[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Venezuela's Fake Democrat

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Venezuela's Fake Democrat

August 14, 2004
 By BERNARD ARONSON 



 

The most important struggle for democracy in the Western
Hemisphere is now playing out in Venezuela, one of Latin
America's oldest continuing democracies, and a leading
supplier of oil to the United States. 

The immediate forum for this struggle is a referendum
tomorrow on whether to recall President Hugo Chávez. Mr.
Chávez - a former army colonel who led a failed coup
attempt in 1992 - was elected on a populist platform in
1998, and, after rewriting Venezuela's Constitution, again
in 2000. 

In an interesting twist, the referendum that could unseat
Mr. Chávez, is, itself, part of the populist restructuring
of Venezuela's democratic institutions that he has carried
out- including creating a unicameral legislature and
renaming the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Nevertheless, when citizen groups petitioned to hold a
referendum, the Chávez-dominated courts and National
Electoral Commission forced them to collect millions more
signatures than necessary - and then to recertify many of
those signatures. While the process dragged on, public
employees who signed the referendum petition were fired,
demoted and denied national identity cards and passports.
Only after pressure from the Organization of American
States and former President Jimmy Carter did the commission
agree to let the referendum proceed. 

There is no question that the struggle in Venezuela is
rooted in the country's past. The corruption, crime,
poverty and inequality under 40 years of rule by two
political parties fueled a wave of popular disgust with
traditional politics and a deep desire for change that
carried Mr. Chávez to the presidency. But the struggle also
marks a shift of sorts, one that highlights disturbing
trends across Latin America. 

Like former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, Mr. Chávez
represents a new breed of Latin autocrat - a leader who is
legitimately elected but then uses his office to undermine
democratic checks and balances and intimidate political
opponents. 

Two months ago, for example, the Chávez-controlled National
Assembly added 11 justices to the Supreme Court, and
changed the requirement for confirmation from two-thirds of
legislators to a simple majority, guaranteeing Mr. Chávez
control of the judiciary. As a result, should Mr. Chávez
lose the referendum, the court is likely to ratify his
stated intention to run for president in the election to
fill his vacancy, even though a disinterested reading of
the Venezuelan Constitution suggests that he would be
ineligible. 

Mr. Chávez's record of subverting democracy doesn't stop
there. Though much of the Venezuelan media remains in
private hands and is clearly allied with the opposition, it
is slowly being strangled by regulations that deny it
access to hard currency. And, whenever Mr. Chávez wishes,
he decrees that all private television and radio stations,
along with the state-owned news media, carry his speeches
live. 

What's more, his government has manipulated the criminal
justice system to thwart political opponents. Henrique
Capriles Radonski, a leader of Justice First, a reformist
political party, and the elected mayor of the Baruta
district of Caracas, languishes in jail on a clearly
fraudulent charge of fomenting a riot. María Corina
Machado, a director of Súmate, a civic group allied with
the opposition, is being prosecuted on charges equivalent
to treason because her organization accepted a grant of
more than $50,000 from the National Endowment for
Democracy, which is financed in part by Congress, to
educate Venezuelans about their voting rights. Yet only one
Venezuelan has been arrested in the killings of more than
25 opposition demonstrators in clashes with supporters of
Mr. Chávez over the last three years. 

The outcome of the referendum remains in doubt because Mr.
Chávez has been spending state oil revenues freely and
registering new citizens and voters en masse. (At the same
time, signers of the recall petition have found their
customary voting places moved at the last minute.)
Moreover, Mr. Chávez retains passionate support among
Venezuela's poor. 

The strength of populist appeal in Venezuela reflects
another shift in Latin America, particularly in the Andean
nations: Dispossessed populations, long locked out of their
nation's economic and political life by class, economic or
racial barriers, are now demanding a political voice. In
Bolivia, last year, violent protests by Aymara Indians,
angry over efforts to export gas through Chile, a longtime
enemy, claimed more than 80 lives and subsided only after
President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada fled the country. 

Like the Bolivian demonstrators, Mr. Chávez's core
supporters barely subsist in the informal economy. They
have been convinced by their would-be leaders, and, often,
by their own experience, that the reforms needed to compete
in the global economy represent a new form of exploitation.


A new agenda is needed that offers upward mobility and
political empowerment to the hemisphere's poor. This would
require not only a deepening of structural economic reforms
and fiscal discipline, but a new focus on giving the poor
title to their land, credits for microenterprise, easing
the transition for small enterprises from the informal to
the formal economy, cracking down on tax evasion and
official corruption, and ending the subsidization of higher
education at the expense of primary and secondary
schooling. 

Sadly, the hemisphere's political leaders, north and south,
have not found a language of political and economic reform
that speaks to the region's impoverished masses -
particularly the indigenous populations - to counteract the
siren song of populism and demagoguery. Nor have they
developed the political tools or the will to confront the
slow strangulation of democratic liberties by elected
leaders such as is now under way in Venezuela. If they
don't do so soon, expect more leaders like Hugo Chávez: men
who campaign to consolidate their power and inveigh against
the oligarchs while their people descend deeper into
poverty. 

Bernard Aronson, assistant secretary of state for
inter-American affairs from 1989 to 1993, works for a
private equity firm that manages investments in Venezuela
and elsewhere. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/opinion/14aronson.html?ex=1093510358&ei=1&en=66b957581a871593


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