Saturday 15 November 2008, San José, Costa
Rica
VENEZUELA:
Elections Will Put
Chávez to the Test
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, (IPS) -
As if his post were at
stake, Venezuela’s
left-wing President Hugo
Chávez is showing up all
over the country at
election rallies,
caravans, public works
inaugurations,
nationally televised
public events and highly
publicised midnight
calls to his party’s
local offices in remote
towns.
But on Nov. 23, the
almost 17 million
Venezuelans registered
to vote will not be
going to the polls to
elect a new president or
decide an issue put to
referendum. They will be
voting to renew 22 of
the country’s 23 state
governors and 328 of its
335 mayors.
In the last regional
elections, held four
years ago, Chávez
supporters secured 21
state governments and
around 300 city
governments, but opinion
polls and analysts are
forecasting a slightly
modified political map
after the coming
election.
"The opposition has a
sure chance of winning
four states, including
the oil state of Zulia
(in the northwest) and
the industrial state of
Carabobo (in central
Venezuela), and it is
has strong candidates in
four others," Luis León,
director of the
Datanálisis polling
firm, told IPS.
Oscar Schémel, of the
pollster company
Hinterlaces, pointed out
to IPS that "in eight of
the 14 states where
we’ve carried out polls
there is a clear
tendency in favour of
candidates opposed to
Chávez."
For his part, Saúl
Cabrera said that his
firm, Consultores 21,
estimated that
opposition or dissident
candidates could win up
to 10 state governments,
and Nelson Merentes, a
former finance minister
of the Chávez
administration and
currently director of
the opinion polling
company Gis-XXI, said
that official candidates
have "high" chances of
winning in 16 states,
"medium" chances in
four, and "low"
probabilities in only
two.
"If you want to know
what the weak states are
for the government, just
check and see which
places Chávez is
visiting," analyst
Eduardo Semtei, a former
member of the National
Electoral Council,
commented to IPS.
Semtei predicts that the
coming elections will
"correct the statistics,
as the opposition,
backed by 40 percent of
voters, has only eight
to 10 percent of state
and municipal
governments."
"With his tours, Chávez
is going to leave us all
out of a job, because
he’s making our voting
projections redundant,"
León joked, "as in a way
he’s clearly marking
what is happening in
terms of numbers around
the country."
The same pattern is
repeated in the most
hotly disputed states:
in the morning or at
noon Chávez inaugurates
some public work or
grants scholarships or
loans, and the ceremony
is broadcast nationwide,
and in the afternoon he
climbs on a platform
truck to lead a
demonstration or rally
for one of the
candidates for governor
or mayor that he
supports.
"If you’re with me, vote
for…" and he mentions
the name of his
candidate. "Because
what’s at stake here is
the future of the
revolution, of
socialism, of Venezuela,
of the government and
the future of Hugo
Chávez himself," he
repeats to crowds of
ecstatic supporters in
red t-shirts, who cheer
him on with shouts of
"Hey, ho, Chávez won’t
go!"
Chávez "has been trying
to polarise and
radicalise the process,
and he knows he’s the
catalysing element in
that radicalization --
that is, he acts as if
he were the only
candidate in the states
and municipalities,"
León said.
"People distinguish
Chávez from Chavism.
Which is why the
president is focusing
this campaign on himself
and wants to turn the
election into a
referendum. Without that
support, his candidates
would lose by a
landslide," Semtei
observed.
SUPPORT WITH A HIDDEN
AGENDA
Why is the president
making these regional
elections out to be so
critical when he still
has four of the six
years of his second term
to go? IPS asked
political analyst Fausto
Masó.
"Because Chávez wants to
be able to be re-elected
indefinitely, and these
elections are crucial to
achieving that goal," he
responded.
"If Chávez wins, for
example, 20 of the
states at stake and the
opposition is reduced,
then he will immediately
call for an amendment of
the constitution that
will allow him to run
for president again in
2012," said Masó.
According to Semtei, the
government’s strategists
have already prepared
the referendum for such
a reform.
"If, instead, the
opposition wins in eight
or nine states,
including several of the
most populous states,
and secures the most
important cities, then
not only will that
complicate Chávez’s
goal, but also, once his
presidency has a
definite expiration
date, he will face more
and more contenders and
dissidents within his
own party," Masó added.
After he was re-elected
in 2006 with 63 percent
of the vote, Chávez
tried to push through a
broad constitutional
reform that included the
possibility of running
for re-election
indefinitely. The
reforms, however, were
rejected by 51 percent
of the voters in a
referendum last year --
Chávez’s first electoral
setback in a total of 12
elections and
referendums held since
1998.
DISSIDENT VOICES
Between the two extremes
-- government and
opposition -- that have
faced off over the last
decade, certain
dissenting voices have
emerged in the regional
and municipal elections,
presenting alternatives
that move away from
Chavism, and which have
added greater complexity
and variety to the race,
as well as opening up
possibilities to trace a
more diverse political
map.
Dissent was first
sparked when the
governing United
Socialist Party of
Venezuela (PSUV) held
primary elections, and
several regional leaders
broke away from the
party, hurling
accusations of
favouritism or fraud
committed to secure
positions for the
candidates backed by
Chávez.
Chávez, the party’s
president, had, in fact,
reserved the right to
accept the candidates
and select his favourite
out of the three that
took the most votes.
These skirmishes led the
president to break with
two small leftwing
parties that had been
supporting him for a
decade, the Communist
Party (PCV) and Patria
Para Todos (Fatherland
for All - PPT).
Recent polls indicate
that several of the
dissidents have a clear
chance of winning. One
of them is Julio César
Reyes, mayor of Barinas,
capital of the state of
the same name located in
Venezuela’s southwest
plains. Barinas is
Chavez’s home state, and
his brother, Adán Chávez
(PSUV) is running for
governor there, hoping
to succeed their father,
Hugo de los Reyes Chávez.
In Portuguesa, also in
the southwest plains,
the PPT candidate, Bella
Petrizzio, has a chance
of beating PSUV
candidate Wilmar Castro.
And in Guárico, in the
central plains, Lenny
Manuitt, the daughter of
Governor Eduardo Manuitt,
who had left the PPT to
join the PSUV, returned
to her old party and,
according to the polls,
is giving the PSUV
candidate Willian Lara a
good fight.
In the small state of
Trujillo, in the western
Andean region, Octaviano
Mejías won the PSUV
primary, but Chávez
appointed Hugo Cabezas,
who had come in second.
That led Mejías to run
under a combined PPT and
PCV ticket, and he is
doing well in the polls.
Chávez, who has called
several dissidents
"filthy traitors,"
"sell-outs" and
"counterrevolutionaries,"
and the opposition
"conspirators," "vile"
or "imbeciles," has
threatened to throw in
jail anyone who
questions the victory of
his candidates, as he
says his adversaries
"are getting ready to
yell ‘fraud!’ and spur
violence and
destabilisation."
If that were to happen,
he reiterated that "this
revolution is a peaceful
revolution, but it is
armed," and warned that
he will not hesitate to
bring out the tanks in
the streets of Carabobo
or deploy a military
operation in Zulia if
the opposition stages an
uprising to reject the
results.
Dissidents and
opposition candidates
have responded by saying
that these declarations
are a clear sign that
Chávez is closely
following the polls.
More accommodating, the
president said at a
rally Wednesday that "if
the opposition wins in
any state, I’ll be the
first person to
acknowledge" the
victory.
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