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Ballot
Box Pressure as Chávez Hits Halfway
Mark
Humberto
Márquez
CARACAS, (IPS) - Venezuela's President
Hugo Chávez reaches the halfway mark
in his six-year term on Tuesday, and
-- according to the constitution that
he himself promoted -- the opposition
can then activate the mechanisms for
holding a recall referendum to try to
remove him from office.
Over the past three years the country
has sunk into an ongoing clash between
Chávez's Fifth Republic Movement (MVR)
and the opposition, which claims 77
political parties and civil society
and union organisations. Both sides
are impervious to any new weigh-in of
achievements and mistakes.
Chávez ”reawakened interest in
politics for millions of Venezuelans
and has advanced a new
institutionality, but the nature of
his administration has ruined
consensus, favouring confrontation,”
José Vicente Carrasquero, political
science professor at Simón Bolívar
University, told IPS.
Chávez, a retired paratrooper
commander who led a failed coup
attempt in 1992 and served a two-year
prison sentence for it, won the
presidential elections in 1998 with 56
percent of the valid votes cast.
Once in office, his administration
promoted the creation of a constituent
assembly, which drafted the new
national charter, approved by popular
vote in 1999.
The new constitutional framework also
gave rise to new general elections,
held in July 2000. Chávez was elected
to a six-year term by approximately
3.8 million votes, 60 percent of the
valid ballots cast, out of an
electorate of some 10 million.
His successive electoral victories --
the elections that put him in office
and the approval of his pet project,
the constitution -- came as evidence
of the decline of the social-democrat
and Christian-democrat politicians who
had governed the country in the 40
years previous.
Chávez's bases of support consist
mainly of the lower income sectors,
and his administration has put the
spotlight on their plight. The middle
class, meanwhile, has engaged in
unprecedented activism against his
government.
Official figures indicate that 45
percent of the nearly 26 million
Venezuelans are poor -- with 18
percent living in extreme poverty --
while 47 percent are considered
members of the different strata within
the middle class.
Chávez supporters were until 2001 the
sole protagonists of the massive
political rallies that took place in
cities throughout Venezuela, but in
January 2002 big anti-government
marches emerged as a counterweight.
One of the opposition's largest
demonstrations came on Apr. 11, 2002,
dispersed amidst gunfire that claimed
the lives of 18 people. General unrest
ensued, including a short-lived coup
staged by a sector of the opposition
movement and dissident military
officers that put Chávez out of power
for two days.
Now, more marches are announced for
Wednesday, when the political
opposition coalition, known as the
Democratic Coordinator, plans to
present the national electoral
authorities with the 2.7 million
signatures gathered in February to
request a recall referendum on Chávez's
mandate.
”Many people react to Chávez not as
they would a political adversary but
rather as if he were a personal
enemy,” commented sociologist Tulio
Hernández, in response to IPS's
request for an overview of the
political situation.
For Venezuelan society, ”the great
Chávez legend is the visibility he
gave the poor and the excluded, who
adopted him as a leader and maintain
poverty as the major issue yet to be
resolved in Venezuela,” Teodoro
Petkoff, a socialist theorist and
newspaper editor, told the foreign
media here.
”The president is the one who truly
is concerned about us,” Iraima García,
a homemaker from a working-class
neighbourhood in southwest Caracas,
told IPS as she left a government
subsidised market.
Vice-President José Vicente Rangel
said in a conversation with IPS,
”There has not been a leader in
recent times in Venezuela with greater
sensitivity to the issue (of poverty)
than President Chávez.”
In the fight against poverty,
”Venezuela shows a slight
improvement, but remains in 69th
place, out of 175 countries, in the
Human Development Index,” noted
Antonio Molpeceres, representative
here for the United Nations
Development Programme, which publishes
the index annually.
As far as compliance with the
poverty-reduction goals established by
the U.N. Millennium Summit in 2000,
Molpeceres believes the country has
worked ”very diligently in reducing
the infant mortality rate and in
increasing women's access to education
and to the labour market.”
Nevertheless, ”Venezuela suffers
stagnation or backsliding in the areas
of poverty, malnutrition and universal
access to primary education,” he
noted.
In the past four months, the
government has launched programmes for
subsidised food in some cities, an
adult literacy plan and a basic
medical attention campaign with the
support of Cuban health professionals.
The impacts of these programmes have
not yet been quantified.
Unemployment has risen from 11.3
percent of the economically active
population in1998, to 14.6 percent in
2000, and now reaches 20 percent,
according to government statistics.
More than half the country's labour
force works in the informal economy,
where most are considered
underemployed.
Studies conducted by economists
opposed to the Chávez government show
that the average Venezuelan income
fell 25 percent in the past five
years, and that inflation, which was
just 13 percent in 2001, reached 31
percent in 2002, and already topped 17
percent in the first seven months of
this year.
Another social indicator on the
decline is that of personal safety.
The number of homicides per year
averaged 7,000 in the late 1990s,
nearly 8,000 in 2001, and more than
9,000 in 2002. So far this year there
have been 6,000 murders. Experts fear
the national total for 2003 will be a
record 12,000.
Insecurity and unemployment are the
two leading problems cited by
respondents in opinion polls,
alongside the high cost of living and
the political crisis.
The polling firms Datanálisis,
Consultores 21 and others, run by
members of the political opposition,
show that at least two out of three
people consulted said they would vote
against Chávez in a recall
referendum.
The results of surveys conducted by
independent polling firms, or even by
those aligned with the government,
have not yet been released.
Carlos Correa, of the local human
rights group Provea, told IPS, ”Chávez
embodies a vast consensus about the
need for transformation, and the 1999
constitution includes an important
catalogue of human rights, but
institutional weakness has not been
reversed in order to guarantee those
rights.”
The president and his backers blame
this continued weakness on the
resistance to change expressed by the
traditional sectors of power, like the
business community, labour unions,
state bureaucracy, the former
political class, foreign interests,
the privately owned media and a part
of the Roman Catholic Church
hierarchy.
Chávez and his allies point out that
representatives of these groups and
part of the armed forces were the ones
behind the coup that temporarily
ousted Chávez in April 2002. The
president regained power as a result
of the pressure from his supporters,
who staged massive protests, and from
the constitutionalist ranks of the
military.
”These have been three years of
developing a project amidst
difficulties, of continued struggle on
behalf of the excluded amidst
incomprehension and adversity. No
government has had to overcome
sabotage to the extent that this one
has,” lawmaker Nicolás Maduro, of
the governing MVR, said in comments to
IPS.
The difficulties afflicting the
government's social programmes, but
especially the country's economic
setbacks, are blamed by the governing
party on the resistance staged by the
private sector associations,
particularly the failed coup d'état
and the 63-day general strike that
began Dec. 2, 2002, bringing the
country to it knees.
The strike, which practically shut
down the oil industry, which is
Venezuela' leading source of revenues,
caused losses estimated at 9.0 billion
dollars (nine percent of gross
domestic product) and caused a record
29-percent economic decline in the
last semester. Economic forecasts are
that this year will close out with a
recession of more than 10 percent.
With this as the backdrop, neither of
the blocs in the rivalry for power is
making the slightest concession.
Parliament, divided almost equally
between the governing party and the
opposition, was unable to designate
the five member of the National
Electoral Council, prompting the
Supreme Court to step in, and announce
that it will select the members of the
council.
The opposition wants the
”revocatory” referendum to be the
definitive battle, and aims to hold
the vote this year, because next year
it would be jumbled in amongst
regional and municipal elections.
Furthermore, if the referendum is held
when Chávez has only two years of his
term left, there will be no chance of
holding early elections.
Vice-President Rangel would simply
serve out the rest of the term.
Human rights activist Correa says he
fears that ”polarisation has led to
a Manichean (black and white) take on
the situation.”
”On a scale of zero to 100, one
sector of the country gives zero to
the president and the other gives him
100,” says Correa.
”There is no more time for
redirecting the policies or building
consensus,” said political scientist
Carrasquero.
”The time has come to balance the
accounts,” he said.
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