Volatile Venezuela
Editorial
Stabroek News
November 29, 2002
Conditions in this country might be grim, but to our west Venezuela is in danger of sliding into the maw of anarchy. The intervention of OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria has had little impact on the situation so far, and the space for compromise between President Hugo Chavez and his opponents has been reduced almost to the point of invisibility. The President, his popularity rating down to 30-35% according to the latest poll, is pressing ahead with his Bolivarian revolution, while the opposition has been demanding a non-binding referendum on his government to be held in December (it has just been decided that it will be held in February), in the hope that the expected ‘no confidence’ vote will shame him into resigning. Constitutionally speaking, the earliest that a binding referendum can be mounted is August 2003, halfway though his term of office.
In the opposition camp stand a number of amorphous groups, such as business interests, the unions, the wealthy, the middle class, a range of old and new political parties and most of the media. There is disaffection too, among the military, although how deep this penetrates is not easy to assess. The rockbed of the President’s support remains the poor who form the majority in Venezuela, although a failure to deliver on several of his promises has cost Mr Chavez some backing even among the members of this group. His hardline followers are organized into ‘Bolivarian Circles,’ which the opposition maintains are responsible for the violence directed against them, and which they allege are being armed by the Government. The anger of both sides, however, has caused street clashes of one kind or another to disturb the peace of the capital on a regular basis this year.
While the attempted coup in April collapsed after two days, President Chavez did not emerge unscathed. The failed putsch weakened his position considerably, both because it revealed the full extent of disaffection with his government, and because it left in its wake a legacy of suspicion and bitterness. If he was to see out his six years uneventfully, then he was required to make major concessions to his opponents, and recraft some of the ideological pillars on which his Bolivarian revolution rested. He elected, however, to do neither of these things, favouring instead an approach of accruing more power to the centre in a misconceived attempt to disable the opposition.
The effect of the President’s measures, inevitably, has been precisely the opposite of what he intended. Instead of gaining more control over the situation, he is in fact losing it. One of the leading lights in the opposition against him is the Mayor of Greater Caracas, Alfredo Pena, who up until recently had responsibility for the capital’s police force. Using the excuse of a month-long labour dispute, the central government wrested control of the police from the Mayor, appointing an ex-army sergeant to replace Police Chief Henry Vivas.
Far from emasculating his enemies in general and Pena in particular, the militarization of the police has only raised the temperature and provided yet another - and more dangerous - flashpoint between the two sides. Vivas has refused to resign and half the police force is declining to recognize the new authority. Last week there were pitched battles in the streets, and central Caracas was being patrolled by soldiers. The opposition has labelled the take-over of the force as an “internal coup,” and has presented a petition to the National Assembly requesting the restoration of civil autonomy over the police, while for his part, Pena has had recourse to the Supreme Court.
It is in this context that a general strike has been planned for Monday, December 2, the fourth in the space of less than a year. This would involve the co-operation of both labour and business, although it has been suggested that some of the store-owners were less than enthusiastic about a stoppage in the run-up to Christmas, since their takings would almost certainly suffer. The danger in the strike would be that it would drag on indefinitely, with all that that implies.
The critical issue for the success of a general strike, however, is whether the employees of the Venezuelan oil company PDvSA will participate. The oil sector is responsible for half of the Government’s income and 75% of its export earnings. It was a strike by PDvSA management which heralded the attempted coup in April, and after that collapsed, the oil entity was the only one to which President Chavez made concessions.
On Tuesday the President of Fedecamaras, the umbrella business organization, said confidently that 80% of the workers in the oil sector would withhold their labour, although Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez disputed that claim. It is true that last week PDvSA executives accused President Chavez of using the company to further his political interests by allowing members of his party to hold a meeting in one of its facilities, but whether that indicates that they would actually join a general strike remains to be seen.
The strike could definitely be headed off if Mr Gaviria makes a breakthrough in peace talks, or if the President accepts the holding of the non-binding referendum which the National Elections Council has now set for February 2. What was not clear at the time of going to press, was whether the decision of the council which was only made yesterday, was sufficient on its own to cause a postponement of the shut-down. All that can be said is that at the moment the prognostications are not good that the President will accept the council’s decision. He had already been to the Supreme Court challenging a change in the law designed to facilitate such a referendum - a case which he lost - and last Sunday he was reported as saying that he would not resign even if 90% of the electorate voted against him in such a poll. According to a Reuters report yesterday, it is thought that the Government will challenge the validity of the referendum, both at the level of the Supreme Court and in the National Assembly.
Even if, however, for the sake of argument, a strike were avoided and President Chavez were to be pressured out of office through the agency of a consultative referendum, it is doubtful that his most devoted supporters would accept this quietly. In other words, if the President were to step down, there would be no guarantee of peace. It is in conditions of social disorder over an extended time frame that the intervention of the military, which barring the events of April has avoided direct interference in the political arena for very many years, could become a possibility. According to former President Perez - admittedly not a neutral commentator - a “military coup floats in the air of the barracks.” What complicates the situation, of course, is that as far as is discernible, the armed forces themselves seem to be divided.
In the middle of all this turmoil the Venezuelan economy is suffering, with all the implications that has for the people of the country. According to Dow Jones, the economy has contracted by 6.4% in the first nine months of the year; there is 17% unemployment and 30% annual inflation, sparked by a 48% devaluation in Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar.
It is significant that a poll conducted by Keller y Asociados in August found that 62% of those interviewed believed that Venezuela was heading towards civil war. As the two sides lock themselves into immutable positions, and their room for manoeuvre disappears, one can only hope that they will decide in the very near future to step back from the brink, so the fears of ordinary Venezuelans are not realized.
