VHeadline News Editor Patrick J. O'Donoghue reports: Public Works & Housing Minister, Diosdado Cabello is pushing through a legal process against another 29 radio stations in the country. Defending the announcement he made during a pro-government rally last Saturday, the Minister said the government will continue to examine the administrative situation of all private radio stations in the country.

Cabello insisted that the government will not stop in its aim to democratize frequencies. The government has already closed 34 radio stations whose licenses had run out or were illegal.

The Ministry has called for penalties against 24/7 opposition TV news channel Globovision for allegedly calling for the coup d'etat during a political talk show. The channel's lawyer, Anna Christina Nunez replies that 40 pages of text messages reached the channel with one page containing 50 messages and the telecommunications administrations board (CONATEL) picked out 7 messages. There is also a possibility, she adds, that the message had been pirated and that has happened before forcing the company to deactivate the text message reception. The government is picking on the channel, she says, as an excuse to censor and diminish freedom of expression.

Minister Cabello has replied maintaining that what is shown on the screen is previously filtered by the channel, declaring that there is no excuse for undertaking anti-democratic conduct, which supposedly incites to assassination.

• In a belligerent mood, the Minister said it is a question of seeing who has more ammunition, confirming that the government is prepared to follow the law through to the end.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan chamber of radio-diffusion has called on CONATEL to rectify its proposed action and accuses the government of failing to listen to its position and instead imposing repression and illegal persecution on radio stations. The organization calls on the government to activate licenses pending since 2002.

Patrick J. O'Donoghue
news.editor@vheadline.com