Venezuela: Chavez Eliminating Dissent in Military

 It will not be long before Chavez eliminates any military opposition and pulls a Mugabe. The same people who thought Mugabe was the answer for Zimbabwe are insisting that Chavez is a new kind of Marxist. He will consolidate power and disarm his people just like his mentor Fidel has taught him. Without the military control Chavez can not come out of the closet as what he is, a Marxist who is a carbon copy of his father Fidel…mpress

CARACAS –MH

Hundreds of Venezuelan military officers are no longer assigned duties and have been relegated to their homes, quietly pushed aside for their dissent under President Hugo Chávez, according to former military commanders and a watchdog group.They say the officers have been sidelined for objecting to Chávez’s socialist ideology, his push to form civilian militias and his ambiguous stance toward Colombia’s leftist rebels.

Dissident army Gen. Angel Vivas Perdomo says he sought to defend the military’s apolitical tradition when he asked the Supreme Court to toss out Chávez’s order for troops to salute with the motto: “fatherland, socialism or death — we will triumph.”

”It’s a motto from Fidel in Cuba that, on top of being unconstitutional, is absolutely undemocratic,” Vivas Perdomo told The Associated Press in his first interview since challenging the motto in court in May.

He said the motto, previously used by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, “takes away the right of every Venezuelan citizen to think differently and to disagree with socialism.”

About 800 officers are without formal duties because of their dissent, and many of them wait out their days at home, said Rocio San Miguel, who heads Citizen Control for Security, a nonprofit group that monitors public security issues.

Many of the 1,200 officers who have requested early retirement are also unhappy about the current state of the military, according to San Miguel, who says the information comes from active officers. That motto is pretty eye opening…mpress