Legislators Present Evidence that Politicians Are Behind Venezuelan Student Protests

Friday, Jun 01, 2007
By: Venezuelanalysis.com

Caracas, June 1, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com)— Leaders from the opposition political parties in Venezuela are the real actors behind the student protests in Venezuela, according to several Venezuelan National Assembly Members who released evidence yesterday. The Assembly members released recorded telephone conversations of some opposition leaders apparently showing their involvement in what they call "a conspiracy plan to overthrow the president of the Republic, Hugo Chavez."

At a press conference yesterday, vice president of the Assembly Desiree Santos Amaral, together with Assembly members Gabriela Ramirez and Calixto Ortega, assured that the student protests in Venezuela over the last few days "are not spontaneous," but are rather a part of a plan to provoke violence.

The Assembly members released two different recorded phone calls in which a leader of the opposition party Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT), Alfonso Marquina, and his wife Tibisay converse about the protests and the necessity for them to continue but without the appearance of any political leaders in order to preserve their supposed spontaneity.

Marquina gets angry in one of the recordings because of the repeated appearance of political leaders in the protests, in particular the mayor of Chacao. Apparently the mayor of Chacao, Leopoldo Lopez, had mentioned the support for the student protests on the part of the political parties. Marquina says this will "mess it up", and prefers to leave the students "in their natural state."

"We decided, the politicians, to not get involved, let's leave the students in their natural state. We sent them support," said Marquina, but "We can't appear there," he concluded.

In another recording, Marquina's wife, Tibisay, apparently converses with an advisor to Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) about the necessity for the party Un Nuevo Tiempo to assume a greater role in the protests in order to reduce the distrust of the party and to reduce the leadership of Oscar Perez, leader of the more radical Comando Nacional de la Resistencia.

Tibisay assures the person from RCTV that her husband Alfonso has been organizing street protests all over the country with "AD youth" that "adore him," but that he does not want to play an open role so that the public believes that the protests are spontaneous.

"The truth is that Alfonso hasn't been detached (from the student protests), its that he hasn't known how to be involved," says Tibisay, explaining the absence of Marquina in the protests.

The three Assembly members say that the recordings are evidence that the student protests are directed by sectors that are adverse to the government. They assured that the protests are media-directed by the opposition and that they have the ultimate objective of producing "a death" so that they can "put in march a chain reaction that will create the conditions for another coup attempt like the one in April 2002"

The Assembly members singled out Oscar Perez, of Comando Nacional de la Resistencia, as one of the leaders promoting violence, along with Carlos Granier (son of Marcel Granier, president of RCTV) and the Organization of Venezuelans in Exile (Orvex). They said these individuals, and other politicians of the right who are funded by the US State Department, are behind a plan of which they will present evidence.

"They are behind the students, they are trying to provoke a death and we have a series of evidence that demonstrates that they want to do the same thing that they did on April 11th [2002]," said Assembly member Santos Amaral. "A conspiracy plan that has the objective of carrying out day-to-day actions to destabilize and overthrow the constitutional government of Venezuela."

Marquina, however, denied the allegations in an interview with private news network Globovision and student leaders have said they receive no direction from the political opposition.