The Implications and Explanation of Venezuela's Recall Election.

Everyone around the world who knew about the ongoing crisis in the Bolivarian Republic understood full well that this election was going to be a big event.  It would be one of a few events, along with the 2002 coup d’etat and the winter ‘02/’03 business lockout, that showed the conflict of Chávez’s term in the Fifth Republic.  Due to several inherencies of the ongoing events, the implications of this recall are a whole lot greater than merely tension over a national event.  The referendum has the potential for far-reaching effects.  

The Implications and Explanation of Venezuela’s Recall Election.

It was obvious to everyone that the Venezuelan referendum was going to be an important event for Venezuelans and for the world. However, the stunning election results have the potential of generating much greater impacts.

To fully understand what a fair landslide victory for No means for the political crisis, we must first understand the deep-rooted nature of the Venezuelan crisis, namely the conflicting holistic views that are in play between Chavez supporters and opponents.

Let’s begin with the opposition. Their worldview is something like the following

For forty years, parties COPEI and Acción Democrática, handed over power to one another in American electoral style. Their rule was plagued by corruption and inequality, which led to the rise of Chavez.

However, his goals in office turned out to be quite sinister, his policies became very inefficient and corrupt; his motives became ever more authoritarian and communist. The common Venezuelans, who voted for Chavez at first, began to notice this phenomenon, and most of them now side with the opposition. Now Chavez has a small 30% base of those in hapless poverty, directly benefiting from some of his spending, and those indoctrinated in his pro-communist ideology. Everyone else wants him out.

Chávez had further proved he was not a democrat by his opposition to having early elections, as demanded widely in 2002, even when the people of Venezuela went on strike for two months for that demand. Chávez forced a rebellion against his rule as a result of the discontent from his policies. The supportive elements of the military, however, were able to crush the rebellion and bring Chávez back to power in a couple of days.

The people had one last chance, to use the constitutional recall option, with international observers, to make sure they get a fair chance when Venezuelans vote overwhelmingly against him. Even Venezuelans scared of Chávez would vote freely and secretly against him without being intimidated. The referendum would to show the world once and for all that Chávez is incredibly unpopular.

Now let’s hear the story Chávez supporters would tell about the situation.

Chávez came to power because of the problems that plagued the Fourth Republic. He tried to reform the political process and restructure policies, in what he described as his peaceful and democratic “Bolivarian Revolution”. He used popular referendums to scrap the old constitution, implement the Bolivarian constitution, and called on fresh elections afterwards. Between 1999 and 2001, Chávez and his allies won some 6 elections, including the two constitutional referendums and the elections for the National Assembly. The policies of Chávez strongly alienated the traditional oligarchy in Venezuela and their allies in Washington who were seeking to increase neoliberal free trade policies in the hemisphere.

The commercial media, owned by the anti-Chávez oligarchs began a disinformation campaign, accusing him of absurdities not backed up by any evidence. The social programs that were staffed with Cubans were portrayed as indoctrinating Venezuelans with socialist ideology. The allies of the Bolivarian Constitution that were appointed to the Supreme Court were portrayed as Chávez supporters, because they respected his constitution instead of trying to get rid of it.

As a result of such a media war, the strong opposition to Chávez has expanded beyond the minority oligarchy, but to a good third or so of the country, though nonetheless the more affluent chunk.

The anti-Chávez military staged a coup through which the media lied about what was happening, stating that Chávez resigned. The coup also proved that the opposition didn’t care much about democracy, as they scrapped the constitution, the democratically elected National Assembly, the Supreme Court, and performed door-to-door roundups of Chávez allies and supporters. The oligarchs staged a business lockout, used the media to call portray it as a 90% supported “general strike”, crippled the economy, and blamed the economic downturn on Chávez’s policies. The economy is now recovering strongly, as noted by many international institutions and even neoliberal ones. The referendum idea, which was created by Chávez, would show the world once and for all the reality that Chávez is supported by most of Venezuelans.

Every major policy Chávez carried out was interpreted as differently as night and day, by his supporters and opponents. In terms of the Bolivarian Circles, supporters of Chávez (who are commonly in Bolivarian Circles) regard them as peaceful community organizations that work together with the government on local projects to help better their communities. Opposition supporters, however, view them as pro-Chávez organizing militias packed with Cubans. On the topic of Cuban assistance in the social programs Chávez created, the opposition supporters believe it is for the purposes of Communist indoctrination (citing no evidence other than the Cuban nationality of those who work), meanwhile Chávez supporters regard them as assisting the poor who cannot afford to have a Venezuelan doctor or have a low level of literacy, conducted in exchange for economic petroleum agreements, which make the programs work very well for reasonable costs.

The differences between both sides are incredibly noticeable, completely unlike the parties in any Western democracy. The most significant difference, however, is that concerning their perceived support size, unsurprisingly both Chavistas and anti-Chavistas strongly believe they have the support of a strong majority, with their opponents being a minority.

Consequently, prior to the referendum, Chávez supporters dismissed the opinion polls that showed Chávez was unpopular. They pointed to the fact that there are zero standards for polling in Venezuela, also to the pollsters’ open bias in favor of the opposition, and that they further did not conduct polls in the thick ranchos where the majority of Venezuelans and Chávez supporters reside.

However, as the referendum approached, many opinion polls with credible practices (which were in high demand, considering an election was coming up), started to show. They showed a consensus of a double digit Chávez victory, from 10-25%. The opposition was quick to dismiss these polls (though in many cases these polls were actually conducted by opposition leaders), pointing out that Venezuelans were scared to say what they really felt about Chávez because of possible reprisals. Unfortunately for them, there’s no historical evidence of such actions happening, nor did the opposition claim Venezuelans were scared when polls showed them opposing Chávez.

In any case, it was absolutely clear that both sides knew they were right. They knew that if the referendum was to be fair, there is no way they would lose. They also understood that if they were not to win, than the referendum had to have been fraudulent. Such a militant commitment to ideology was much truer with the opposition than with Chávez supporters. Chávez always promised the opposition a fair referendum if they played by the rules, as early as in 2002, in response to opposition claims for (unconstitutional) early elections. Obviously the results of a fair referendum would produce massive shock for the losing party. It would prove correct the holistic view for the winners, and dismiss the make-believe fantasies generated by the losers.

In the world’s first ever recall election of a head of state, Chávez received his third electoral landslide victory, this time by 16.5 points. After being described as outright unpopular by the private media in Venezuela and the parroting private media of the world, he and his supporters were vindicated in the eyes of the world in a stunning upset for those who were entrenched with the opposition ideology.

On election day, the opposition in “Baghdad Bob” style, claimed victory by citing exit polls conducted in wealthy polling districts. After the Electoral Counsel stated Chavez won decisively, his opponents were quick to claim fraud, citing no evidence other than the internalized belief that it was impossible for Chávez to have such support. Such claims kept the recall from simmering into the second day, though they were eventually dismissed as the electoral observers, including Jimmy Carter and OAS leader Cesar Gaveria deemed the results to be fair. The fervently anti-Chávez bloggster and former NY Times reporter Francisco Toro put it as such on the day after the results.

But it looks very much to me like the government won fair and square. If it didn't, it'll come out in the paper-trail audit, which CNE's Jorge Rodriguez has already agreed to.

If the government did win fair and square, the Coordinadora Democratica has a LOT of explaining to do. In fact, if the government did win fair and square the Coordinadora Democratica leadership has a lot of resigning to do.

In the dawn hours of August 16th, opposition activists claimed that within hours they would announce evidence of “gigantic fraud”. Days later, nothing has been offered up to the observers, though their bitching and moaning was enough for Carter to go ahead with an audit of a small sample of voting stations. The audit option, which would manually recount the paper ballots that each individual put into the ballot box, thus dismissing any myth of computer fraud, was rejected the next day by the same opposition leaders who cried so hard to make sure they get one. They are beginning to understand that in this battle, they have decisively lost. Like the human psychological response to a tragedy or a loss, the opposition supporters began slowly moving from denial to acceptance. They are waking up to an event they knew was impossible to happen.

"The opposition has never demonstrated any particular gift for public relations abroad", Toro continued two days later. "Five years of efforts by the opposition to explain to the world just how brutally nasty, deceitful and dangerous Hugo Chavez is were comprehensively undone on Monday. This is a battle we will not win." Indeed a brilliant description of the kind of legitimacy the referendum brought for the revolution to the people of the world.

The opposition’s rigid, narrow view of Venezuela, as trumpeted in a disinformation campaign throughout the past three years, has taken a devastating and perhaps fatal blow. The opposition has been exposed for the first time as unreservedly wrong, in a way that is completely undeniable, - an internationally recognized landslide electoral victory for the Bolivarian Revolution.

The latest events give great credence to media critics and Chávez supporters, who’ve relentlessly asserted for the last three years that the opposition leaders didn’t really want elections, knowing full well they would lose. That is why they tried to starve the country with the business lockout, lying about it as a “general strike”, it is why they staged a Pinochet-style coup on dictatorial lines.

The implications extend far beyond the colossal effect on Venezuela’s internal affairs. The private media in many countries, including other Latin American states and the US, reported the political crisis from a point of view that was essentially the same as that of the anti-Chávez Venezuelan media. The media in other Latin American nations, with similar oligarchic interests as Venezuela’s media, used its reporting to keep their nations on a path of Fourth Republic–style neoliberal reforms. With the rise of Chávez, other nations began to challenge neoliberalism, observed by the electoral victories of Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Gutierrez in Ecuador, and the popular overthrow of a US-educated right-wing oligarch Gonzalo de Lozada in Bolivia.

The people of the world will accept the results and march on forward to the future. Today, with the public vindication of Bolivarian Revolution seen by the whole world, the referendum could be creating an earthquake-like effect on the political climate in the whole of Latin America and possibly the world. If the events that follow stay peaceful and democratic, with no international meddling in Venezuela, the prospects of the results are huge. The referendum will go down in history as not only the world’s first recall election of a head of state, but also as the jolt that will destroy the illusions created by world’s oligarchs for the world’s people, and the rich nations’ preferred malevolent path of economic development for the poor nations.