By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS – The “imminent” closure of Globovisión, the private sector channel which makes no secret of its opposition to President Hugo Chávez, was announced Monday by a middle-ranking figure of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Gian Carlo Di Martino, formerly mayor of Maracaibo, the capital of Opposition-controlled Zulia state in the west of the country, also said several other media should also be put out of circulation. Di Martino unsuccessfully ran for governor of Zulia at last November’s regional elections, losing to Pablo Pérez of the Opposition party, Un Nuevo Tiempo.

Di Martino claimed that Globovisión had been an “accomplice” of Manuel Rosales, the founder of UNT who succeeded him as mayor of Maracaibo after serving two successive terms as governor before handing over to Pérez.

Rosales is living in self-imposed exile in Lima, where he turned up after failing to appear at a first hearing of a trial brought against by the government on charges of alleged corruption.

Di Martino claimed that Globovisión had been involved in helping Rosales to get out of Venezuela, where he is officially considered a fugitive from justice. Rosales has been granted political asylum in Peru on condition that he abstains from getting involved in Venezuelan politics from Lima.

Globovisión and other media aligned with the Opposition are said to be carrying out some sort of investigation into Di Martino’s conduct while he held office in Maracaibo.

Di Martino claims Globovisión is out to act as “judge and jury” against him, on the basis of accusations that “administrative irregularities” – a catch-all phrase that could cover a multitude of supposed crimes and offences – took place during his tenure as mayor.

He said would call on the Attorney General’s Office to investigate Globovisión. As senior members of the government and the PSUV have done before him, he accused the channel of plotting to “destabilize democracy” in the country.

Globovisión is already the object of inquiries by the National Telecommunications Commission, Contatel. More than once, Chávez has vowed to close the station down – as he did with Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), by the simple expedient of not renewing its broadcasting licence just over two years ago.

Chávez and President Rafael Correa of Ecuador announced over the weekend that they would propose that the South American Union of Nations (Unasur) should set up an organization to “defend governments against the abuses of the press” – who they claimed were the “worst enemy of the socialist model.”

Correa said he would make just such a proposal when he was president of Unasur. Ecuador is due to take over the revolving presidency in July this year. Correa vowed to “clean the country” of media he condemned as a “corrupt instrument of the oligarchy” and chief “enemy of change” in both Ecuador and Venezuela.

Chávez signalled his agreement. “Ecuador can count on the support of Venezuela in its internal struggle against this crude, open and cynical phenomenon that’s found in the madness of fascism,” he declared.

The president of Globovisión, Guillermo Zuloaga, continued to be the focus of unwanted attention, following the raid and the alleged discovery of vehicles at a residence he owns in the leafy suburb of Los Chorros in east Caracas last week.

Interior and Justice Minister Tarek El Assaimi claimed that “irregularities” had taken place in the sale of vehicles by two companies, Toyosan and ToyoClub, at least the last of which Zuloaga is said to be the owner. The company is based in Carabobo state, apparently at the same address as C&CSA, another company mentioned by the minister.

El Assaimi had referred to a supposed “mafia” involved in the distribution and sale of motor vehicles in Venezuela. Chávez recently asked out loud why cars cost so much more in Venezuela than in neighboring countries.

National Assembly Deputy Elvis Amaroso, a long-serving PSUV loyalist at the legislature, lauded the raid instigated by Commerce Minister Eduardo Samán, who also heads a government agency in charge of defending the free supply of goods in the country.

Amoroso, who heads a special committee at the Assembly that’s looking at the purchase and sale of cars and trucks, apparently in response to the presidential query, also spoke of an auto sector “mafia” that he claimed was deliberately holding cars back from the market in order to sell them later at higher prices.

Officials had come across no less than 6,000 vehicles that he said had been stored away for just that purpose. He said all this called for a “much more profound investigation” in order to track down the “chiefs of these mafias.”