Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 17, 2009 Editorial
The Venezuelan Referendum to amend five Articles of the country’s Constitution to grant the president, mayors, local councillors, legislators and governors unlimited bids for re-election was held last Sunday. Monitored by some one hundred international observers, it was conducted without any major incidents.
The major focus was to decide whether the two-term limit on Presidential terms should be maintained or abolished. The votes were tabulated before the night was over, and the verdict is in: Chavez has won, and he can seek re-election when his present term expires in 2013; and for that matter, as many times again thereafter.
The opposition has accepted the results, which gave Chavez’s PSUV or Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela, 54 percent of the seventy percent of the Venezuelan eligible voters who turned out: “We’re democrats. We accept the results,” said Opposition Leader Omar Barboza.
Castro was the first to offer felicitations: “Dear Hugo, congratulations for you and for your people for a victory that, by its size, is impossible to measure.” What are we to make of Chavez’s victory?
For one, it is sure to reopen the old debate between those who see “democracy” confined to its procedural aspect of making decisions through the ballot box as vitiating substantive aspects, such as the need for the “other side – the opposition – to be heard.
This is especially true when the opposition can point to the advantages that incumbency offers a party or individual that wants to continue in office at all costs. It has been alleged, for instance, that the employees of many government corporations, such as the largest oil company, were mobilized to get out the pro-Chavez votes.
However, Chavez can point to his defeat when the same proposition was placed before the electorate back in December 2007, and to the gains made by the opposition in regional elections as evidence of a vibrant democracy in Venezuela.
It was felt that those gains were occasioned by the very high levels of crime, inflation, and widespread corruption perceived in many of the people surrounding Chavez.
He can also point out that his latest victory was achieved in the additional face of further challenges faced by his regime, precipitated by the collapse of oil prices from US$147 to US$40 a barrel. He must be doing something right.
One thing that he has done right was to radically pare down the changes proposed in the referendum from his previous outing in 2007 to make it a referendum on his personal leadership. And even his critics have conceded that the opposition has not demonstrated that they can field a leader to match the popularity of Chavez.
Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, one of the region’s most moderate and diplomatic leaders, is full of praise for Chávez: “Chávez is without a doubt Venezuela’s best president in the last 100 years,” he told Germany’s Der Spiegel last year.
The praise is based on solid accomplishments. According to the UN’s Economic Council for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), not known for its political sympathies for Chávez, Venezuela is “an essential driver in the reduction of poverty in Latin America.”
Poverty in Venezuela since 2003 has dropped from fifty-one per cent to twenty-one per cent, and extreme poverty has dropped from 25 per cent to seven per cent. This has been accomplished with over US$700 billion that a buoyant oil market brought in over the last decade.
Many predict that the inevitably rockier road ahead may expose the contradictions of the Socialist “Bolivarian” Revolution that Chavez has vowed to consummate after the “yes” vote. Sceptics point to the inducements for dictatorial behaviour if challenges are mounted under future hardships to a regime that has the courts, the legislature and the election council all under the influence of a man who can now become President for life.
However, while we believe that the concerns of the opposition are justified about the future of their country, they have only themselves to blame. They did not build on their recent success, and allowed Mr Chavez to seize control of the election agenda.
They will have to do better if they want to head off Venezuela’s man on horseback and return from the political wilderness.
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