Introduction
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: 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.
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.
Historical Legacy
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.
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 socially
polarized but political power
was monopolized by two or three parties who competed for the support of
competing factions of the ruling elite and the US Embassy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Institutional Configuration
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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 institutional bases to contest the powerful socio-economic advances
of the Chavez government and to mount an aggressive electoral campaign.
Social Dynamics and the
Presidential Campaign
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.
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.
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.
Chavez on the other hand is highlighting his social accomplishments, 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.
The Correlation of Forces: International,
Regional, National and Local
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 programmatic promises
and the incompetent and inefficient implementation of those policies by local
officials.
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
Electoral Outcome
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 fear 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 consumption 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 recoveries 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.
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 local and state
level: 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 demonstrators
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.
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.
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.
