By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS – President Hugo Chávez’s directly appointed rather than elected “head of government” in this capital, Jacqueline Faría, transferred BsF26 million to the rival authority led by Opposition Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma, who went on hunger strike for six days this week to pressure her into handing over the funds.

The money amounted to only half the BsF52 million Ledezma said he needed to cover two months of arrears owed to employees on the Metropolitan payroll. Faría did not explain why she hadn’t paid the amount in full, and neither did she clarify when or whether the rest would follow.

Instead, Faría claimed that the handover had been delayed because Ledezma – who won office at the elections in November last year – hadn’t given her the list of municipal workers and what they were owed.

She also said Ledezma had to pay people who were on the payroll as of the beginning of this year, rather than staff hired since then. Pay packets would have to include tax deductions for 2008, she added.

Ledezma – who’d consistently insisted that the money was due his Metropolitan authority under the constitution and the law – launched into his hunger strike on Friday last week, and chose to do so at the Caracas office of the Organization of American States (OAS).

He ended the hunger strike last Wednesday having achieved his objectives. Apart from forcing Faría’s hand over the money, Ledezma also had another target in going on the high-profile fast.

This was to nudge OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza into publicly conceding that there was a case for studying the situation in Venezuela. Ledezma called off the hunger strike last Wednesday after Indulza said the OAS would look at Venezuela’s case.

The Opposition sees this as a preamble to the OAS taking up its claim that President Hugo Chávez is repeatedly violating the constitution and trampling on human rights and the democratic rights of the people.

The hope is that, were the OAS to take up the cudgels on behalf of Chávez’ critics, this would eventually lead to the Organization invoking the Democratic Charter. But all this could be a long way down the road.

For the moment, Ledezma is deemed by the more independently-minded observers here as having broadly won his fight with Faría. In doing so, he had support from some of his employees, even if in theory it was him who wasn’t paying them.

Fifteen of them joined him on hunger strike. Three of them ending up in hospital as a result amid mounting speculation that Ledezma might be about to follow them.

On Friday, Marco Pantona, head of the municipal workers’ union, publicly thanked the mayor for his “valiant” decision to stage the hunger strike in demand of the funds and in defense of the employees.

“We reiterate our thanks and say that the mayor can count on these workers to make Caracas the city that we want,” Pantona said, claiming to speak on behalf of the workforce.

Ledezma was taken out of intensive care on Thursday, and is expected to be allowed to go home within a matter of days. His wife, Mitzi, warned during the strike that the mayor had not been in the best state of health beforehand.