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<h1 class="title">In Praise of Chavismo</h1>
<div class="submitted">By <span class="author">Ociel Alí Lopez-
Kalé Blog</span>, <span class="date">December 8th 2015<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11761">http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11761</a></small></small></b><br>
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<p>1. The fact that nearly 7 million Chavistas went out today to
support the government is an amazing reality. With the government
unable to confront the economic war, a self-obfuscating
communication strategy, a leadership that is totally
bureaucratized and isolated, what happened today is a show of
strength by the Chavista grassroots.<br>
<br>
2. Now, that this was not enough to ensure electoral victory is an
obvious political fact that could only have been ignored due to
the leadership’s machine-worship [<em>maquinolatría</em>,
literally: machinolatry] on all levels. Their speeches were
hollow, arrogant masters of the meta-narratives whose collapse
prevented them from seeing the political alienation that has led
them astray. Chavismo’s electoral campaign merely revealed all the
weaknesses of its proto-leaders, incapable of winning a single
vote by themselves. <br>
<br>
3. Now is not the moment for blame. Nicolás is not the only one
responsible. This hegemonic decline could already be seen clearly
when Chávez was in command. If he were alive, he would probably be
witnessing a new setback as well, although we certainly couldn’t
imagine the economic inaction that began even before his death.
There were many R’s [“rectification, revision, relaunching”] and
the results were really non-existent. <br>
<br>
4. But beyond who is responsible, what is in sight today, for the
first time, is not Chavismo, but the neo-opposition. An opposition
that faces the difficult challenge of unifying within itself
everyone from the racist ultra-right to the “reflexive Chavistas”
that today chose to punish the government by not only abstaining
but even by voting for the MUD. Let’s focus on understanding this
subject: there are many within the opposition today who voted for
Chavismo in the last elections. Will they stay there or return to
Chavismo, like the 7% of the electorate that voted against Chávez
in 2010 but returned in 2012? That’s what politics is for. <br>
<br>
5. But no one should fool themselves. That “reflexive Chavismo”
that abstained or voted for the opposition today is nothing less
than proof that those votes in favor of the opposition were in no
way a vote <em>for</em>, but a vote <em>against</em>. And let’s
not lie to ourselves: there are plenty of reasons to vote against.
But moreover, it is a torrential vote that can return to Chavismo
if the opposition shows itself incapable of maintaining the unity
of racist groups who will try to impose their agenda and a popular
vote that will soon demand the economic improvements promised by
the opposition’s campaign. <br>
<br>
6. The central error has been not confronting economic malaise in
a statesmanlike way. The narrative of the “economic war” today
lost the legitimacy it had at the time of the Dakaso [when Maduro
took over the electronics chain Daka, for illegal price gouging].
The few months that remain before the opposition calls a
referendum to recall [Nicolás Maduro] should be dedicated
exclusively to shedding light on the economic situation, although
this is hardly a taboo subject in official speeches at present—not
as taboo as those responsible for the economic situation, who have
not faced the consequences, and who nobody knows why they still
have their positions. Without economic <em>auctoritas</em>, there
will be no confidence in this government, which will collapse
without even putting up a fight. <br>
<br>
7. In the current moment, with the ball in the opposition’s court,
we will see what subjects they put on the public agenda. If the
only points they put on the agenda are to finish off the
government, sabotage it, free Leopoldo [López] and rush into a
recall referendum, the torrential vote of the opposition might
dissipate and return to Chavismo. And the opposition also appears
to lack any plan to escape from the economic crisis, and is now
also jointly responsible for it. <br>
<br>
8. On the contrary, if Chavismo focuses on efficient leaders and
proposes to the country a legislative, but above all a political
agenda, that prioritizes economic and productive decisions and the
defense of social policies, then Chavismo will have the best
chance of winning the recall referendum that we will face in 2016.
But if an injured government only focuses on “taking out” the
people who “got them,” then it will simply be condemned to remain
a minority, or worse still to disappear from the political map. <br>
<br>
9. If one thing is clear, it’s that the Venezuelan people don’t
want any more empty talk. Chávez could shoot the shit and it
worked for him—but the people see right through everyone else. The
people want serious leaders, statespeople, not people making bad
jokes, or political operatives repeating empty speeches, or empty
words. Neither Maduro nor [Diosdado] Cabello seem to point in that
direction—their previous scares did not train them for it. The
tragedy of the present won’t help them if the Chavista people do
not undertake an excruciating process of interpellation, in which
their positions as leaders are obviously under a “state of
suspicion.” Will they be able to reinvent themselves? <br>
<br>
10. The leadership needs to understand well the people’s contempt
for politicking. Any claim to “seize the streets” will not be
recognized by the people unless they can understand why. That is,
unless the opposition implements measures that lead to popular
rejection. Cohabitation implies a political maturity that neither
leaders of the government nor the opposition have. The most
serious will end up winning, and when we say serious, we mean a
leader that can tell the country how to get out of the crisis, not
tells them that the other one is worse. <br>
<br>
11. What has died in the country is political debate as an
ideological debate about “great fundamental truths.” Politics has
been defeated by the economy. The politics that emerged since
2010, according to which I am bad but the other is worse, doesn’t
work for Chavismo. There has not been a single piece of
legislation during the last three legislative periods that is so
“worth it” that we might think we have lost something. What is
lost was already lost since the Assembly lost its ability to do
politics, to legislate and control, to confront the vices
developing in national politics. <br>
<br>
12. The thesis of mediatic impotence continues to ring true.
Getting rid of RCTV and Globovisión didn’t matter. And it doesn’t
matter if we have dozens of public media outlets that no one wants
to watch. Buying print media doesn’t matter. Politics is not in
the media, and much less in those media. This is something that
Chavismo understood from the beginning but which was forgotten by
a leadership that believed that they could govern through bad
television programs. The public media are an embarrassment for
Chavismo, and that’s why people prefer the private media.
Something like this happened to politics on December 6th. The
discourse of loyalty, patriotism, the new man, was trapped by a
lack of certainty in the economic future, and this, far from
implying disloyalty, implies instead the reflexivity of the
popular world. We will need to grasp it if we want to keep up the
fight. <br>
<br>
***<br>
<em>Translated by George Ciccariello-Maher. Originally published
at Kalé: <a
href="http://hablakale.blogspot.com/2015/12/elogio-del-chavismo.html"
title="http://hablakale.blogspot.com/2015/12/elogio-del-chavismo.html"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://hablakale.blogspot.com/2015/12/elogio-del-chavismo.html">http://hablakale.blogspot.com/2015/12/elogio-del-chavismo.html</a></a></em></p>
<p><em><span class="null">Ociel Alí López</span> is a Venezuelan
writer, blogger, lecturer at the UCV in sociology and
communication and co-founder of Avila TV.</em></p>
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