Chávez Seeks Tighter Grip on Military
LOS TEQUES, Venezuela  — They say prison life can be lonely, but not for Raúl Isaías Baduel,  Venezuela’s former army chief and once one of President Hugo  Chávez’s confidants, who was detained last month.  Among his cellmates in the Ramo Verde military prison here are a former  admiral, Carlos Millán, and Wilfredo Barroso, a onetime general arrested along  with Mr. Millán on charges of conspiring to oust Mr. Chávez. Since February, Mr. Chávez has moved against a wide range of domestic  critics, and his efforts in recent weeks to strengthen his grip on the armed  forces have led to high-profile arrests and a wave of reassignments.  These are seen here as part of a larger effort by Mr. Chávez to cement  loyalty in the military, where some officers are growing resentful at what they  see as his micromanagement and politicizing of a proud and relatively  independent institution. “Chávez does not have the support he thinks he has in the armed forces,” Mr.  Baduel, 53, said in an interview in the cell that has become his home since  agents from the military intelligence service arrested him, shoving him into a  vehicle and holding a pistol to his temple. In March, Mr. Chávez replaced the chiefs of the army, the air force and the  Bolivarian Militia, a Cuban-inspired reserve force created to repel what Mr.  Chávez repeatedly raises as the threat of an invasion by the United States. During the same wave of dismissals, Mr. Chávez also cashiered his defense  minister, Gen. Gustavo Rangel Briceño. On Thursday night, intelligence agents  detained another former officer, Otto Gebauer, a retired captain who was ordered  to hold Mr. Chávez during a brief coup in April 2002. Mr. Gebauer, who had  angered Mr. Chávez by saying the president cried during the 48-hour coup, was  accused of violating the terms of his house arrest, his wife said. The authority of as many as 800 military officers was stripped  away last year after doubts surfaced over their loyalty to Mr. Chávez,  according to news reports. The officers were said to have been angered by  favoritism shown to pro-Chávez officers, as well as by revelations of the  military’s close  ties to leftist Colombian guerrillas and by infiltration of the military by  Cuban  intelligence, civilian experts on Venezuela’s military said.  In recent months, the crackdown has been extended to the civilian arena.  Manuel Rosales, the president’s opponent in the 2006 elections, sought asylum in  Peru after being faced with corruption charges, and Mr. Chávez handpicked  a new mayor for Caracas after legislators eliminated most of the budget of the  elected mayor, Antonio Ledezma.  The government even singled out smaller targets, like an outspoken biologist  critical of Mr. Chávez who was fired from his tenured post at the Institute of  Advanced Studies, a state-run scientific research group.  Mr. Chávez has asked officials to investigate  Globovisión, a television news network that is often critical of him, over  claims of disrupting public order that the station’s owner calls baseless. The  National Assembly is considering giving Mr. Chávez’s government control  over financing for nongovernment organizations.  The arrest of Mr. Baduel is a reflection of how much has changed in  Venezuela, especially since oil prices plunged last summer. A few years ago, a  rift between Mr. Chávez and him would have seemed unimaginable.  Mr. Baduel was long a member with Mr. Chávez of a secret cell of leftist  officers that conspired to seize power. A coup failed in 1992 but thrust Mr.  Chávez, then a lieutenant colonel, into the spotlight. In 2002, Mr. Baduel led a  paratrooper operation that returned the elected Mr. Chávez to power after the  April coup.  But after retiring as defense minister, Mr. Baduel broke with Mr. Chávez in  2007. He publicly criticized the president’s proposal to overhaul the  Constitution and transform Venezuela into a socialist state with greatly  expanded presidential authority. The measure was rejected by voters in December  2007, and Mr. Baduel emerged as a prominent voice of dissent.  Then, as often happens with Mr. Chávez’s critics, Mr. Baduel found himself  under the scrutiny of the justice system. A military prosecutor said he was  responsible for about $14 million that disappeared during his tenure as defense  minister, and the military intelligence directorate sent agents to follow his  every move. Mr. Baduel says he is innocent.  His protestations are echoed by his fellow inmates at the Ramo Verde prison,  in this city on the outskirts of Caracas. “The plot is a concoction, an amateurish fable,” said Mr. Millán, the former  admiral. He questioned why he and Mr. Barroso were still detained when no proof  of the supposed conspiracy had surfaced beyond crackling taped phone  conversations played on state television that were attributed to him and others.   Mr. Millán, who was detained in September, and Mr. Baduel said they had been  denied their due-process rights in a “witch hunt” among former officers.  Whether or not the charges are false, reports of quiet discontent within the  military seem to be well founded. There is resentment over a policy shift that  speeds promotions of pro-Chávez noncommissioned officers, over a decline in  bonus pay for soldiers as oil revenues fell and over Mr. Chávez’s order that  soldiers use the Cuban-style pledge, “Fatherland, socialism or death,” according  to active and retired officers.  “On the one hand we have officers who believe in the military’s institutional  independence, and on the other the Praetorians who prop up the government,” said  Hernán Castillo, a political scientist at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas.   Mr. Baduel is believed to wield influence among the non-Praetorians. Asked  about the possibility that such discontent could foster an armed conspiracy  against the government, as has happened at least three times in the past two  decades, Mr. Baduel demurred.  “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence,” said Mr.  Baduel, quoting from Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military strategist. “I was  trained for decades in the administration of violence, but I personally think  that violence is not the answer to our dilemma.”  Instead, Mr. Baduel suggests convening an assembly to rewrite Venezuela’s  Constitution as a step toward reintroducing checks on Mr. Chávez’s power.  Meanwhile, the armed forces seem increasingly weakened and divided as they  come further under Mr. Chávez’s thumb.  Notwithstanding the quiet deference to Mr. Baduel by his military jailers, he  says he has no option but to wait. He has a routine. He prays each morning. He  meditates after reading from “Tao Te Ching,” Lao Tzu’s Chinese text. And bides  his time.  “I won’t leave this prison,” Mr. Baduel said, “until Chávez leaves the  presidency of Venezuela.”  (The New York Times. María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting from Caracas,  Venezuela)