November 24, 2006
Money and Violence Hobble Democracy in Nigeria

By LYDIA POLGREEN
ADO EKITI, Nigeria — Early one Sunday morning in June, a mysterious text message flashed across Kayode Fayemi’s cellphone.

“Since you continue to oppose Governor Fayose, we shall kill you,” the message read, referring to the bare-knuckled incumbent at the time, Ayo Fayose. It was signed, “THE FAYOSE M SQUAD.”

Mr. Fayemi, a candidate for governor in this tiny state in southwest Nigeria, tried to brush off the threat. But if there was any doubt what the M in the message stood for, it evaporated six weeks later, when another candidate for governor, a World Bank consultant, was stabbed and bludgeoned to death in his bed.

So lucrative is public office here that even in a backwater like Ekiti, a state of only 2 million people in a nation of 130 million, the state house and the spoils that come with it are apparently worth killing for. Of Nigeria’s 36 governors, 31 are under federal investigation, mostly on suspicion of corruption, and 5 have already been impeached, including Mr. Fayose in October. He is now in hiding.

“This is democracy at work in Nigeria,” Mr. Fayemi muttered as he drove between campaign stops in Ekiti in early November. “Murder and money, violence and fraud.”

It has been seven boisterous years since Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and an anchor for the entire region, shed its military rule and ostensibly became a democracy. But the transformation has been slow and stumbling, hobbled by a political culture of graft and intimidation that has led to widespread neglect and disillusionment.

Despite some progress by the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo in fighting corruption and improving the economy, Nigerians are deeply disappointed with how their country has turned out. In 2000, suffused with the euphoria of new freedoms, 84 percent of Nigerians said they were satisfied with the state of their new democracy, according to the Afrobarometer public opinion survey. But six years later, the same survey found that just 25 percent of Nigerians felt that way.

New democracies naturally suffer from the letdown of high expectations, but the drop in Nigeria is virtually unparalleled on the continent. Of the 12 African countries surveyed in 2005, only Zimbabwe, which the Bush administration has called an “outpost of tyranny,” had a lower score.

“Confidence in the new democracy has crashed,” said Peter Lewis, director of the African Studies program at Johns Hopkins University, who was among the researchers who conducted the survey. “Nigerians expected a democratic dividend in 1999. They expected more economic opportunity and better governance.”

In small states like Ekiti, it is plain to see why confidence in democracy has fallen so far, so fast. Nowhere is Nigeria’s democracy in deeper trouble than at the state and local levels, where the most bruising contests for power take place in a bloody, winner-take-all system in which the voters are all but superfluous.

“Greedy politicians are literally killing their own people by stealing the money for health care, for schools, for clean water, for everything the state should provide its people,” said Sola Adeyeye, a member of Nigeria’s national assembly who once served as a local government chairman.

In April, Nigeria is to hold its next election, choosing a president, governors and legislators in its third contest since making the transition to civilian rule in 1999, after 16 years of military domination. Though the election is still months away, political chaos and electoral violence are already gripping the nation.

The main political parties hold primaries in December, and the ruling People’s Democratic Party may splinter over its nominee. The wave of impeachments has left statehouses in disarray and sparked violence that has killed dozens.

If Mr. Obasanjo, who is barred from running again by the Constitution, successfully passes the baton to an elected president next spring, it will be the first time this troubled giant of a nation has handed over power from one civilian government to another. That would cement its place in the growing family of democratic nations in Africa and further stabilize an uneasy corner of the globe.

But if the election fails — and there are indications that it might, given the political chaos, electoral violence and lagging voter registration — analysts worry that a number of grim possibilities could play out, including a military takeover that could steer the country back toward despotism.

Failure would have broad consequences. One in six Africans is Nigerian. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States. It is the economic, social and political fulcrum on which West Africa balances.

Mr. Fayemi, the gubernatorial candidate here in Ekiti, says he hopes to transform the political culture. He spent much of the 1990s in exile opposing military rule, and now brings his résumé, studded with graduate degrees and international accomplishments, to the local political scene.

He also has a network of high-level contacts that includes, among many others, the liberal American financier George Soros, whom he befriended while serving on the board of Mr. Soros’s Open Society Justice Initiative.

“We have allowed our politics to be so debased by money and violence that of course nothing but misery can come of it,” Mr. Fayemi said. “It is the politics of the belly, and it is destroying us.”

To spend a few days with him on the campaign trail is to experience democracy as it is lived for most Nigerians. It is not pretty. The leaders of Nigeria’s 36 states are princes of a political system that rewards executive power and does little to curb corruption. Governors get a check each month that represents their state’s cut of Nigeria’s booming oil fortune, and have almost no one to answer to for how they spend the money.

Here in the state of Ekiti, that check is typically $14 million, but lately it has been more than double that because of soaring oil prices. In a tiny state like this, that money could go far toward meeting the basic needs of the population — schools, roads, health clinics, running water.

In reality, many governors steal with impunity, buying the loyalty of the legislature and using state money to erect systems of patronage that help keep incumbents in office, analysts and political leaders say.

Ekiti’s most recent governor, Mr. Fayose, is a case in point. In October, he was impeached after an investigation found that he and his associates had pocketed millions from the state treasury. In one instance, he is alleged to have spent close to $7 million, mostly in contracts to political allies, supposedly for a poultry farming project, but the money simply disappeared and the project has yet to produce a single egg.

Several of his top aides have been arrested in connection with the killing of the gubernatorial candidate in August. A report by a presidential security panel last year said that Mr. Fayose “has zero tolerance for opposition,” “consistently sets in motion activities that will lead to violent acts” and “is said to be a user of hard drugs, which makes him to be highly unpredictable.”

“Under this man we lived in a state of siege,” said Dipo Kolawole, a top administrator at the University of Ado Ekiti. “It was worse than colonialism, worse than military rule. He was never the choice of the people. He imposed himself upon us.”

While international observers ultimately deemed them to be largely free and fair, Nigeria’s last two elections were marred by widespread allegations of ballot stuffing, intimidation and fraud. In 2003, Mr. Fayose bullied his way into power in Ekiti by paying off party bosses and using the police to intimidate opponents, according to analysts and political leaders here. Mr. Fayose’s excesses were so egregious that, even though he was a member of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, he has since been repudiated as an “error” by Mr. Obasanjo.

But even now, with Mr. Fayose and his style of politics discredited, candidates in Ekiti are expected to spread cash around. Mr. Fayemi’s campaign treads the treacherous middle ground between the high road, on which pro-democracy advocates have traditionally marched directly to defeat, and the bruising, money-driven politics that dominate Nigeria’s electoral contests.

Mr. Fayemi has spent freely on this election, handing out stacks of Naira notes as donations to local party organizations, with extra thrown in for the women and youth sections. On a recent campaign swing, he handed out nearly 500,000 Naira, or $4,000, in a single day. He estimates that winning the election will cost him 4 million Naira, a sum he has raised from allies and friends in Nigeria, as well as from his contacts in the West.

As he crisscrosses Ekiti’s rutted roads, Mr. Fayemi navigates the messy world of Nigerian politics. At a meeting with the bosses of his party, the opposition Action Congress, he knelt before them to receive their blessing. He promised development projects, like a local polytechnic, and handed out fat envelopes of cash at another party meeting. The money was intended as a donation to the local party machinery, but what actually happens to it is anyone’s guess.

After one rally, as Mr. Fayemi tried to leave town, a fracas erupted among some youths who crowded around his car. A dozen young men began arguing with one of his aides and blocking the car.

Apparently the campaign had given money for a local youth wing to a man no one could identify, and he had absconded with the cash. Mr. Fayemi would need to pay them again, the young men explained, surrounding his car as they pressed their case.

Mr. Fayemi threw up his hands. It had been a long day of hectic and sometimes antagonistic meetings with party bosses.

“This is what we live with,” he said.

The aide argued with the young men, but their mood darkened as the dispute stretched for several minutes. Finally, Mr. Fayemi relented.

“Just pay them,” he said.

The leader of the young men seized the stack of cash, carefully counting the notes in the glow of the car’s headlights: 10,000 Naira, or about $80. Once he confirmed the amount and nodded his assent, a cry went up.

“Excellency, Excellency!” the young men shouted, using the honorific for governors, opening the cordon and allowing Mr. Fayemi’s car to pass through.

“This is our politics,” Mr. Fayemi said, an edge of disgust in his voice.

Such payoffs clearly make him uncomfortable, but he said he hoped that the ends would justify the means. Once installed in the governor’s office, he says he can begin to change the political culture. But first he has to get elected.

“Money,” Mr. Fayemi said. “It is the language of Nigerian politics. As much as you want to get away from that, you also have to be mindful of those short-term things you must do.”

China Filling Void Left by West in U.N. Peacekeeping
Despite Its Misgivings, Nation Is Now 13th-Largest Contributor to Missions as Major Powers Withdraw
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 24, 2006; A12

UNITED NATIONS -- When African nations began urging the deployment of peacekeepers to Somalia in June to prop up its embattled government, an unlikely nation stepped forward to support their call for action: China, which had long been wary of such interventions by the United Nations.

China's emergence as an economic superpower has forced the government to rethink some of its foreign policy priorities, and it is quietly extending its influence on the world stage through the support of international peacekeeping operations.

China is now the 13th-largest contributor of U.N. peacekeepers, providing 1,648 troops, police and military observers to 10 nations, mostly in African countries, including Congo, Liberia and southern Sudan. But its activities reach well beyond Africa.

Chinese riot police have been sent to Haiti to quell unrest. Earlier this month, Beijing offered to send 1,000 peacekeepers to southern Lebanon to help enforce a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah. The United Nations accepted less than half.

Wang Guangya, China's U.N. ambassador, said that China is filling a vacuum left by the West. "The major powers are withdrawing from the peacekeeping role," he said. "That role is being played more by small countries. China felt it is the right time for us to fill this vacuum. We want to play our role."

China's participation in U.N. peacekeeping missions has generally served to bolster its relationship with Washington and other Western governments. In some cases, though, the higher profile has led to strains, such as when the United States blocked China's call for condemnation of an Israeli strike that killed four unarmed U.N. military observers, including a Chinese national.

"China has had global leadership thrust upon it," said Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She said China's new role has forced the government to counter the perception that it is interested only in exploiting resources in places such as Africa. "It has a number of reputational risks. Being seen as a force for peace and security is an important and good first step."

Edward Luck, a Columbia University historian who studies the United Nations, said: "If they're going to be the next superpower, they have to be pretty active on these kinds of things."

China's misgivings about U.N. peacekeeping date to the 1950-1953 Korean War, when a U.N. force, led by the United States, marched to the Chinese border and clashed with troops there. The U.S. commander, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, even considered a nuclear strike to deter Mao Zedong's Red Army.

When Communist China joined the United Nations in 1971, it refused to fund U.N. peacekeeping operations for a decade and remained wary of engaging in council discussions on the topic. "They were mostly silent for about 10 years," said Brian Urquhart, a retired U.N. official who helped create the world body's peacekeeping efforts and who sought to persuade China to participate in peacekeeping in the 1980s. "They sat on every fence available."

After the Cold War, Beijing decided to send small contingents of military engineers and observers to serve in U.N. missions in Cambodia and Kuwait. But it would be another decade before China began to expand significantly its participation in U.N. missions.

Today, Africa is a "bellwether" for Chinese attitudes on intervention, Luck said.

Until recently, China's policy on Africa has been largely defined by its desire to prevent Taiwan from making diplomatic inroads in the region and its pursuit of the continent's supply of oil and raw materials to fuel economic growth. It has been criticized as being insensitive to workers' rights, soft on human rights abusers -- including the government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe -- and an obstacle to U.N. action in Sudan, where it has blocked U.S. efforts to impose economic sanctions on the regime.

But now China is struggling to burnish its reputation in Africa, signing trade deals worth billions, pledging to double foreign assistance by 2009 and promising to cancel the foreign debt of some of the poorest countries. Last week, Wang played a critical role in persuading the Sudanese government to allow an expanded U.N. presence in the Darfur region, where a government-backed militia has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, according to senior U.S. and U.N. officials.

Andrew Natsios, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, praised Wang for securing Khartoum's cooperation. "At critical moments, he intervened in a very helpful and useful way," he said.

During a U.N. Security Council mission to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in June, it was Wang who scolded other diplomats for neglecting Somalia and urged them to support the deployment of peacekeepers. It marked a turning point for Beijing, the first time it had taken the lead in the 15-nation council in promoting foreign intervention to resolve a conflict thousands of miles from its own borders.

"I was reluctant to take this role," said Wang, explaining that African governments had been pushing China to raise the issue in the council. "But there was a lack of interest by the other major powers."

The move faced initial opposition from Britain, which feared that the insertion of foreign troops would contribute to the chaos in Somalia. U.S. officials said they are still studying the situation.

"China wants to be seen on the right side of this issue," said Augustine Mahiga, Tanzania's U.N. ambassador.

Princeton N. Lyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa, said he suspects that China is seeking diplomatic points by supporting important regional allies such as Ethiopia, which has already sent thousands of troops to Somalia to protect the interim government, according to a recent U.N. report on arms smuggling in Somalia. The report of an influx of arms and troops from Ethiopia and Eritrea, which is supporting Somali Islamists, could reignite all-out war between the East African rivals.

Richard Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, declined to comment on China's role in Somalia but noted that Beijing has shown a heightened interest in Africa. "We are well aware the Chinese are working very hard on African issues," he said.

November 24, 2006
In Video, Hussein Uses Slingshots and Bows to Rally Iraqis for War

By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 — As the world worried about Saddam Hussein’s quest for nuclear and biological weapons, he took time out to discuss with his top advisers the merits of a decidedly more primitive arsenal: slingshots, Molotov cocktails and crossbows.

In a previously undisclosed video, apparently shot in the months before the American-led invasion in 2003, Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, beams as military officers display and demonstrate low-tech weapons spread on a table in a ceremonial room. Whether the episode shows genuine preparation for an insurgency or was merely a bizarre propaganda exercise is unclear.

In the video, Mr. Hussein, wearing a double-breasted gray suit, aims a slingshot, shoots an arrow at a door using a crossbow (as aides scamper out of the way) and swings a mock gasoline bomb over his head with a rope. He urges his aides to get such weapons into the hands of Iraqis.

“Let’s use all the methods we can,” he tells his generals. “These methods can be made at home.”

Later he says, “Let’s talk to the minister of industry to see if we can mass produce this.” Tariq Aziz, Mr. Hussein’s close adviser and deputy prime minister, pipes in, “This can be shown to our group of people, who can introduce it to the others.”

Phebe Marr, a historian of Iraq, says that what is most striking about the video is the archaic and impotent nature of the weapons Mr. Hussein appears to be taking seriously. “This stuff is medieval,” she said. “The interesting question is whether this was preparation for the resistance we’ve seen since.”

The 20-minute video, part of a vast collection of videotapes seized by American forces in Iraq, was obtained from a military source by Peter W. Klein, a television producer who has included an excerpt in a documentary, “Beyond Top Secret,” to be shown Friday night and Saturday morning on The History Channel.

The video is undated. But it appears to have been made in late 2002 or early 2003, based on the contents and the physical appearance of Mr. Hussein and Mr. Aziz, said specialists on Iraq who reviewed it for The New York Times and The History Channel.

“I’d say it was one or two months before the invasion,” said Louay Bahry, an Iraqi scholar who taught political science at the University of Baghdad in the 1960s and 1970s and now lives in Washington. “They were trying to inflame the people with propaganda.”

Mr. Bahry, who reviewed the video with Ms. Marr, his wife, says that Mr. Hussein and his aides use the Arabic word “muqawama,” which means “resistance,” and discuss enlisting civilians in a future insurgency against an occupying army.

But the staged nature of their show-and-tell suggests a political purpose: to show that the ruler is planning for the coming conflict and expecting all citizens to help. Whether the video was ever shown on television is not known.

“The message is that the coalition is coming after all the Iraqi people and not just the regime,” said Paul R. Pillar, a top Middle East analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency from 2000 to 2005 and now a professor at Georgetown University. “My guess is that the propaganda value was at least as important as any true military preparation.”

Marc E. Garlasco, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who specialized in the Iraqi leadership and who was in Iraq early in the war, said Mr. Hussein was “quite delusional” at times about the military threat he faced. Still, Mr. Garlasco said, the tape’s main purpose was probably “to send a message: ‘We’re all in this together, and there’s a part for everyone to play.’ ”

A Defense Intelligence Agency spokesman, Cmdr. Terry Sutherland, reviewed the video but said the agency had no comment.

Mr. Hussein, 69, was sentenced to death on Nov. 5 after being convicted of crimes against humanity for the persecution of residents of Dujail, Iraq, in response to what was said to be an assassination attempt against him there in 1982.

Military analysts have debated what he and his aides did before the invasion, to prepare for a guerrilla campaign. Some studies have suggested that he doubted that American troops would come to Baghdad and that he was more worried that any attack could set off a rebellion by the country’s Shiite majority, as occurred after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, or an invasion by Iran.

Whatever the thinking, enormous quantities of small weapons and explosives were hidden around the country before the invasion. “We found caches everywhere with thousands of weapons,” said Mr. Garlasco, now a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch.

Those supplies have fueled the three-year-old insurgency, which has relied mainly on firearms, improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers. Attacks using slingshots to shoot ball bearings have occasionally been reported, but there is no evidence that Mr. Hussein’s videotaped exhortation led to action.

In most of the video, the lead role in demonstrating the low-tech weapons is played by a man experts identified as Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaish, chief of the military industrialization commission, which once oversaw attempts to build unconventional weapons.

In the video, however, Mr. Huwaish, who was captured by allied forces not long after the invasion, shows off martial arts weapons, including a sharp-pointed throwing star, a slingshot designed to be stretched between the feet and fired sitting down, and metal spikes designed to destroy the tires of passing vehicles.

“There are more than 100 ideas, but I chose these,” Mr. Huwaish says. Pointing out Molotov cocktail devices using soda bottles, he says, “Pepsi, Coke — things that are in the house.”

by Paul Schemm1 hour, 50 minutes ago
The United States government is in contact with Kurds struggling against Iran, a top rebel leader of the anti-Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) told AFP in an interview.

Cemil "Cuma" Bayik, one of the main leaders and a founder of the movement that has struggled for Kurdish self-determination for the past 30 years, said the US was in touch with the Party for Freedom in Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iran, but that it was not helping actively.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed recently in the New Yorker magazine that American forces were supporting the PJAK movement as part of their strategy to destabilize the Tehran government.

"I have to say that American authorities want to have contact with PJAK, and as a matter of fact they do have contact with PJAK," Bayik said late Wednesday in an exclusive interview at his headquarters deep in Iraq's remote Qandil mountains on the Iranian border.

"But to say that the United States is supporting the PJAK is not right," he added. "PJAK is until now continuing their struggle just with the support of the Kurdish people and the PKK."

The allegations of US support for the PJAK sparked uproar in the Turkish media, forcing the American ambassador in Ankara to issue a denial.

The PKK, which in September declared a unilateral ceasefire in its struggle with Turkey, is labeled a terrorist organization by the US and Europe, which both refuse to have contact with it.

"If the United States is interested in PJAK, then it has to be interested in the PKK as well," Bayik said. "The PKK is the one who formed PJAK, who established PJAK and supports PJAK."

The PJAK, which reportedly has some 3,000 guerrilla fighters based in the Mount Qandil area of Iraq, was founded in the late 1990s and is engaged in a bitter struggle with Iranian security forces, killing a reported 120 in 2005.

The party claims tens of thousands of activists inside Iran itself and describes its agenda as promoting Kurdish identity, democracy and women's rights.

Bayik also called on the international powers and Turkish parties that urged the PKK to announce its unilateral ceasefire to do more to put pressure on the Turkish government and military to reciprocate.

Fearing Turkish threats to invade northern Iraq in a bid to deal with PKK bases, the US and Iraq pushed the PKK to reinstate its ceasefire in September.

With the Kurdish autonomous region one of the few peaceful areas in war-torn Iraq, the US does not want to see it destabilized by a Turkish invasion.

Bayik told AFP that rather than reciprocating, Turkish forces have increased their attacks on the PKK in Turkey.

"Since we called the ceasefire, we are at a point of no war, no peace," he said. "Before we called for a ceasefire, the forces who asked for the ceasefire said they would work for the Kurdish question to be solved peacefully."

Turkey's military has dismissed the ceasefire as a PKK ploy to cover its traditional cessation of hostilities during the snow-choked winter months in mountainous southeast Turkey.

Bayik said the ceasefire would continue until after Turkish general elections in May, when the PKK would reevaluate the situation.

"We are very realistic because there are elections, and we know before elections there is no one to make steps towards a ceasefire," he said. But he added that measures such as scaling back military operations would help create a better atmosphere.

"If these steps are taken, we will be able to continue our ceasefire and this will start our dialogue," Bayik said, adding that after the Thrkish elections, the organization would make a decision.

"I don't want to say it will be the end of the ceasefire, but when the time comes, say for instance June, we will look at the situation in the region... and we will reevaluate the situation."

On Monday, former US diplomat Richard Holbrooke wrote in the Washington Post that the best way to deter a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq would be to deploy NATO troops along the border between the two countries, a suggestion not welcomed by the PKK.

"We fought against Turkey, and as you know Turkey is a member of NATO and during this war NATO supported Turkey and that's how Turkey stood up to us," Bayik said.

"Because of that, whether NATO forces come here or not doesn't change anything for us," he added. "If NATO forces come here and stand against us, this will increase the tension of the Kurdish people against NATO."

Ultimately, Bayik said, restarting the guerrilla war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives in Turkey would be in no one's interest.

"Realistically, we know very well if clashes start again this will not benefit Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan or the people of the region," the PKK chief said.

Divided Venezuelans United on Costly Policy of Cheap Gas
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 23, 2006; A31

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Jesús Vivas drives a 26-year-old clunker with rusted fenders, ripped upholstery and a tattered carpet. With a wheeze, a plume of smoke and a walruslike roar, the wreck he calls a taxi accelerates down congested streets. About the only thing that works well is a new radio, which blares accordion-laced folk music.

But he's not worried. Operating his four-door Malibu across Caracas, day and night, costs less than $4, thanks to gasoline that, at 17 cents a gallon, is considered the cheapest in the world. "Gasoline prices here in Venezuela are very good," said Vivas, 25, in the kind of characteristically understated comments Venezuelans make about fuel costs. "We cabbies circulate all over. Here in Caracas it's cheap, and you can go the whole day."

The credit, as every Venezuelan knows, goes to government subsidies and price controls -- part of a policy that dates back decades and has infused people here with a sense of entitlement to Venezuela's vast oil deposits. In this famously polarized country, where President Hugo Chávez's government and a strident opposition never have anything good to say about each other, there is agreement about at least one thing: gas. The country's policy is unalterable, a hip-hip-hurrah for cheap fuel that is seconded by truckers, industrialists and suburban soccer moms in their SUVs.

"As an oil country, the state has the responsibility to guarantee energy and preserve the price of gasoline as it is," said Gabriela Ramírez, a pro-Chávez lawmaker in the National Assembly. "You raise the price one bolivar and you affect the economy because the price of bus tickets goes up, everything becomes more expensive."

Everyone in Venezuela also remembers what happened when prices were dramatically increased in 1989 -- an uprising that left hundreds dead. As the government and its foes prepare for the Dec. 3 presidential election, which most opinion polls show Chávez will win handily, the themes of the day range from Venezuela's expensive aid programs overseas to skyrocketing crime to the government's popular social programs. No one -- no one -- is talking about cheap gasoline.

"Of course, cheap gas is good," said Jesús Espinoza, a truck driver, perplexed that anyone could consider low gasoline prices debilitating. "In a country with so much petroleum riches, you cannot have expensive gasoline. It would be a contradiction."

One downside to the cheap gas, though, is that it eats up about $1 billion in subsidies and another $5 billion that Venezuela fails to earn by not selling the oil on the world market, where a barrel reached a high of $78 this year. It generates the horrendous traffic jams that mark this city, where 2 million cars snake along at an average speed of 9 mph. It also has made the sale of contraband gasoline to neighboring Colombia a major criminal enterprise.

The policy, critics say, is a vicious circle that feeds on itself as Venezuelans seeking investments, ever mindful that filling up a tank costs less than a ham sandwich, buy cars at a record clip. More than 320,000 cars have been sold this year alone.

Cheap gas also symbolizes the inherent drawback of a policy that contributes to the so-called oil curse -- an unhealthy reliance on easy money that is seemingly intractable in most major oil producers. Venezuelan intellectuals and academics have long warned that the country's dependence on oil smothers efforts to diversify its economy, leaving the government banking on a commodity that, history has shown, always crashes.

"This is something that really does not benefit the public," said Eddie Ramírez, a former state oil company executive who believes poorer Venezuelans shoulder much of the burden because they do not own cars. "It helps the privileged. But it's a theme that has always been taboo."

Venezuela's populist government, which helped engineer higher oil prices by nudging fellow members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to adhere to production quotas, seems to be as addicted to oil as any administration in the world. Private investment here is dismal. Half the workforce toils in the black market, and many make ends meet selling clothing, CDs and papayas on the street.

But with oil prices relatively strong, and the country exporting most of its crude to the United States, the money is rolling in. Venezuela's oil industry generated $48 billion from exports last year, three times as much as in Chávez's first year in office. That money has helped fund not only about $8.3 billion in health, education and nutrition programs through September of this year, but also foreign aid programs designed to counter U.S. influence in Latin America.

The government here had once talked of raising prices. And Chávez has scolded the United States and Europe for consuming so much oil, generating pollution and more dependence. At the OPEC meeting in Caracas in June, he called on big consumers to "reflect" on the consumerist model that drains a nonrenewable resource.

But an examination of Venezuela's oil policy -- not to mention its own consumer culture -- shows that this capitalist country is about as far as any country can get from being a model of conservation or thoughtful energy policy.

The streets are jammed. There is no oversight of emissions, as is increasingly common in Latin America. Parking on the street is free, and price controls on indoor parking make it dirt-cheap.

The Chávez government has invested in the Caracas Metro, where a new line was inaugurated in October, and in subways in other cities. But there have been no similar improvements for the bus system, whose aging fleet of smoke-belching vehicles clogs the roadways.

With oil dollars flooding the economy, the inflation rate rising and Venezuelans looking to invest, cars are among the best options. They retain value, unlike vehicles in the United States. And the gas, well, it's always cheap.

"The result is a huge distortion for the urban development for cities like Caracas or Valencia or Maracaibo, where you basically have to live in a traffic jam," said Michael Penfold, a newspaper columnist and economist at the Institute of Superior Administrative Studies, a business school in Caracas. "This is nothing but a result of these huge distortions we have in the economy."

At René Diaz's Super Autos, the BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes are being driven out by new owners at four times the rate they were three years ago. Some of the vehicles go for well over $100,000.

"You can buy a car, and two weeks later, you can sell it and it's still a good investment," said Miguel Carfora, moments after strolling through the showroom.

Henrique Capriles, the mayor of Baruta, the district where Super Autos is located, said he understands his countrymen's fascination with cars. But he is trying to turn as many people as will listen toward mass transit, he said.

One of his ideas is to restrict motorists from using their cars on certain days -- or during certain hours -- a plan that has dramatically eased traffic in Bogota, the capital of Colombia. But Capriles is an opposition politician, and the mayor in adjacent Caracas is a close ally of the president, so he hasn't been able to work out an agreement.

And then there's that other obstacle just down the street -- the big Texaco gas station, pumping gas day and night at a price so low that an attendant there, Miguel Tirado, calls the gasoline "a gift."

"If it is so cheap to travel with a car, because the price of the gasoline is so low, you're going to buy a car," Capriles said. "And you're never going to use the public transportation, never."