Hundreds of Venezuelan military officers are no longer assigned duties and have been relegated to their homes, quietly pushed aside for their dissent under Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, former military commanders and a watchdog group said.
They say the officers have been sidelined for objecting to Chavez’s socialist ideology, his push to form civilian militias and his ambiguous stance toward Colombia’s leftist rebels.
Dissident army General Angel Vivas Perdomo says he sought to defend the military’s apolitical tradition when he asked the Supreme Court to toss out Chavez’s order for troops to salute with the motto: “fatherland, socialism or death — we will triumph.”
“It’s a motto from Fidel [Castro] in Cuba that, on top of being unconstitutional, is absolutely undemocratic,” Vivas Perdomo said in his first interview since challenging the motto in court last month.
He said the motto, previously used by 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, San Miguel said, adding that the information comes from active officers.
She said those cases combined represent nearly one-seventh of the Venezuelan military’s 14,900 officers, pointing to significant divisions. Some dissident officers have reported being blocked from entering bases, she said.
Speaking to troops on Tuesday, Chavez denied accounts of military divisions, saying “in the armed forces today, the people have a solid patriotic column — a revolutionary, socialist column.”
Chavez, whose government has benefited from rising oil profits, has granted the military substantial pay raises and has spent billions of dollars buying Russian-made fighter jets, helicopters and assault rifles.
But a Defense Ministry spokeswoman and a top military aide would not respond to accounts of dissident officers being relieved of their duties, despite repeated requests from reporters.
One former defense minister, retired General Raul Isaias Baduel, said there is increasing concern among officers and within the ranks about “how far [Chavez’s] personal effort to stay in power will take the country.”
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