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CARACAS, Jan 18: Venezuelan troops seized control of a local bottling affiliate of Coca-Cola Co. on Friday as President Hugo Chavez made good on his threat to get tough with a six-week opposition strike that has disrupted domestic fuel and food supplies.
National Guard troops wielding metal batons and firing tear gas dispersed a small group of protesters who tried to block the entrance to Venezuela’s largest bottling plant — Panamco’s water and soft drink facility — in Valencia, about 160kms west of Caracas.
Troops later forced their way into a warehouse of the beer and food maker Empresas Polar, Venezuela’s largest private company, after forcing managers out into the street.
The measures were the first major action against food and beverage plants after Chavez threatened to ease shortages by sending troops to seize manufacturing facilities withholding products during the strike that aims to force him to resign.
The move against private property rattled opposition leaders who accuse the leftist leader of ruling like a dictator and fear he wants to install Cuba-style communism in Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter.
“We are distributing this product to the population because collective rights come above individual rights,” National Guard Gen. Luis Felipe Acosta Carles said.
Outraged opposition leaders said the takeover was illegal.
The opposition strike, started on Dec. 2, has cut off Venezuela’s economic lifeline by slashing its vital oil exports to a fifth of normal levels, rattling global markets and causing long lines for scarce gasoline supplies.
Strike leaders, including political parties, unions, business groups and rebel managers at state oil firm PDVSA, have vowed to strike until Chavez quits and stages elections.
Fear of war in Iraq and the Venezuelan crisis pushed U.S. oil futures to $33.87 a barrel, around recent two-year highs. Venezuela’s bolivar currency, battered by economic uncertainty, dipped 2.3 percent as it extended its slide.
In a “state of the nation” speech on Friday at the National Assembly, Chavez denounced his foes and kept up his staunch rejection of their calls for early elections.
“What you have here is a democratic government fighting fascists, terrorists and coup-mongers,” Chavez said. “There can be no dialogue and there will be no dialogue.”
Chavez, who survived a coup in April, has ordered the military to take over oil installations as he fights to defeat the shutdown. He has also threatened to take over schools, banks and factories that join the protest, which he says is an illegal attempt to oust him.
Chavez’s tough comments came one day after he met with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York for talks on breaking the deadlock. A group of six nations, including the United States and Brazil, agreed on Wednesday to back negotiations.
Chavez was due to travel to Brazil later on Friday for a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who first proposed the so-called “group of friends” initiative.
COCA-COLA, RAMBO AND COUP PLOTS: Local television images of the Panamco plant showed troops standing inside warehouses filled with crates of bottled products. Acosta, a staunch Chavez ally dubbed “Rambo” by the local media, said he was carrying out the president’s orders. There were no immediate reports of damage to the plant.
“What I see here is hoarding and we are going to move these products,” said Acosta, after swigging from a bottle of malt drink and burping loudly at television cameras.
Chavez last week called Venezuelan tycoon Gustavo Cisneros, who is based in the United States and listed as a member of Panamco’s board of directors, a coup-plotter.
Miami-based Panamco, or Panamerican Beverages Inc., is Latin America’s largest soft drink bottler and one of the world’s three largest bottlers of Coca-Cola. The Valencia plant distributes to about 30 percent of the Venezuelan market.
Rodrigo Calderon, a spokesman in Mexico for Coca-Cola Latin America, said the plant had been closed since Dec. 1 due to security concerns and gasoline shortages. “There is no agreement specifically that they can take the products and the trucks. We are analyzing the situation at our plants in Venezuela,” Calderon told Reuters by telephone.
US ambassador Charles Shapiro told Venevision he was “concerned and disappointed” at the move at the Coca-Cola plant in Valencia.
Organization of American States General Secretary Cesar Gaviria said that he would suspend his efforts at brokering talks because of the heightened tensions in the wake of Friday’s seizures.
Gaviria has been attempting to bring the two sides together since Chavez was briefly ousted in an April coup.
Chavez said the government was preparing legal action against two television channels he accused of taking part in plotting “a coup.” The authorities did not name the channels.—Reuters
