

Opposition leaders followed this up with the referendum drive, collecting 2.7-million signatures calling for a recall vote to remove Chavez from power, an electoral right provided under Venezuela's Constitution.

On Friday electoral officials ruled the referendum petition was invalid on technical grounds. The signatures should have been collected after the halfway point of Chavez's presidency which was only reached Aug. 19, the five-member body ruled. But opposition leaders took the ruling in stride, saying they would hold a new petition drive Oct. 5 to collect the 2.4-million signatures required by law.

But many hurdles remain. The referendum issue remains stuck in a nightmarish web of procedural uncertainties which electoral officials should rule on this week.

Even the nation's supreme court is having trouble making sense of the situation. One of its rulings last week - on whether Chavez could stand for re-election if defeated in a recall vote - was called into doubt after someone allegedly inserted several unauthorized paragraphs into the official text.

It was only the latest foulup in a catalog of mysterious misdeeds that have sapped public confidence in the organs of state.

In March, a list of the names and identity card numbers of those who signed the first of two referendum petitions was leaked to a progovernment congressman, Luis Tascon. The names of those who signed were supposed to remain in the safekeeping of electoral officials.

In an interview, Tascon said the list was delivered to his office anonymously in a sealed envelope. Instead of returning it, he posted the entire list on his official Web site in the form of a database, allowing names to be checked at the click of a mouse.

From there the list appears to have made its way to government offices, where it is being used to cross-reference the names of public servants. Among the first to be singled out were members of the armed forces and employees of the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

"Currently five military officers are under arrest at the air base here in Caracas," said Carlos Martinez, a lawyer representing many of the military dissidents who signed the referendum petition.

Officers who signed were summoned before disciplinary hearings, and only those who held their tongues were allowed to keep their jobs. "All those who fought for their rights were kicked out," he said.

Officials at PDVSA have also used the referendum signatures to blacklist applicants for jobs, as well as hundreds of highly sought-after academic internships and grants, according to students and academics at the Central University of Venezuela.

One former doctor at a PDVSA medical clinic in the eastern oil fields of Monagas state, Dr. Josefina Acosta, was fired after she joined the strike. Soon after finding a job at a nearby clinic in July, her new employers were informed that PDVSA would no longer refer any patients to clinics that employed staff fired from the company.

"Apart from the fact that they violated my employment rights, they violated the rights of all those patients to be treated," she said.

PDVSA's head of human resources, Asdrubal Chavez, a cousin of the president, did not respond to requests for an interview.

Union leaders also say their members are under intense government pressure to switch allegiance to a new, pro-Chavez union, created by the government in May. "Our public sector members who signed the (referendum) petition are being blackmailed with threats of firing and loss of bonuses," said Manuel Cova, an opposition leader and secretary-general of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, the country's largest labor organization.

The politicization of Venezuela's state institutions has reached as far as the country's chief civil rights ombudsman, a federal office known as the People's Defender. A creation of the 1999 constitution drafted by Chavez in his first year, the office has failed to take up a single case of political discrimination, say human rights activists.

In an interview, the ombudsman, German Mundarain, said he was unaware of any abuses. "Political opinions are being respected," he said. He attributed the allegations to a politically motivated campaign by the opposition-dominated media.

However, Mundarain is accused of fomenting a climate of political intolerance that has resulted in numerous firings and resignations.

One former employee who served as a senior human rights lawyer, Ramon Colina, 50, said he was dismissed in November after complaining that office staff were participating openly in progovernment demonstrations.

"I didn't think it was appropriate," he said. "I'm anti-Chavista and not afraid to say it, but I never went on opposition marches. I kept my political views to myself."

Although political discrimination is a violation of the constitution, as well as international labor and human rights treaties, so far only a handful of cases have been challenged in the courts.

"Things have gotten so bad that people are losing their capacity for astonishment," said Carlos Correa, head of PROVEA, a leading human rights group. "They are reacting as if there is no state."

With no faith in the system, many Venezuelans are at a loss to know what to do.

On Thursday, Vanessa Roca, the fired PDVSA secretary, traveled seven hours by bus from her home outside the capital to file a complaint with the prosecutor handling alleged signature forgeries.

Standing outside the prosecutor's office with a notarized complaint in her hand, she said she was not claiming forgery. "That would be absurd," she said, admitting that she had signed the petition. Saying she no longer supported the referendum, she said she simply wanted her name taken off the petition list.

Later that afternoon, the prosecutor, Gledys Carpio, made headlines by showing up at the national electoral headquarters, accompanied by an intimidating police SWAT team armed with submachine guns. She was ostensibly there to search for falsified signatures. But her presence earned a rebuke from her boss, the country's chief prosecutor, who promised such heavy-handed legal tactics would not be repeated.

Even so, it may have had the desired effect. The next day Roca telephoned one of the reporters, asking to retract her story. Clearly nervous, she said she was no longer sure why she had been fired.

Earlier, Roca had been in no doubt. Saying she no longer supported the referendum, she said she simply wanted her name taken off the list. Upset by the whole experience she blamed both sides. "I don't believe in anything anymore. No one is playing fair. It's all gotten so radical."