President Chávez yesterday cautioned the military coup plotters in Honduras that something better not happen to the Venezuelan ambassador in Tegucigalpa or the Venezuelan embassy. Chávez has said that it would be "a declaration of war" and that Venezuela might be forced to send troops. "The FANB has already been put on alert," he said. "The military junta there would be entering a de facto state of war. We would have to take action, including military action. I could not do nothing knowing that they are attacking our ambassador." "You have to give a lesson to these guerrillas, these coup plotters," he said. President Chávez said that "they will overthrow" any president sworn in to replace Manuel Zelaya, who was taken out of the country on Sunday by the military, the day he was going to inquire about the possibility of running for reelection. "If Micheletti (Roberto Micheletti, president of the Congress of Honduras), or Peleletti or Gafetti or Goriletti are sworn in, they will be toppled. They will be toppled, I say," Chávez said in a televised speech.
The new president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti said he would "be glad" to receive deposed president Manuel Zelaya if he wants to return, but without the support of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. "I think that if he wants to return to the country (...) without the support of Hugo Chávez, we, with pleasure, will receive him with open arms," Micheletti said in a press conference, according to Efe. Chávez has expressed his support for Zelaya, who in 2008 Honduras joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an initiative of Chávez's which also includes Cuba, Nicaragua, Dominica and Ecuador, among others. Micheletti stressed that Zelaya was not overthrown by a coup, but was "replaced" by a procedure established by the Constitution.
Unofficial figures indicate that the headquarters of Legal Medicine of Caracas has admitted 425 corpses so far this month, mostly as a result of illicit activity, as well as other events such as traffic accidents and death from unknown reasons. It should be noted that from 6 p.m. on Friday until 6 p.m. on Saturday, the figure was eight deaths, and from Saturday to Sunday the number increased to 16, understanding that this number includes seven deaths from a traffic accident on Saturday in Caracas-Guarenas highway, where 22 others were injured.
"We have accumulated five million people for gunshot wounds from arms and violence," said Wiiliam Ojeda, National Vice-President for Social Affairs of A New Time, emphasizing the amount of gunshot wounds for each homicide in Venezuela during the past 15 years, according to United Nations statistics. Ojeda said that the request of the bureau to demand an emergency declaration due to security risks "is absolutely relevant" because it is the main problem for Venezuelan families. "When we talk about an declaration of a state of emergency, that means prioritizing all resources, be they logistical, human, technological, or financial for the purpose of addressing a problem that is of concern to society, but also because we have more than 150,000 murders in the last decade and half, we must also talk about 5 million injured by bullets."
President Chávez begins a visit to the Dominican Republic today, where he will attend the signing of the letter of intent to purchase 49 per cent of the shares of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery (Refidomsa) from Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA ). An official source said that Chavez will attend, together with the Dominican president, Leonel Fernández, the act of signing a letter of intent, the document that precedes the purchase agreement once all the technical details of the transaction are finalized. The Dominican Republic announced in the middle of this month that it reached an agreement with PDVSA to sell for a 49% stake in a petroleum refinery for $130 million worth of equity, while the Dominican State will retain a 51 percent majority that will allow it to maintain control of the company, which has a capacity of refining 34,000 barrels a day.
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