Interview: Chavez friend becomes foe

Retired Gen. Raul Baduel weighs his words carefully even in closed-door meetings. These days, he says he is regularly followed by intelligence agents, and he is convinced that President Hugo Chavez watches his every move.

But Baduel, once a member of Chavez's inner circle, speaks without a trace of uneasiness as he accuses his commander-in-chief of abandoning the democratic ideals they once shared.

The leftist Chavez, who argues that Latin America has long suffered from U.S. domination, has spread his government's booming oil revenues to socialist allies in the region and used Venezuela's wealth to finance a slew of populist initiatives at home. But he has also been accused of pursuing a more autocratic rule.

Baduel's break with Chavez late last year helped persuade Venezuelans to vote down constitutional changes that would have let the president run for re-election indefinitely. And since then, Baduel has become a key opposition figure, though one of the least visible — a behind-the-scenes operator intent on being a counterweight to Chavez.

In his office, eclectically decorated with statues of Buddhas, Samurais and Catholic saints, Baduel meets with disaffected military officers, politicians and other influential Venezuelans. He is reluctant to reveal the names of his allies, but he insists his aims are completely aboveboard: to build support for reining in presidential power.

"I'm a committed democrat," Baduel told The Associated Press in an interview this week, saying that with many visitors he discusses his push to reform the constitution with an eye to limiting Chavez's powers and reinforcing term limits that bar him from running again in 2012.

Baduel has always maintained a low profile, moving cautiously and forging personal alliances behind the scenes, said retired Lt. Col. Yoel Acosta Chirinos, who first met Baduel during basic training in the mid-1970s.

"He's very prudent. He walks through life as if he were walking through a mine field, very cautiously. He doesn't stumble," Acosta said. "He's a man of patience."

Baduel and Chavez are both practiced strategists who know well what it takes to lead a conspiracy — and also what it takes to defend against one. Baduel was widely credited with helping to save Chavez during a 2002 coup when he sent paratroopers to rescue the president from a faction of officers who had plotted his overthrow.

But now it appears Chavez is taking no chances with his former friend. Baduel says state intelligence agents regularly tail him and tap his phones. He often changes cell phones to avoid eavesdropping, and close confidants frequently tip him off to surveillance activities he attributes to Chavez.

"It seems they are permanently watching my movements," Baduel said, noting that government agents have questioned active military officers after meetings with him that were intended to be secret. In that way, he said with a laugh, "they do us the favor of letting us know" they are listening.

The friendship between Baduel and Chavez goes back to their soldier days in the 1980s, when they were part of a small, tightly knit group of officers who formed a clandestine movement based on the ideals of independence hero Simon Bolivar.

Chavez and Baduel became co-conspirators in the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement 200 — the group that led a bloody 1992 coup against then-President Carlos Andres Perez. It failed to topple the government but catapulted Chavez to fame.

Although Baduel did not join the uprising, military chiefs were suspicious of his ties with the plotters. In an effort to prevent him from imbuing others with conspiratorial ideas, they sent him to the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., for training, Baduel said.

A decade later, Chavez publicly thanked Baduel for helping him survive the 2002 coup and later rewarded him with the post of defense minister.

Later, Baduel said, he grew disillusioned with the president's ideological slant. He was replaced as defense minister last year and quietly retired.

But in November, he publicly broke ranks and joined a campaign against proposed constitutional changes that would have expanded Chavez's powers.

Chavez's loss in the December vote was his first during his nine-year presidency.

"Chavistas," as the president's supporters call themselves, see Baduel as an opportunist who turned his back on a longtime friend to carve out a political following for himself ahead of gubernatorial and municipal elections this November.

But Baduel denies any ambition of running for office, saying his motivations stem from patriotic duty and a revulsion to Chavez's "thirst for power."

"I pray to God everyday that he may allow me to serve our nation's supreme interests, and for that I also ask the Lord to provide me with three tools: humility, patience and wisdom," Baduel said.

Chavez called Baduel "a traitor" after their falling-out and withdrew the cadre of government bodyguards normally assigned to retired generals.

But Baduel, who is fascinated with Eastern philosophy and writings on military strategy, says he believes in a Samurai code that calls for swordsmen to respect their enemies. And he refrains from responding directly to Chavez's barbs, saying only that their friendship is over.

Gregorian chants played on the stereo as he welcomed a visitor, flipping through a book by ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu and offering black coffee mixed with what he called an "Amazonian elixir" — a medicinal concoction of roots and herbs given to him by an Indian shaman.

Young, uniformed soldiers appear to be regular visitors at his office in affluent eastern Caracas. Baduel said there is dissent within the ranks, and that some are uncomfortable with Chavez's recent statements of sympathy for Colombia's leftist rebels.

Baduel said Chavez's failings are also evident in sporadic food shortages, rampant crime and corruption.

"This country is in a profound crisis," he said.