Moontown

The marches were the first since Chavez sharply devalued the bolivar currency and deployed soldiers to stop retailers hiking prices and the start of water rationing and electricity outages stemming from a drought that has drained dams.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as he gestures during a rally to commemorate the 52nd anniversary of the end of the dictatorship (1948-1958) of Marcos Perez Jimenez in Caracas. AFP PHOTO

They come as the country gears up for heavy campaigning for legislative elections in which Chavez faces losing his near-total control over the OPEC nation’s Congress.

“This march shows we are tired of bad management by the government,” said Erik Marteau, 26, a businessman. “This country is filled with riches but bad administration has left us with corruption and waste.”

A group of thousands of opposition sympathizers marched toward the Caracas slum of Petare, once a stronghold of Chavez support where an opposition mayor took power in 2008.

One demonstrator carried a sign saying: “If they take your water and they take your electricity, they take your life.”

Chavez launched four-hour blackouts in Caracas in an effort to save power but quickly scrapped them after his supporters protested, though many in the capital and around the country still complain of patchy access to power.

Facing financial pressure from falling oil prices, Chavez devalued the bolivar currency by as much as 50 percent in a two-tiered system that was praised by Wall St. for easing some economic distortions — but also risks worsening inflation.

The marches officially commemorate the anniversary of the 1958 collapse of Venezuela’s last dictatorship, but the festive spirit of the demonstrations has been overshadowed by the partisan politics of a polarized society under Chavez.

On the other side of town, Chavez rode in caravan through a sea of thousands of supporters dressed in signature red T-shirts and dancing to salsa tunes honoring the anti-US stalwart’s self-styled socialist revolution.

“Tremble, you oligarchs — this is the joy of the patriotic revolution,” Chavez thundered from a stage downtown. “The streets no longer belong to the oligarchs.”

Chavez still commands strong support within the country’s sprawling shanty-towns and in isolated rural hamlets where millions have benefited from oil-financed health and education initiatives.

“Chavez is the leader who defends our democracy and helps us participate in all the decisions that help the people,” said Maberlyn Duran, a housewife who participates in a social program for poor mothers that Chavez created.

He also has strong control over key state institutions including state oil company PDVSA and the judicial system.

Chavez took complete control over the legislature in 2005 after opposition candidates boycotted the elections, giving him effectively a rubber stamp Congress for laws that including a strong bill that makes it easier to nationalize businesses.

This would make it more difficult for him to win Congressional approval to pass laws via decree, a tactic he has used to advance his most aggressive legal overhauls. (Caribnet)

The left-wing foe of Washington has accused the United States of using the earthquake in Haiti as a pretext for an “imperial occupation” of the devastated Caribbean nation.

“Obama, send vaccinations, kid, send vaccinations,” Chavez said during his weekly broadcast. “Each soldier that you send there should carry a medical kit instead of hand grenades and machine guns.”

A contingent of 13,000 US troops is helping relief efforts after the Jan. 12, magnitude-7 quake killed up to 200,000 people and left up to 3 million people hurt or homeless and clamoring for medical assistance, food and water.

Chavez called into doubt the effectiveness of a US hospital boat sent as part of the relief effort, saying American doctors had been unable to find patients and had to request referrals from Cuban and Venezuelan doctors.

“Why? Because they don’t push their way through the debris, they don’t go into the slums, where the bodies are,” he said.

“It’s because they’re afraid. Our (doctors) aren’t afraid.

Venezuelan government television networks have focused their Haiti coverage nearly exclusively on the US military presence there.

One broadcast on Saturday showed footage of soldiers, saying they were American troops surrounding the Venezuelan Embassy in Port-au-Prince.

The quake struck at 5:43 p.m. EST/2243 GMT at a distance of 21 miles (34 km) east-north-east of Grand-Bourg, Guadeloupe, the USGS said.

There were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami warning.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) – It’s not immediately clear where the crowd gathered in prayer ends and where the refugee encampment begins, as one group of listless, traumatised people bleeds into another.

With a symbol of state strength, Haiti’s once magnificent National Palace, lying in ruins behind them, thousands left homeless by the devastating quake pin their hopes of salvation on God rather than on the works of man.

A woman prays during the funeral service for Haitian Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot who was killed in last week’s devastating earthquake outside Notre Dame d’Assumption Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. AFP PHOTO

The reading is Psalm 102, and the reader has a high, clear voice, sometimes distorted by feedback through the massive rock concert-size speakers.

“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee,” she declares. “Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me: in the day when I call answer me speedily.”

Worshippers in the crowd follow the text with their fingers in battered copies of the Bible salvaged from their demolished homes. In a break in the text their wavering voices sing along with a Misericordia prayer.

“For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth,” the Psalm continues. “My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.”

“For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,” runs the reading. “Because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down.”

Many Haitians were cast down on January 12, when a 7.0-magnitude quake tore into the capital and surrounding region, burying at least 112,000 people in the ruins of their shops and homes and leaving a million homeless.

Now the survivors are looking for sense among the senseless waste. A queue of them waits by the side of the stage as the reading continues.

One by one they take the microphone and loudly confess their sins and those of their people, begging the forgiveness of a God they can only suppose to have been so angered by Haitians that his wrath felled them in their thousands.

“My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass,” the reader continues, her voice tireless. “But thou, O Lord, shall endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.”

“He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord.”

Not everyone in the crowd has come to pray, some are just bored by life in the tents and makeshift bivouacs carpeting the surrounding ceremonial square. others are here to do what business they can to survive.

A haggard-looking woman hawks a neat pile of freshly cleaned and pressed face towels. One optimist has erected a stall selling souvenir key rings with the Haitian flags and arm bands celebrating US President Barack Obama.

Elsewhere, family life continues. One woman huddles in a tiny patch of shade, breast-feeding an infant. Small boys wash in a bucket of soapy water while nearby their playmates fly kites made of wire and plastic waste.

Stands sell short sticks of sugar cane and small oily pastries.

Two young men unload French-language textbooks from a sack to sell on the kerbside. The cover boasts that readers will become fluent after a few easy lessons, but the salesmen themselves struggle to express themselves.

“What do I think of what happened? I don’t think anything about it.”

Across the road, marshalled by police with pump-action shotguns, a large but orderly and calm crowd presses around the door of a newly reopened bank, hoping to access cash, hoping that relatives abroad have sent donations.

“The cause of the quake was natural, but in what other country would it have had such an effect?” asks 33-year-old security guard Mercelus Luckner, fearful that he is unemployed after finding his firm’s offices in ruins.

“Haitians have made many mistakes. They offended God. God is punishing us,” he reasons, holding on to a vague hope that one of the foreign aid workers arriving in the city will pluck him from the crowd and offer him a job.

The Psalm ends: “Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure:”

CCN senior journalist Andy Johnson

CCN senior journalist Andy Johnson remained with a contingent from the Jamaica Defence Force in Haiti last week. In part two of a series on his journey into Haiti, he continues to describe the problems encountered by the Caricom initiative to bring relief supplies to earthquake victims last week.

During a period (last week) a total of two pallets of relief supplied by Caricom had made it to the JDF base at the airport.

Unable to camouflage his sense of frustration, Major Jamie Ogilvie, Commanding Officer of the JDF forces in Haiti, told a TVJ reporter on Friday that indeed significant amounts of ’productive man hours had been wasted’ in the process.

By Friday as well, a supporting contingent of health professionals from the Jamaica Ministry of Health had reached 24.

A half-dozen firefighters, including search and rescue officers, also complemented this team.

SHOTGUN WOUNDS: A US Army soldier from the 82nd Airborne helps a man with shotgun wounds to the head during patrols in Port-au-Prince yesterday. The soldiers found the man at the scene in a wheelbarrow, after he was shot while allegedly looting items from the roof of a damaged store downtown. -Photo: AP

Their work had also been severely hampered by a lack of vehicles on the ground.

The medical team, led by orthopaedic surgeon Dr Derrick McDowell, had been going to communities on the outskirts of the city.

They were encountering people who had either not had any medical attention to the injuries they suffered during the earthquake, or such attention had been inadequate.

They were performing amputations where limbs had become infected and gangrenous, sufficient to be life-threatening. In a few cases, they felt lucky enough to have performed reconstructive surgeries, thereby avoiding the need for amputations.

It became clear that the medical supplies made available for this mission were of a volume that the Ministry of Health in Kingston could ill-afford to spare.

One member of the team spent the better part of two days just taking stock of what had been donated.

She misplaced her list on Thursday and could not therefore provide a reliable estimate of the volume.

In one community on Tuesday, the medical team had seen some 45 people, dressing wounds and otherwise attending to critical injuries.

Many of them had not seen a doctor since they suffered those injuries seven days earlier.

The soldiers had finished handing out hundreds of five-litre bottles of water, several dozen boxes of corned beef, sardines and biscuits.

By Thursday, however, Dr McDowell was begging the Major to do what he could to get vehicles so he could effectively deploy his teams.

He had told me the previous day his team had ’resuscitated’ four existing hospitals, and established eight other ’field’ hospitals.

Communications and coordination lapses also hampered the Jamaican relief and assistance efforts.

In one instance, a convoy of soldiers was despatched to the Haitian border with the Dominican Republic to provide security for a cargo of supplies.

By the time the convoy got to the border, however, it discovered that five of the six trucks the soldiers were expected to protect had passed them on the way, along the 90-minute drive.

They had to hustle back to play catch-up.

This mission was on behalf of the international charity Food for the Poor, which has long-standing presence in Haiti. One detachment of the JDF team is located on the Food for the Poor compound.

By Friday also, word was spreading among the soldiers that a contingent was coming from elsewhere in the region to join them.

Thirty of them, from Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.

It turned out such word had been around since Wednesday. (Trinidad Express)

Aretha Welch awelch@trinidadexpress.com

Prime Minister Patrick Manning assured PNM supporters that unlike the Opposition UNC his party will never ’air its dirty laundry in public’ as the UNC held its internal elections yesterday.

Manning said he was not in the practice of commenting on the internal affairs of other political parties, but noted that the Opposition put itself in a place where it made it the norm to wash dirty laundry in public, but then UNC members expected the people of the country to turn around and vote them into government.

He said there were commentators who said too much personal information on Opposition candidates was being offered to the public during the lead up to yesterday’s UNC elections.

He asked: ’So if we know someone drinks, do we not have a right to know?’

Manning said it has been the discipline of the PNM that has kept it as the top political party in the land for over five decades.

Manning was speaking at the PNM’s 54th anniversary celebrations and thanksgiving at Balisier House in Port of Spain.

He said his government did not fear any elections as he knew from past experience that it never took long for the people of Trinidad and Tobago’s faith in the PNM to be restored. (Trinidad Express)

Carolyn Kissoon and Richard Charan

ROUGH WELCOME: Basdeo Panday, left, is heckled yesterday after casting his vote at Chandernagore Presbyterian School, Chase Village, Chaguanas. -Photo: DEXTER PHILIP

Candidate Basdeo Panday suffered the election day embarrassment of being booed and jeered as he left the Chandernagore Presbyterian School yesterday after voting for himself and his slate.

His wife, Oma, who never left the vehicle, was called a derogatory name.

Several men chased after Panday’s vehicle as he left.

They exchanged words with him.

’You shouldn’t come here!’ the men shouted.

Even after Panday left, several anti-Panday activists shouted that they would set fire to the UNC’s Rienzi Complex, Couva, headquarters.

The tirade was heard and seen by people waiting in line to vote at the Chase Village, Chaguanas, school.

The polling station at the school was for eligible voters living in Panday’s constituency of Couva North.

Another polling station for all eligible voters living in the Princes Town North constituency of Subhas Panday was located at the St Julien Presbyterian Primary School in the village of Panday’s birth.

Some 900 people were on the list to vote there, and many who voted said they knew Basdeo Panday personally, loved him, but voted for someone else.

Several were not on the list of voters.

They were told to go to the next constituency polling station.

The names of others were misspelt but they were allowed to vote.

Panday said yesterday that he would accept the results of the party’s internal elections and work with whomever was elected to form the new national executive of the United National Congress.

’I will not allow the party to crumble. I have given 20 years of my blood, sweat and tears to this party… I will accept the democratic process and I will be willing to work with anyone,’ he said.

And whatever the outcome, he was still Leader of the Opposition and Member of Parliament for Couva North, Panday said.

Should Persad-Bissessar win, her supporters insist she must be the Opposition Leader.

When Panday came to the polling station, he was not accompanied by his wife as in previous elections.

He was greeted by several supporters, including deputy mayor of Chaguanas, Orlando Nagessar.

But as he was about to leave the compound, Panday was booed and jeered by men who said they were UNC members.

They told Panday he was unfit to lead the party.

Panday was eventually escorted to his vehicle by two security guards who were stationed at the polling station.

And even as the car was about to leave, the men hurled insults at Panday and his wife.

They shouted that he would never be leader of the UNC.

Panday did not respond. He simply smiled and waved at the mob.

He said several people who turned up to vote at various polling stations found that their names were not on the list and the majority of the omitted names were supporting his slate.

’But the person who was responsible for the list before was very incompetent. I don’t want to call that person’s name because it would jeopardise her job but she went on sick leave the moment the election was called,’ he said.

He said Couva South MP Kelvin Ramnath, the chairman of the UNC’s membership committee, should not be blamed for the ’hiccups’.

Panday said he did not know how the membership committee intends to deal with the 1,400 Congress of the People members whose names turned up on the voting list.

He alleged that there were some COP members who voted in yesterday’s elections. (Trinidad Express)