Chavez criminalizes opposition to his thugocracy

Jackson Diehl:

Hugo Chavez, who is up for reelection as Venezuelan president this year, kicked off his new campaign with an old tactic: criminal trials of his leading opponents. For years Latin America's would-be socialist revolutionary has been nursing along prosecutions of politicians, human rights activists, labor leaders, journalists and election monitors. Some have ended in prison sentences, but many have not: Instead, Chavez toys with his targets, holding the threat of jail over their heads while avoiding the embarrassment it would create for his apologists in Washington and Europe.

Now, with a vote on his tenure coming up, the president's prosecutors are back. First up in court was the election-monitoring group Sumate, which has meticulously documented Chavez's manipulation of the electoral system. The caudillo ordered up the trial of its top leaders on treason charges during his weekly television show two years ago; Maria Corina Machado and Alejandro Plaz have been in and out of court every few months since. Their case reappeared early this year, and by mid-February they were preparing for a judge to rule on their imprisonment. Then European Union ambassadors advised Chavez's Foreign Ministry that they planned to attend and monitor the court session. The case was abruptly dismissed and sent to another court, where it is once again pending.

Next comes Henrique Capriles Radonski, a popular young opposition mayor in Caracas and the leader of the only political party to nominate a candidate against Chavez. Like Sumate's leaders, Capriles was first charged in 2004; like them he has seen the case against him discredited and thrown out by appeals courts, only to reappear as Chavez tightened his control over the judiciary. His trial is now due to begin by early May.

But unlike Sumate's Machado, Capriles isn't well known outside Venezuela. He hasn't been received by President Bush. He has already spent three months in jail, in 2004. And he thinks the Cuban ambassador -- delegate of Chavez's closest ally -- is demanding that he be sentenced to prison.

So Capriles, a slim, handsome and fast-talking pol, was in Washington late last month to drum up interest in his case. In the perverted logic of Chavez's court system, what now matters is not evidence or law but international exposure. "I want to get every NGO and human rights group to send someone to my trial," Capriles told me. "I want journalists, I want television. I want to fill every seat in the courtroom. That's my only guarantee of justice."

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