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<h1><small>Venezuelan Elections: a Choice and Not an Echo</small></h1>
<span class="small">10.04.2012 <b>::</b> <a
href="http://petras.lahaine.org/?cat=2"
title="View all posts in Latin America" rel="category tag">Latin
America</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1912">http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1912</a><br>
<br>
</span>
<div class="pret_art"><b>Introduction:</b> On October 7th, Venezuelan
voters will decide whether to support incumbent President Hugo Chavez
or opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. The voters will
choose between two polar opposite programs and social systems:</div>
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<p>Chavez calls for the expansion of public ownership of the means of
production and consumption, an increase in social spending for welfare
programs, greater popular participation in local decision-making, an
independent foreign policy based on greater Latin American integration,
increases in progressive taxation,the defense of free public health and
educational programs and the defense of public ownership of oil
production. In contrast Capriles Radonski represents the parties and
elite who support the privatization of public enterprises, oppose the
existing public health and educational and social welfare programs and
favor neo-liberal policies designed to subsidize and expand the role
and control of foreign and local private capital. While Capriles
Radonski claims to be in favor of what he dubs “the Brazilian model” of
“free markets and social welfare”, his political and social backers, in
the past and present, are strong advocates of free trade agreements
with the US, restrictions on social spending and regressive taxation.
Unlike the US, the Venezuelan voters have a choice and not an echo: two
candidates representing distinct social classes, with divergent
socio-political visions and international alignments. Chavez stands
with Latin America, opposes US imperial intervention everywhere, is a
staunch defender of self-determination and supporter of Latin American
integration. Capriles Radonski is in favor of free trade agreements
with the US, opposes regional integration, supports US intervention in
the Middle East and is a diehard supporter of Israel. In the run-up to
the elections, as was predictable the entire US mass media has been
saturated with anti-Chavez and pro-Capriles propaganda, predicting a
‘victory’ or at least a close outcome for Washington’s protégé.</p>
<p> The media and pundit predictions and propaganda are based entirely
on selective citation of dubious polls and campaign commentaries; and
worst of all there is a total lack of any serious discussion of the
historical legacy and structural features that form the essential
framework for this historic election.</p>
<p><b>Historical Legacy</b></p>
<p> For nearly a quarter of a century prior to Chavez election in 1998,
Venezuela’s economy and society was in a tailspin, rife with
corruption, record inflation, declining growth, rising debt, crime,
poverty and unemployment.</p>
<p> Mass protests in the late 1980’s early 1990’s led to the massacre
of thousands of slum dwellers, a failed coup and mass disillusion with
the dual bi-party political system. The petrol industry was privatized;
oil wealth nurtured a business elite which shopped on ‘Fifth Avenue,
invested in Miami condos , patronized private clinics, for face-lifts
and breast jobs, and sent their children to private elite schools to
ensure inter-generational continuity of power and privilege. Venezuela
was a bastion of US power projections toward the Caribbean, Central and
South America. Venezuela was <i>socially polarized</i> but political
power was monopolized by two or three parties who competed for the
support of competing factions of the ruling elite <i>and </i>the US
Embassy.</p>
<p> Economic pillage, social regression, political authoritarianism and
corruption led to an electoral victory for Hugo Chavez in 1998 and a
gradual change in public policy toward greater political accountability
and institutional reforms which signaled a turn toward greater social
equity.</p>
<p> The failed US backed military-business coup of April 2002 and the
defeat of the oil executive lockout of December 2002 – February 2003
marked a decisive turning point in Venezuelan political and social
history: the violent assault mobilized and radicalized millions of
pro-democracy working class and slum dwellers, who in turn pressured
Chavez “to turn left”. The defeat of the US-capitalist coup and lockout
was the first of several popular victories which opened the door to
vast social programs covering the housing, health, educational and food
needs of millions of Venezuelans. The US and the Venezuelan elite
suffered significant losses of strategic personnel in the military,
trade union bureaucracy and oil industry as a result of their
involvement in the illegal power grab.</p>
<p> Capriles was an active leader in the coup, heading a gang of thugs
which assaulted the Cuban embassy, and an active collaborator in the
petrol lockout which temporarily paralyzed the entire economy.</p>
<p> The coup and lockout were followed by a US funded referendum which
attempted to impeach Chavez and was soundly trounced. The failures of
the right strengthened the socialist tendencies in the government,
weakened the elite opposition and sent the US in a mission to Colombia,
ruled by narco-terrorist President Uribe, in search of a military ally
to destabilize and overthrow the regime from outside. Border tensions
increased, US bases multiplied to seven, and Colombian death squads
crossed the border .But the entire Latin and Central American and
Caribbean regions lined up against a US backed invasion out of
principle, or because of fear of armed conflicts spilling beyond their
borders.</p>
<p> This historical legacy of elite authoritarianism and Chavez
successes is deeply embedded in the minds and consciousness of all
Venezuelans preparing to vote in the election of October 7th. The
legacy of profound elite hostility to democratic outcomes favoring
popular majorities and mass defense of the ‘Socialist president’ is
expressed in the profound political polarization of the electorate and
the intense mutual dislike or ‘class hatred’ which percolates under the
cover of the electoral campaign. For the masses the elections are about
past abuses and contemporary advances, upward social mobility and
material improvements in living standards; for the upper and affluent
middle class there is intense resentment about a relative loss of
power, privilege, prestige and private preferences. The rightwing
elite’s relative losses have fueled a resentment with dangerous
overtones for democracy in case of lost elections and revanchist
policies if they win the elections.</p>
<p><b>Institutional Configuration</b></p>
<p> The rightwing elite may not control the government but they
certainly are not without a strong institutional base of power. Eighty
percent of the banking and finance sector is in private hands, as are
most of the services manufacturing and a substantial proportion of
retail and wholesale trade. Within the public bureaucracy, the National
Guard and military the opposition has at least a minority actively or
passively supportive of the rightwing political groups. The principle
business, financial and landowners associations are the social nuclei
of the right. The rightwing controls approximately one third of the
mayors and governors and over forty percent of the national
legislators. Major U.S. and EU petroleum multi-nationals have a
substantial minority share in the oil sector. </p>
<p> The rightwing still monopolizes the print media and has a majority
TV and radio audience despite government inroads. The government has
gained influence via the nationalization of banks – a 20% share of that
sector, a share of the mining and metal industry and a few food
processing plants and a substantial base in agriculture via the
agrarian reform beneficiaries.</p>
<p> The government has gained major influence among the public sector
employees and workers in the oil industry, social services and the
welfare and housing sector. The military and police appears to be
strongly supportive and constitutionalist. The government has
established mass media outlets and promoted a host of community based
radio stations.</p>
<p> The majority of the trade unions and peasant associations back the
government. But the real strength of the government is found in the
quasi-institutional community based organizations rooted in the vast
urban settlements linked to the ‘social missions’.</p>
<p> In terms of money power, the government draws on substantial oil
earnings to finance popular long term and short term social impact
programs, effectively countering the patronage programs of the private
sector and the overt and clandestine “grass roots” funding by US
foundations, NGOs and “aid” agencies. In other words despite suffering
major political defeats and past decades of misrule and corruption, the
rightwing retains a powerful <i>institutional</i> bases to <i>contest
</i>the powerful socio-economic advances of the Chavez government and
to mount an aggressive electoral campaign.</p>
<p><b>Social Dynamics and the Presidential Campaign</b></p>
<p> The key to the success of the Chavez re-election is to keep the
focus on socio-economic issues: the universal health and education
programs, the vast public housing program underway, the state
subsidized supermarkets, the improved public transport in densely
populated areas. The sharper the national social polarization between
the business elite and the masses, the less likely the rightwing can
play on popular disaffection with corrupt and ineffective local
officials. The greater the degree of social solidarity of wage,
salaried and informal workers the less likely that the right can appeal
to the status aspirations of the upwardly mobile workers and employees
who have risen to middle class life styles, ironically during the
Chavez induced prosperity.</p>
<p> The Chavez campaign plays to the promise of continued social
prosperity, greater and continuing social mobility and opportunity, an
appeal to a greater sense of social equality and fairness; and it has a
bed rock 40% of the electorate ready to go to the barricades for the
President. Capriles appeals to several contradictory groups: a solid
core of 20% of the electorate, made up of the business, banking and
especially agrarian elite and their employees, managers, and
professionals who long for a return to the neo-liberal past, to a time
when police and army and intelligence agencies kept the poor confined
to their slums and the petrol treasury flowed into their coffers. The
second group which Capriles appeals to are the professionals and the
small business people who are fearful of the expansion of the public
domain and the ‘socialist ideology’ and yet who have prospered via easy
credits, increased clientele and public spending. The sons and
daughters of affluent sectors of this class provide the “activists” who
see in the downfall of the Chavez government an opportunity to regain
power and prestige that they pretend to have had before the ‘revolt of
the masses’. Capriles past open embrace of neo-liberalism and the
military coup of 2002 and his close ties to the business elite,
Washington and his rightwing counterparts in Colombia and Argentina
assures the enraged middle class that his promise to retain Chavez
social missions is pure electoral demagoguery for tactical electoral
purposes.</p>
<p> The third group which Capriles does not have, but is vital if he is
to make a respectable showing, is among the small towns, provincial
lower middle class and urban poor. Here Capriles presents himself as a
“progressive” supporter of Chavez social missions in order to attack
the local administrators and officials for their inefficiencies and
malfeasance and the lack of public security – Capriles, hyper-activity,
his populist demagogy and his effort to exploit local discontent is
effective in securing some lower class votes; but his upper class links
and long history of aggressive support for rightwing authoritarianism
has undermined any mass defection to his side.</p>
<p> Chavez on the other hand is highlighting <i>his social
accomplishments</i>, a spectacular decade of high growth, the decline
of inequalities (Venezuela has the lowest rate of inequalities in Latin
America) and the high rates of popular satisfaction with governance.
Chavez funding for social impact programs benefits from a year-long
economic recovery from the world recession(5% growth for 2012), triple
digit oil prices and a generally favorable regional political
environment including a vast improvement in Colombian-Venezuelan
relations.</p>
<p><b>The Correlation of Forces: International, Regional, National and
Local</b></p>
<p> The Chavez government has benefited enormously from very favorable
world prices for its main export-petroleum; it has also increased its
revenues through timely expropriations and increases in royalty and tax
payments, as well as new investment agreements from new foreign
investors in the face of opposition from some US MNC. </p>
<p> Washington, deeply involved in conflicts in oil rich Muslim
countries, is in no position to organize any boycott against Venezuela
one of its principle and reliable petrol providers; its last big effort
at “regime change” in 2002-03,during the “lockout” by senior executives
of the Venezuelan oil company backfired –it resulted in the firing of
almost all US ‘assets’ and the radicalization of nationalist oil policy.</p>
<p> US efforts to ‘isolate’ the Chavez regime internationally has
failed; Russia and China have increased their trade and investment, as
have a dozen other European, Middle Eastern and Asian countries. The EU
recession and the slowdown of the US and world economy has not been
conducive to fostering any sympathy for any restrictions in economic
ties with Venezuela.</p>
<p> Most significantly the rise of center-left regimes in Latin
America, the Caribbean and Central America, has favored increasing
diplomatic and economic ties with Venezuela and greater Latin American
integration.In contrast Obama’s’s backing for the Honduran and
Paraguayan coups and Washington-centered free trade agreements and
neo-liberal policies have gone out of favor. In brief, the
international and regional correlation of forces has been highly
favorable to the Chavez government, while Washington’s dominant
influence has waned.</p>
<p> One of the last Latin American bastions of US efforts to
destabilize Chavez, Colombia, has sharply shifted policy toward
Venezuela,. With the change in regime from Uribe to Santos, Colombia
has reached multi-billion dollar trade and investment agreements and
joint diplomatic and military agreements with Venezuela, signaling a
kind of ‘peaceful coexistence’. Despite a recent free trade agreement
and the continuance of US military bases, Colombia has, at least in
this conjuncture, ruled out joint participation in any US sponsored
military or political intervention or destabilization campaign.</p>
<p> US political leverage in Venezuela is largely dependent on
channeling financial resources and advisors toward its electoral
clients. Given the decline in external regional allies, and given its
loss of key assets in the Venezuelan military and among Colombian
para-military forces, Washington has turned to its electoral clients
.Via heavy financial flows it has successfully imposed the unification
of all the disparate opposition groups, fashioned an ideology of
moderate ‘centrist’ reform to camouflage the far right, neo-liberal
ideology of the Capriles leadership and contracted hundreds of
community agitators and ‘grass roots’ organizers to exploit the
substantial gap between Chavez’s programatic promises and the
incompetent and inefficient implementation of those policies by local
officials.</p>
<p> The strategic weakness of the Chavez government is local, the
incapacity of officials to keep the lights on and the water running. At
the international, regional and national level the correlation of
forces favors Chavez. Washington and Capriles try to compensate for
Chavez regional strength by attacking his regional aid programs,
claiming he is diverting resources abroad instead of tending to
problems at home. Chavez has allocated enormous resources to social
expenditures and infrastructure – the problem is not diversion abroad,
it is mismanagement by local Chavista officials, many offspring of past
clientele parties and personalities. The issue of rising crime and poor
low enforcement would certainly cost Chavez more than a few lost votes
if the same high crime rates were not also present in the state of
Miranda where candidate Capriles has governed for the past four years</p>
<p><b>Electoral Outcome</b></p>
<p> Despite massive gains for the lower classes and solid support among
the poor, the emerging middle class product of Chavez era prosperity,
has rising expectations of greater consumption and less crime and
insecurity; they look to distance themselves from the poor and to
approach the affluent; their eyes look upward and not downward. The
momentum of a dozen years in power is slowing, but mass fears of a
neo-liberal reversion limits the possible electorate that Capriles can
attract. Despite crime and official inefficiencies and corruption,the
Chavez era has been a period extremely favorable for the lower class
and sectors of business, commerce and finance.This year -2012-is no
exception.According to the UN ,Venezuela,s growth rate (5%)exceeds that
of Argentina(2%) Brazil(1.5%) and Mexico(4%).Private consumtion has
been the main driver of growth thanks to the growth of labor
markets,increased credit and public investment.The vast majority of
Venezuelans ,including sectors of business will not vote against an
incumbent government generating one of the fastest economic recovery in
the Hemisphere. Capriles radical rightist past and present covert
agenda could provoke class conflict , political instability , economic
decline and an unfavorable climate for international investors.</p>
<p> Washington is probably not in favor of a post-election coup or
destabilization campaign if Capriles loses by a significant margin. The
popularity of Chavez, the social welfare legislation and material gains
and the dynamic growth this year ensures him of a victory margin of
10%.Chavez will receive 55% of the votes against Capriles 45%.
Washington and their rightist clients are planning to consolidate their
organization and prepare for the congressional elections in December.
The idea is a “march through the institutions” to paralyze executive
initiatives and frustrate Chavez’s efforts to move ahead with a
socialized economy. The Achilles heel of the Chavez government is
precisely at the <i>local</i> and <i>state level</i>: a high priority
should be the replacement of incompetent and corrupt officials with
efficient and democratically controlled local leaders who can implement
Chavez’s immensely popular programs. And Chavez must devote greater
attention to local politics and administration to match his foreign
policy successes: the fact that the Right can turn out a half a million
demonstraters in Caracas is not based on its ideological appeal to a
ruinous, coup driven past, but in its success in exploiting chronic
local grievances which have not been addressed – crime, corruption.,
blackouts and water shortages .</p>
<p> What is at stake in the October 2012 election is not only the
welfare of the Venezuelan people but the future of Latin America’s
integration and independence,and the prosperity of millions dependent
on Venezuelan aid and solidarity.</p>
<p> A Chavez victory will provide a platform for rectification of a
basically progressive social agenda and the continuation of an
anti-imperialist foreign policy. A defeat will provide Obama or Romney
with a trampoline to re-launch the reactionary neo-liberal and
militarist policies of the pre-Chavez era – the infamous Clinton
decade(of the 1990’s) of pillage, plunder , privatization and poverty.
</p>
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