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(And he slays that little worm. Enjoy!) ----- Fighting Corruption or Persecuting Political Opponents in Venezuela? A Response to the New York Times
By JAMES SUGGETT - VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM, April 13th 2010
As Venezuela heads toward its fifteenth internationally monitored election in ten years<1>, the international media assault against the democratically-elected Chavez government is intensifying. On April 3rd, New York Times correspondent Simon Romero lent a hand to Venezuela’s elite, neo-liberal opposition (LINK) by warping positive news about the government’s anti-corruption efforts into a profoundly biased diatribe about supposed political persecution.
With scant reference to several very relevant facts, Romero suggested that Chavez puppeteered an arbitrary arrest of Judge María Lourdes Afiuni merely for having displeased the president, and that this is part of Chavez’s effort to take control of the judiciary and silence dissent.<2>
When considered even-handedly, the arrest of Judge Afiuni for illegally allowing a wealthy banker to be released from custody and thus flee the country reflects the government’s efforts to establish the rule of law in the historically corrupt banking sector and justice system. It also brings to light deep-rooted problems in Venezuela’s judiciary, indicating that there is much more to be done to fully correct these problems.
What Occurred?
Here’s what happened: In 2007, Venezuelan authorities arrested Eligio Cedeño, the former president of two banks, on the charge of stealing $27 million from the state’s foreign currency administrative agency, CADIVI, through a false import contract.
Last December, the government stepped up its investigations of corruption in the banking sector, leading to the arrest of 10 bankers for fraud and the liquidation or nationalization of eight banks that had violated national banking laws – including both of Cedeño’s former banks, Banco Canarias and Banco Bolivar. Three bank executives fled the country to avoid charges, so the government placed temporary international travel prohibitions and seized the assets of nearly thirty other bankers who were under investigation.<3>
In the middle of all of this, on December 10th, Judge Afiuni changed the conditions of Cedeño’s arrest warrant to allow him to be freed from custody. More importantly, she did so in an unannounced hearing without notifying the prosecution from the Attorney General’s office, in violation of the penal procedural code. Cedeño was released from custody and, days later, he turned up in Miami, where he was detained by U.S. immigration authorities for illegally entering the country.<4>
Had Afiuni’s only infraction been a faulty judicial procedure, then she would not have been arrested. Rather, she would have been disciplined by the Supreme Court according to its own code of conduct, a procedure mandated by the 1999 Constitution in order to assure the independence of the Judicial Branch. However, there was evidence that Afiuni had conspired to help Cedeño avoid facing the charges amidst the escalating fraud scandal in which he was implicated. So, national prosecutors brought charges against Afiuni for conspiracy, which warranted her arrest.<5>
It is important to point out that neither Judge Afiuni nor Eligio Cedeño were campaigning against or criticizing the government. Those who spin the issue as the silencing of government critics are wrong and guilty of deliberately misleading the public. The judge and banker were arrested for corruption and fraud, respectively, and they will go to trial like other citizens.
It is very hypocritical for the same media outlets who say there are political prisoners whenever the government takes effective measures against corruption and crime to also condemn the government for not doing enough about corruption and crime, depending on which critique is most convenient at any given time.(SNIP) In his April 3rd article for the New York Times, Romero manipulated and distorted the facts about Afiuni’s case to fit the Times’s agenda of impeding honest news and discussion about Venezuela, driving forward the informational sabotage against the Chavez government that is widespread in the mainstream international media.
Romero asserted that Judge Afiuni and Eligio Cedeño were political prisoners. This is clearly inaccurate, especially since no evidence was presented that they were politically active. His piece also implied, by omission of sufficient context, that the Chavez government is the primary cause of the problems in the judicial system. This is also inaccurate and disingenuous. Romero even went so far as to implicitly compare Afiuni to the Dalai Lama at the end of his article, confirming the Times’s lack of seriousness when addressing these issues.(MORE) http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5275---------------------------------------- "... confirming the Times’s lack of seriousness when addressing these issues." Or, you could just call them the New York Slimes, as I do. |
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