Le Monde diplomatique
-----------------------------------------------------
September 2004
THE OPPOSITION SILENCED
Venezuela: Chávez is vindicated
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The Venezuelan opposition continues to deny the result of the 15
August referendum on Hugo Chávez's presidency, although
international observers judged that he had fairly and genuinely
won
by Paul-Émile Dupret
___________________________________________________________
THE centre of Caracas was quiet at dawn on 15 August. But
poorer, outlying areas glimmered with thousands of lights.
This was the day of the referendum on whether Hugo Chávez was
fit to continue as president of Venezuela. The opposition had
called the referendum, invoking a clause in the new
constitution that allows such a vote to be held after a
president has served at least half of his allotted term.
As the pro-Chávez campaign had proposed, at 3am a bugle call
- called the Diana - resounded across the hillside
shantytowns that surround Caracas. It triggered a commotion:
bangers and other fireworks were set off on every corner,
mixing with barking dogs and other barrio sounds, and with
the pro-Chávez chant: "Uh! Ah! Chávez no se va!" (Oh! Oh!
Chávez will not go!).
The last offensive in the Battle of Santa Inés (1) had
started. A few hours later a formidable army of voters could
be seen marching down the hillsides to play their part in the
popular process. Many were voting for the first time: more
than two million new names have appeared on Venezuela's
electoral register in the past year. The unprecedented
turnout produced long queues; some had to wait as long as 13
hours to vote.
Despite this the referendum felt more like a party than
anything else. It was a celebration of democracy, marred by
only one serious incident: armed men with machine-guns fired
on a crowd in the Petare area, leaving one voter dead and a
dozen injured. According to Alirio Uribe, a Colombian lawyer
there as an observer, the aim was to scare away voters in
this mostly pro-Chávez district: "Some people did leave but
most stayed to cast their votes." Meanwhile in the gated
communities of the moneyed quarters of Caracas, canny voters
were complaining about the wait while demanding that the
anti-fraud fingerprint checks be waived to speed things up.
"There are on average 1,000 voters per polling station in the
rich areas, against 8,000 voters per polling station in the
poor areas," says Jorge Rodriguez, a director of the National
Electoral Committee (CNE). Rodriguez blames the long queues
on the high turnout - around 75% - but also on the
opposition's repeated refusal to countenance an increase in
the number of polling stations. The ones there were remained
open until midnight to ensure that everyone could vote.
At 4am on 16 August, the CNE's chairman, Francisco
Carrasquero, announced the result: with 94.49% of ballots
counted, 58.25% had voted no to the revocation of Chávez's
mandate, while the yes campaign conducted by the opposition
had polled 41.74%. Leaders often see their popularity fall
once they are in government, but not Chávez. He had done more
than just retain his position, he had actually polled higher
than he had in the December 1998 election that brought him to
power with 57% of the vote.
This was his eighth electoral victory in five years, and the
team of international observers declared the conduct of the
voting "exemplary". "More than 10 million people voted and
there is a clear majority in favour of President Chávez's
government," said former United States president Jimmy
Carter, who led one of the two teams of observers. The other
was from the Organisation of American States (OAS), headed by
its secretary-general, César Gaviria.
As Chávez declared, his is "a victory for all those who are
building alternatives to neoliberalism in Latin America". His
tenure has enfranchised millions of his poorest compatriots,
thanks to the new constitution of the re-named Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela, which was drawn up by an elected
constituent assembly. Gradually the majority of Venezuelans
are beginning to benefit from the country's wealth,
especially its oil reserves, which were controlled until
recently by a small, wealthy minority.
Well before the recent increases in crude oil prices, major
social programmes were already achieving spectacular results.
Public health missions called barrio adentro were penetrating
shantytowns, education was improving, land rights being
reorganised more fairly and protection for small-time
fishermen had been introduced. The government was working to
generate new economic activities and ensure that basic neces
sities were widely available at affordable prices.
On an international level Chávez's government has played an
active role in reviving the Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries Opec), where those countries' governments
keep the oil supply under their control. He opposed the
extension of the North American Free Trade Area (Nafta) into
a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), preferring to work
towards further Latin American integration. Venezuela
recently joined the South American common market, Mercosur,
(2) and signed agreements with Argentina to set up a
pan-South American energy company, Petrosur, and to create a
continent-wide television channel.
The resounding win will surely spare Venezuela a new wave of
violence. In the event of an opposition victory, radicals had
drawn up plans for immediate occupation of major
institutions, including the headquarters of the state oil
company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), government buildings
and hospitals in Caracas.
One of the opposition's potential candidates for the
presidency, Miranda state governor Enrique Mendoza, is an old
hand at such tactics. He had sent police forces to occupy the
state television company immediately after the coup that
temporarily deposed Chávez on 11 April 2002. Mendoza rules
Miranda by terror. According to the state ombudsman, there
have been more than 30 assassinations during Mendoza's time
as governor, and countless unjustified arrests. In May, 150
Colombian paramilitaries were discovered in Miranda; they had
been hired to create a climate of instability that would
benefit the opposition (3).
But the referendum result will allow the government to work
towards reforming Venezuela's justice system and ending
impunity. Carter praised its commitment to human rights on 14
August: "Human rights are being observed satisfactorily in
Venezuela There is clearly freedom of expression, association
and press freedom."
For the opposition and for every media outlet in Venezuela
and abroad that had helped to diffuse propaganda (by
presenting Chávez as an autocrat, a tyrant, a dictator or "a
leader who talks a lot but does nothing") the failure is
humiliating. The continual attacks on the government were
based on a carefully constructed media myth that the
government was illegitimate because 70% of the population
supported the opposition.
Now that the facts have given the lie to such assertions,
Chávez's opponents are accusing him of populism and of having
bought the votes of the poor by running down the vital oil
industry to fund his social programmes. Yet their indignant
voices had been silent during the lockout of December
2002-January 2003, which paralysed PDVSA and severely
destabilised the economy. Venezuela lost 9% of its GDP as a
result of the politically driven strike, forcing the
government to suspend all its social programmes for lack of
funding. Perhaps the silence was related to the fact that
suspensions and destabilisation were the aims of the strike.
The 15 August result will remain the people's victory. The
referendum was conducted in accordance with a government
decision, made with the backing of the popular movements, to
take responsibility for electoral campaigning away from the
rusty old machinery of party politics; 900,000 volunteers
answered the call to join grassroots committees, or patrols,
in a web across the country. Meanwhile Chávez and his
campaign coordinator, historian Samuel Moncada, worked on the
content of the argument. Astutely they used as illustrations
such well-known stories as the battle of Santa Inés.
The opposition appeared more interested in destabilisation
than in winning an election fair and square. A week before
the vote Mendoza broke the rules to declare that he would
personally announce the results of the referendum at 3pm on
15 August before the official electoral authority had done
so. He planned to read the results of a separate, private
count carried out by Súmate, an organisation funded by the US
agency, the National Endowment for Democracy (4). The
opposition said that it would only accept the results given
by the OAS and the Carter Centre, and not those of the CNE
(5).
Towards 1pm on 15 August, emails were sent to foreign
journalists (it had been forbidden to broadcast any
predictions of the result) announcing an irreversible victory
for the opposition. Some publications believed them: "Chávez
on brink of referendum defeat" was the headline in The
Independent in London. But around 11pm, Venezuela's five
commercial television channels, all anti-Chávez, began to
show cartoons or wildlife programmes, a sure sign things were
not going well for the opposition. They had done the same
thing on 13 April 2002, when crowds of protesters surrounded
the presidential palace of Miraflores to demand the return of
their stolen president and a reversal of the coup. Minutes
after the CNE announced that the no campaign had won by a
clear margin, a leading member of the social-democratic party
Democratic Action rejected the verdict, demanding to hear
those of the Carter Centre and the OAS before making any
conclusions.
Ten hours later, with all checks completed, these bodies
declared the results to be fully valid. Yet the opposition
continued to reject them, making accusations of massive
fraud. Presidents Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, Luiz Inacio
"Lula" da Silva of Brazil and even the very pro-US Alvaro
Uribe Veléz of Colombia all dismissed the allegations and
accepted the verdict. So did the European Commission, which
sent Chávez a congratulatory message. Unsurprisingly the US
did initially give some credence to cries of foul play. A
servile France took the same line, saying only that it had
taken note of the observers' conclusions.
But even the US state department has to swallow bitter pills
sometimes and it recognised the victory on 17 August, pending
an audit of the results. Carter had proposed this audit, with
the consent of Chávez, to dispel any doubts. Carter announced
that both observational agencies would help double-check the
results from a sample of 150 polling stations. "The OAS and
the Carter Centre have agreed to audit a sample of paper
records of votes cast and compare them with electronic
results," said a spokesman for the OAS. The opposition
refused in advance to accept the findings; Mendoza claimed
that they would not be legally binding. On 22 August the
audit reconfirmed the result.
Emerging stronger than ever, Chávez declared: "The process is
irreversible and Venezuela has changed for ever." In an
interview for the new Vive television channel, Tatiana Rojas
asked Chávez whether the respite this vote had given his
revolution would provide an opportunity for an internal
critique of the process. He replied that he considered such a
critique to be imperative. He also suggested that the
campaign battalions could turn into social battalions to
support the government missions and push for a transformation
in the way the state worked.
The referendum and the new campaigning bodies should be a
great source of strength for participatory democracy. Its
success has boosted the confidence of grassroots activists,
who have saved the Venezuelan government twice before, when
the opposition toppled Chávez in a coup and when it tried to
sabotage the oil industry. As they well know, they have done
it again.
________________________________________________________
(1) The popular 19th-century leader Ezequiel Zamora defeated
the Caracas oligarchy in a celebrated struggle, the Battle of
Santa Inés. His strategy was to feign weakness to lure the
enemy into a situation where it could be crushed.
(2) The members of Mercosur are Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay
and Paraguay. Bolivia, Chile and soon Peru are associated
states.
(3) A court found that Mendoza had had 90 P-90 machine-guns
with infrared telescopic sights imported shortly before the
1998 elections. Only 40 of these were seized.
(4) The NED is a private institution, founded in 1983, that
receives a large percentage of its annual budget from the US
Congress. One of its funding centres, the International
Republican Institute, has an office in Caracas. The NED has
funded elements of the Venezuelan opposition, including
organisations that participated in the coup of 11 April 2002,
and in the economic sabotage campaigns of December 2002. It
also helped fund the development of the opposition programme
Consenso Pais.
(5) The opposition's claim that the CNE is controlled by
Chávez is weakened by the fact that the CNE was appointed by
the same Supreme Justice Tribunal that absolved the
perpetrators of the 11 April coup on 14 August 2002.
Translated by Gulliver Cragg
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