Jim McIlroy & Coral Wynter, Caracas
Venezuelan right-wing parties Accion Democratica, Primero Justicia and Sumate are "up to their neck" in planning for a transport strike that will use as a pretext the increase in crimes that are affecting the country's transport industry, according to workers in the urban transport sector, reported in the March 22 Diario Vea newspaper.
The report added that leaders of the three parties are travelling from one region to another trying to bring to a head problems in the transport industry, with the aim of provoking an atmosphere of crisis on a national scale. The report said that "political observers confirm that a transport strike would reinforce the strategy of the right-wing opposition to attempt to sabotage the [December 3] presidential elections by abstentionism, with an obvious link to the politics of the coup-plotters".
In various rural cities, the rightists are holding meetings to plan a national transport strike, supposedly motivated by the insecurity facing bus and taxi drivers, but in reality part of a scheme inspired by the US State Department to undermine the functioning of Venezuelan society. As an example of the problems facing the transport sector, in the city of Cumana, various taxi and bus drivers have stuck to their windscreens a sticker saying "Zero tolerance. Insecurity."
"All of this calls attention to the need to be alert to any new attempt at insurrection", the Diario Vea report concluded.
From Green Left Weekly, March 29, 2006.
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