Popular wisdom and concern in Venezuela was that the only option open to the opposition here to get rid of President Chávez would be to assassinate him. After trying a coup, a two-month long lockout/strike and finally the legal referendum to remove him from office, killing him seemed to be the only remaining possibility for them to try.
However, in recent days there is movement in another direction.
This Sunday, December 4, elections are scheduled for the unicameral legislature. Chávez is riding high in popularity and his followers are expected to easily maintain control of the congress. Polls show Chavez having the support of up to seventy percent of the population. Those who have finally benefited from the country’s oil money through health, education and housing programs are pleased and waiting to celebrate the yearend holiday season. Popular government-sponsored markets are even scheduled to have the products necessary to make the traditional Christmas “hallaca” available at discount prices. That will include capers, green olives, raisins, chicken, beef and pork.
There are places within the country where opposition leaders have done a good job and would stand to win seats in the congress. In other areas, there is enough concentration of the elite that elections would also be secure. But, in general, the opposition has been looking at a great defeat because of their longstanding ineptness and corruption. So what could they do? Withdraw their candidates and cry foul, which is what they have done. Their next expected move is to seek international intervention because the democratic process is supposedly under attack and in one way or another get Chávez out – out of power and maybe out of the country.
Originally the plan seemed to have been to question the Venezuelan electoral procedures so much that the Organization of American States (OAS) would not approved the process. Briefly, in Venezuela, the voting process is as follows. Electors are thumb-printed when they register to vote. Then at the polls, that print is checked by an automated machine so that no one can vote twice. The person votes through a machine, but is given a printout to verify the selection s/he made. This printout is deposited in a box so that the electronic results can be compared with a paper ballot if fraud is suspected.
All in all, it sounds like a system far superior to that used in most countries, including that of the United States. However, some members of the opposition have continually complained about the use of electronics in the election process. Through the years they manipulated the paper ballots very well and weren’t interested in a change.
Nevertheless a real, but highly improbable, problem arose recently. It seems that one could match the order of the thumbprints with the ballots and discover how a person voted. Opposition leaders made the removal of the thumb-printing process a requirement for their participation. To their surprise, the National Electoral Commission granted their request and the OAS observers continued to be happy with the electoral procedures here. But, knowing that they were going to be defeated royally, the two traditional parties, AD (Accion Democratica, Social-Democrats) and COPEI (Christian-Democrats), said they were withdrawing their candidates anyway.
Vice-president Jose Vicente Rangel said that a foreign embassy was involved in pressuring parties to withdraw. Whether he was right or not, other parties did begin to follow AD and COPEI, although not all. Neither have all the candidates withdrawn their names, even though their own party withdrew.
The fact that the AD party was the leader in this process brought to mind something from Philip Agee’s book, “Inside the Company, CIA Diary.” He mentions that in 1966 the CIA used the party to disseminate a supposedly “secret” document. Are there still ties with the CIA? I don’t know. I just find it interesting that they are pulling out of an election where at least some of their candidates could have won.
What to expect now? Yesterday there were some sporadic explosions in the country including one at the Central Venezuelan University in Caracas. (In regard to student protests, remember that the majority of university students here come from the upper classes). More are expected.
There is also a new word that has crept into the everyday vocabulary in Venezuela and is expected on election day: “guarimba.” It is used to describe a type of chaos sponsored by upper-class hooligans in the streets of Caracas. It is the usual provoking of the police by burning old tires and trash, but carried out by the “well-educated” sectors of society.
Again, the purpose of all this is to show a supposed lack of governability and democratic processes in Venezuela and an attempt to get international intervention. With the help of the national and international media, it might be successful, even though a poll conducted by Latinobarometro (a Chilean firm) said recently that more people in Venezuela consider their country “totally democratic” than any other nation in Latin America. The survey was based on interviews in 18 countries.
The forecast is for “guarimba-plus” to begin at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, the day of the elections. Will it happen? Are weather forecasters always right? I’m just sharing what others have told me.
(You can read other articles by Charlie Hardy at
cowboyincaracas.com or he can be reached at
cowboyincaracas@yahoo.com )
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The Little Prince in Venezuela
Submitted December 6, 2005 - 9:06 pm by Charlie HardyThe king thought he was so powerful that even the planets obeyed his commands. But when the Little Prince asked to see a sunset, he was informed that he would have to wait until 6:40 p.m. because the king only ordered his subjects to do what they would do anyway.
For seven years, the opposition to the government of Hugo Chávez has acted as though they ruled this little part of the universe. One of their current leaders, Maria Corina Machado, even achieved a personal interview in the Oval Office with the God of Wars, George W. Bush.
It should not have been a surprise, therefore, that last week the opposition ordered Venezuelan citizens to attend Mass on Election Day, December 4. That was a Sunday. Of course, many people went to Mass—the same people that go to Mass every Sunday. The opposition even had their television cameras in the churches to show that people went to Mass. Once again, they felt they were in control of the universe.
They also ordered that Venezuelans should not vote in Sunday’s elections and about 75 percent of the registered voters didn’t. That shouldn’t have been surprising—even in the United States about 65 percent of the voters don’t vote in an off-year election. But the next day the two principal opposition newspapers proclaimed on their front pages the 75 percent abstention—another proof that here the opposition rules.
Adding to these two great feats, they had commanded that candidates who were going to lose should drop out of the race before the voters could legally reject them. This gave these politicians an organized way to save face. It also guaranteed the continued possibility of having their pictures and inane complaints about a very popular government in the newspapers for several more years.
To my amazement, however, the opposition forgot to announce that they were going to order it to rain in a large part of the country so that voters would be discouraged to leave their homes and vote. Apparently they forgot to include in the budget sent to the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy the request for a few top-notch meteorologists who could help them in telling Mother Nature what she should do, too.
It should also be noted that in their myopic vision the opposition didn’t notice that (as is the custom) probably 90-95% of the Venezuelan population didn’t go to Mass on Sunday nor did they pay any attention to the fact that over three-and-a-half million people didn’t obey their command to not vote.
As the Little Prince said as he left the king, “Adults are very strange.”
Fortunately the election took place without a great amount of physical violence, the largest exception being the explosion of an oil pipeline. But as soon as the election results were announced, Ms. Machado fired some verbal shots at the Venezuelan election commission, even though international observers said they had done a good job. Machado appears to be the highest-ranking representative of the United States government in Venezuela. Her “non-governmental organization,” SUMATE, is one of many anti-government groups in Venezuela that have received funds from the National Endowment for Democracy.
Having made these comments about the opposition, some remarks about the parties that support Chávez are also in order. Let’s face it: they did a miserable job. Three-and-a-half million votes is nothing to laugh at, but Chávez wanted ten million.
To many people, the leaders of these parties are becoming like the geographer that the Little Prince encountered. He described the mountains, rivers and oceans but never visited any of them. The same is happening with many of these politicians. They are more concerned about staying in office than they are with serving the people and truly staying in touch with them. Their constituents have become votes and not human beings.
Chávez had and still has a great loyal following, but one repeatedly hears criticism of those who claim to be political party leaders. Chávez won the referendum against him, not because of the political parties, but because of the grass root efforts without party affiliation. Yet, many of those who worked hard for his staying in office have been excluded from more political participation. Many of these grass root leaders are strong and aren’t going to tolerate this, but many others may just throw in the towel because of exhaustion.
The Little Prince asked the geographer why he didn’t count flowers and the geographer replied because they are ephemeral. In a certain sense he was correct, but that didn’t mean that flowers were not important on the face of the earth. The same could be said of human beings.
I think of a barrio youth in the barrio where I lived, who said to a reporter, “To many people, we are the shit of Caracas. But remember that shit is also fertilizer. And from this shit you are going to see some beautiful flowers someday.” I have seen that come true. The “pro-Chávez” politicians had better take note of these flowers, ephemeral or not.
What will happen next? Expect continued efforts by the opposition to say that Venezuela has an authoritative government, and that while winning election after election, Chávez is not governing democratically.
In the U.S., you might see President Bush looking a little more tired. Together with his other problems, I think he must wake up in the White House day after day full of envy for that little prince, Chávez, whose popularity in Venezuela and throughout the world has never been higher. He might even have nightmares recalling the over forty-thousand people packed into the stadium in Argentina cheering Chávez—a feat he could never pull off anywhere in the world.
But President Bush probably won’t let such an event bother him too much. He is still in command of the universe. Or, didn’t you realize? He is the person who orders the sun to rise and set each day.
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