[News] Venezuelan Opposition “Consultation”: Playing Alone and Losing
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Jul 19 11:06:14 EDT 2017
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/19/venezuelan-opposition-consultation-playing-alone-and-losing/
Venezuelan Opposition “Consultation”: Playing Alone and Losing
by Ricardo Vaz <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/ricardo-vaz/>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/Sunday, July 16, was a significant day in Venezuela’s political
history. The right-wing opposition MUD, backed by the United States,
threw all its weight behind a “consultation” that they hoped would show
that their coup attempts had a formidable public backing and trigger the
“zero hour” of a new phase that would lead to the removal of the
Bolivarian government. In the end the stunt backfired, leaving the
opposition more or less stranded. The real surprise was the show of
force from chavismo, which went out on the streets to rebuke the
opposition’s stunt and take part in a dry-run for the July 30
Constituent Assembly elections./
The opposition “plebiscite”, or “referendum”, which in reality was
nothing more than a non-binding “consultation” without any legal status,
was predicted as a major political earthquake that would instantly
change the country’s landscape. Maria Corina Machado, one of the most
extreme opposition leaders, likened
<https://twitter.com/MariaCorinaYA/status/886713522876547072> it to the
destruction of the Berlin wall, Mandela being elected or the toppling of
Saddam Hussein (no subtlety there!).
The process would have been laughed into oblivion had it taken place
anywhere else. No electoral records were used, expired documents were
accepted and there was nothing stopping people from voting more than
once <https://twitter.com/marxistJorge/status/886755416495067136>. There
was no monitoring and in the end all the evidence was burned, so no
audit was possible. As for the ballot, it had 3 questions
<https://www.laizquierdadiario.cl/El-plebiscito-de-la-MUD-una-maniobra-para-objetivos-reaccionarios>
to be answered yes/no: whether people rejected the upcoming Constituent
Assembly, whether they called the armed forces to intervene (i.e. a
coup) and whether all public powers should be renewed, free and fair
elections held, and a national unity government formed to restore order.
_(1)_
The final result of 7,186,170 votes falls short of the opposition’s
total in the 2015 legislative elections, and unlike what Henrique
Capriles says, it would not be enough to recall
<http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/oposicion/capriles-hoy-fuera-revocatorio-nicolas-maduro-seria-revocado_193546>
Maduro, who received 7,587,579 votes in the 2013 presidential election,
even with all the manipulation of figures _(2)_. It also fell way short
of not-so-wise predictions of 11M (Capriles
<http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20170715/424120875521/capriles-espera-que-11-millones-de-venezolanos-participen-en-el-referendum.html>)
or even 14M votes (AD leader Negal Morales
<http://elsiglo.com.ve/2017/07/11/esperan-que-14-millones-de-venezolanos-participen-en-consulta-popular-del-16j/>)!
And it is worth mentioning that with 2000 voting centres and 14000
booths, this vote total would imply that every centre was full for 9
straight hours with a new vote roughly every 65 seconds. Given that the
process implies walking up to the booth, showing ID, writing the name
down on the electoral register, receiving the ballot, going to the booth
and filling it, folding it, putting it in the box and walking away, this
number raises a few eyebrows. And that is excluding people like Lilian
Tintori who had to make a little speech
<https://twitter.com/i/web/status/886679632984068098> before voting!
It is hard to understand the over-the-top statements of opposition
officials and media. The turnout, while significant, was smaller than in
previous elections, way smaller than the outlandish predictions, and
that is giving a pass to all the dubious number manipulations. The
demands have been heard for weeks and were echoed by leading figures
even before the “results” were tallied. The entire show was irrelevant
because “victory” had been pre-announced, and the corresponding massive
chavista participation in an electoral dry-run (see below) was surely
not expected. Jorge Martín summarised
<https://www.marxist.com/venezuela-july-opposition.htm> the current
crossroads for the Venezuelan opposition:
“We can therefore say that the opposition “referendum” backfired. At
the time of writing, the opposition leaders have not yet come out to
say what are the next steps they intend to take. Their rhetoric
before July 16 was fiery. The consultation was to be the “zero hour”
for a national uprising and the removal of the government before the
July 30 Constituent Assembly elections. They might still try that,
but now it looks less likely that they will achieve any such thing.
Of course they will not stop trying. Both Spain and the US are
already mulling over the idea of sanctions against Venezuela
(perhaps targeted at selected officials) “if the Constituent
Assembly goes ahead.”
At a press conference on Monday the opposition announced a “civic
strike” for Thursday, and that they would be nominating new supreme
court justices on Friday, whatever that means. This is a far cry from
the premonitions that the end of the “dictatorship” was near, and we
will have to wait and see how the opposition intends to escalate further.
*The Cubans are coming*
A common theme amongst the Venezuelan upper classes and plain idiots
(these two groups overlap very often) is this idea that chavismo’s
ultimate goal is to turn the country into their hell-on-earth propaganda
version of Cuba, or even that it is the Cubans who are running the show
<http://peru21.pe/cultura/henrique-capriles-nicolas-maduro-fue-cuba-recibir-ordenes-su-jefe-2128380>.
Opposition leader Julio Borges
<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40624313> said that “We
don’t want to be Cuba”, while “patriot” _(3)_ Oscar Perez
<http://www.elpais.com.co/mundo/reaparecio-el-piloto-oscar-perez-y-advirtio-una-segunda-fase-para-rescatar-a-venezuela.html>
said that holding the Constituent Assembly means handing the country
over to the Cubans.
It must have taken all the opposition’s collective common sense to omit
“Cuba” from the ballot. The media often tries to omit the more
embarrassing aspects of the Venezuelan opposition, but the waving of the
Cuban bogeyman is quite prevalent for the right-wing in Venezuela, and
Latin America in general.
Several right-wing former leaders came to Venezuela for the occasion, as
“observers”. People like Andres Pastrana and Jorge Quiroga, with
enviable resumes of corruption and human rights abuses, flew down to
lecture others on democracy. The most memorable moment was undoubtedly
this tweet by former Mexican president Vicente Fox:
Diosdao Cabello, Yow’r the one behind Dictator Maduro, You’r the
killer, you torture, your hands’r full blood, You’ll meet Halle
Court. Prepare
One can only wonder why he is addressing Diosdado Cabello, a leader of
the PSUV, in English. And it is anybody’s guess what a “Halle Court” is.
If Fox wants to showcase his multilingual usefulness to his imperial
masters he should install a spell-checker on his phone.
*Staggeringly dishonest media*
The coverage of Sunday’s events in the mainstream press had all the
usual bias
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/17/venezuela-protests-death-thousands-vote-unofficial-referendum>
and dishonesty <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40624313>.
Rather than report the event for what it was: a non-binding consultation
with no records, no monitors and no control on people voting more than
once, the media just ran with the line that this was a big show of
support that shook the government and refer to the event like it was a
legitimate electoral process.
More than that, they resorted to their usual tactic of /“Maduro said”/
to try and discredit the other point of view. So instead of this being a
popular consultation with no verification or binding status, it was a
poll that /“Maduro said was meaningless”/. This is akin to, for example,
the US Food and Drug Administration finding something wrong with Burger
King and the company making a “Trump does not like our burgers”
publicity stunt.
As always, nobody can quite compete with the New York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/world/americas/venezuelans-vote-on-measures-devised-to-weaken-maduro.html>
when it comes to dishonest reporting. The NYT starts by announcing that
“Venezuelans Rebuke Their President by a Staggering Margin”. Imagine
that… Anti-government supporters go to an anti-government initiative
and, believe it or not, they “vote” against the government! Next they
will be asking about the right of return of Palestinian refugees at a
Zionist convention and be surprised at the /staggering/ results.
The NYT follows this with a litany of falsehoods and distortions that
would merit an entire article on their own. It says that the 1999
constitution has a provision authorising this kind of consultation (it
does not), that the Constituent Assembly will do away with elections (it
will not) and that Maduro will “appoint” “handpicked” members to it
(they will be elected). The article also mentions that the government
has postponed /every/ election since the December 2015 legislative
elections, but in fact only /one/ poll was scheduled since then. That
was the regional/governor elections that were due to take place last
year and were postponed because they conflicted with the opposition
recall referendum process, being finally set for December 2017. The NYT
also misleads its readers by saying that the third question on the
opposition consultation was about “free elections to pick a new
“national unity government””, when in fact the question
<https://www.laizquierdadiario.cl/El-plebiscito-de-la-MUD-una-maniobra-para-objetivos-reaccionarios>
mentions a “national unity government” /now/, to “restore constitutional
order”, and free elections /later/. The key is in the name. “National
unity” governments are usually not elected…
*Chavista response*
Simultaneous to the opposition consultation, the Venezuelan electoral
authorities ran a dry-run for the July 30th Constituent Assembly
elections, to test the process and help voters familiarise themselves
with the voting machines. This turned out to be a chavista show of
force, with queues forming from early morning and the voting deadline
extended in a few places. Photo galleries attest to this large
mobilisation (see here
<http://albaciudad.org/2017/07/en-fotos-miles-de-personas-participan-en-el-simulacro-para-la-constituyente/>,
here <http://www.avn.info.ve/node/403576> or here
<https://www.facebook.com/lucia.zerpa/posts/10154940806149426>).
The mainstream mostly ignored or downplayed the pro-government
mobilisation, but some outlets stumbled on the pitfalls of their
one-sided coverage. Spain’s El País
<https://www.facebook.com/ManosFueradeVenezuela/posts/1795991100430047>
published photos of people who were clearly chavistas, with the caption
/“chavistas were queuing to vote in the opposition consultation”/. This
was beyond ridiculous because people had banners supporting the
Constituent Assembly, so the inconvenient photos were deleted and the
blame assigned to EFE Agency.
Even with all the hardships and months of opposition political violence,
the chavista bases have made it clear time and again that they are not
going to sleepwalk into an opposition coup and have seized the
Constituent Assembly as an opportunity to strengthen the gains of the
Bolivarian Revolution and radicalise even further. Whether these
impulses will be able to overcome the more conciliatory sectors of
chavismo and the concessions to “patriotic businessmen” remains to be seen.
What is clear is that the opposition is not where it hoped it would be
by now. With the exception of a rogue state’s attorney and a handful of
opportunist former chavista officials, trying to position themselves as
a “third way”, the opposition’s campaign has failed to cause breaks
inside chavismo. Despite the constant appeals for a military coup, they
have also not caused any movement inside the armed forces. And most
importantly, they have not made significant inroads in getting the
popular classes on their side, not even in getting them to demobilise
_(4)_. The upcoming Constituent Assembly is therefore a golden
opportunity to strike a serious blow to the coup-plotters and their
imperial backers.
*Notes*
(1) In retrospect, the opposition might also have tried to frame this
consultation as a vote for their “national unity” government, assuming
they could ever agree on one. The US, its allies and the media might
have started referring to it as the “legitimate representative of the
Venezuelan people”, like they did with Syria. A few dozen puppets,
nominated by the backers of the Syrian war (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey,
etc), living in Turkey, chose a “government” which was referred to as
the “legitimate representative…” for a while, before it became clear
that nobody cared about it.
(2) Perhaps aware of Maduro’s total, the opposition claimed the 7.1M
corresponded to 95% of total ballots, and later came out with the total
convenient figure of 7.6M. One wonders how a total can be updated after
the ballots are burned
<http://www.lechuguinos.com/mud-incendio-actas-plebiscito/>. However,
given that they claimed that 98.4% voted “Yes”, because 100% would not
be as respectable, this brings the total of “Yes” votes to 7.48M, again
below Maduro’s 2013 total!
(2b) On Monday night, PSUV leader and mayor of Libertador Jorge
Rodríguez revealed <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKPJJe3dSIE> a phone
conversation between two opposition leaders in Aragua who openly talked
about cooking the numbers and adding 50.000 to the total for the state.
He also claimed, but did not provide evidence, that the 7M+ VOTES did
not correspond to the same number of VOTERS, but that the opposition was
counting every voter 3 times, since the ballot had 3 questions. So the
event would have had only around 2.5M voters and the opposition revealed
the total number of “Yes” votes.
(3) On June 27 Oscar Perez stole a police helicopter, fired weapons and
threw grenades at government buildings, and yet the Guardian
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/28/venezuela-helicopter-attack-oscar-perez-rumors>
referred to him as a “patriot” or a “government plant”!
(4) It is hard to convince the poor and working-class that you have
their best interests at heart when your foot-soldiers are setting people
on fire
<https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjluYqZoZHVAhWL8RQKHXfmDD4QFggtMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telesurtv.net%2Fenglish%2Fnews%2FVenezuelan-Youth-Burned-for-Being-Chavista-Dies-from-Injuries-20170604-0011.html>
because they /look/ chavista.
/This article originally appeared in Investig’action
<http://www.investigaction.net/>. /
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