:nation

||| politic. Hostility resumes against government's critics

Rosales stands firm

||| The former governor answered a summons from a National Assembly committee. ||| He answered questions about three sets of allegations against him. ||| Conatel started proceedings against opposition-aligned Globovisión.
  

Jeremy Morgan | DJ Staff

Less than a week after the regional elections, the government quickly resumed its campaign of hostility against political foes and critics, not least of all opposition leader Manuel Rosales, the former Zulia state governor.
Rosales appeared Friday before the comptroller committee at the National Assembly (AN) to answer questions about three allegations of malpractice during his two terms as governor. Not allowed to run for governor three times running, Rosales stood for mayor of the state capital, Maracaibo, and won with a large majority.
The allegations centered on the Zulia state lottery, supposed illegal enrichment - there have been repeated allusions to private property Rosales supposedly purchased with public funds - and the "donation" in 2002 of a vehicle to Jesús Cubillán, now chief of the state police in Zulia. The committee quizzed Cubillán on Thursday.
AN Deputy Alberto Castellar of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which dominates the chamber, claims Cubillán sold the vehicle outside the terms of the rules. This suggests that Rosales was being held to account for the actions of somebody else.

The allegations centered on the Zulia state lottery, supposed illegal enrichment and the “donation” in 2002 of a vehicle to Jesús Cubillán, now chief of the state police in Zulia.

Rosales denies the charges and has yet to be brought before a court in connection with any of them. Earlier this month, he refused to answer a summons from the committee, saying it hadn't abided by procedural rules by demanding his presence within 24 hours instead of the stipulated 72. Rosales said he wasn't going to be "ambushed" in a "show" staged by government legislators.
During the hearing, there was an interjection by Deputy Juan José Molina, one of a handful of legislators from the social democratic party, Podemos, and as such one of the few opposition representatives in the chamber.
Molina said deputies were breaking the rules by taking too long over their questions and weren't getting to the point.
Ahead of his appearance on Friday, Rosales had insisted the hearings were to be held in public. With considerable patience, he responded to questions for some hours, saying that what was really afoot was an attempt to try people who disagreed with President Hugo Chávez' Bolivarian Revolution.
Rosales said he'd inherited the lottery in a bankrupt state from the previous governor, Francisco Arias Cárdenas - a former close associate of Chávez who ran against him for the presidency after the new Constitution was introduced in 2000, and then returned to the fold to become foreign minister. Rosales said he'd cleaned up the lottery and insisted that allegations of tax evasion were untrue.
Meanwhile, the National Telecommunications Commission, Conatel, launched an "administrative procedure" against Globovisión, the private channel that makes no secret of its dislike for Chávez. This prompted claims that the channel was about to lose its license.
The station is accused of inciting disorder by broadcasting statements by Fernando Salas Feo before the official results were in. Salas Feo was elected governor of Carabobo state with 47.72 percent of the vote against 44.29 percent for broadcaster Mario Silva of the PSUV. |||

||| economy. Changes possible next year, says minister

Budget Bill plows on

Jeremy Morgan | DJ Staff

The finance committee at the National Assembly (AN) has opened a second discussion of the government's budget legislation for 2009 in the expectation that the Bill will be voted through and ready for President Hugo Chávez' signature on or before Dec. 11 this year.
In the meantime, Finance Minister Alí Rodríguez Araque has said that he doesn't rule out the budget being "modified" during the course of next year. Economists have argued that the unraveling world financial crisis means that the budget has been badly overtaken by events, meaning it should be redrawn from the start all over again.
Rodríguez Araque's plan was based on the assumption that the price of Venezuela's mix of medium grade and heavy crude oil would average $60 a barrel.
But recent weeks have seen the price steadily slip to barely two-thirds of that, and analysts say state spending will have to be slashed to take account of that.
The minister argued that the law stipulated that budget legislation couldn't be changed by the government after it had been submitted to parliament.
However, critics claim this wouldn't apply if the budget was drastically overhauled during debate.
Rodríguez Araque said social spending wouldn't be affected. |||            

City life:
And not a drop to drink

Jeremy Morgan | DJ Staff

Bang slip in the middle of the rainy season in a country sitting on the biggest oil reserves in the Americas, caraqueños are having to make do without water and electricity.
Predictably, officials are blaming both outages on the weather in one way or another. Critics say the real root of the problem is years of negligence in which maintenance became, as one indignantly put it, "a theoretical concept rather than a practical necessity."
Estimates of the number of inhabitants affected by this latest absurdity of life in the capital start at about two million - roughly speaking, a third of the inhabitants. But anecdotal evidence suggests that problems are spreading and the figure is probably rather higher than that.
After two days of shortages in swathes of the capital, Hidronor, the water company, was supposed to get supplies back up by Thursday evening. Uh uh, this didn't happen.
It's not just poor districts up on the hillsides or down in the valley that are getting it in the neck as usual. The more prosperous districts such as Chacao and El Hatillo have been hit, too. Middle class people who pride themselves on being well-presented are beginning to pong a bit.
Problems took a turn for the worse when a landslide swept away a 40-meter stretch of an underground pipeline bringing water into the capital last Monday. The jury's out on whether the landslide was the result of torrential rain or work at a nearly building site.
Trying to get trucks to deliver drinking water has been a bit of a wash-out. The reason for this is as obvious as it's simple. There isn't water for them, either.
As to why the lights went out, the excuse is that the skies are at fault.

This seemed to overlook the uncomfortable fact that Venezuela, being a tropical country, might have gotten used to the heavens opening up from time to time.