Hugo Chavez notches his fourth straight electoral victory with the promise of accelerating the pace of reforms so as to make the Bolivarian revolution irreversible and put his concept of 21st century socialism into practice.
THE WESTERN MEDIA billed it as the toughest electoral challenge President Hugo Chavez had faced in his political career. Some political pundits even began writing his political obituary. The Venezuelan people were, however, confident about the eventual outcome of the presidential election that took place on October 7. The majority of opinion polls had forecast a decisive victory for the incumbent President, who was running for another six years in office. Despite the spirited show put up by a united opposition, Chavez notched his fourth straight electoral victory, polling more than 54 per cent of the vote. The voter turnout at 81 per cent was the highest in Venezuelas electoral history.
Addressing more than a million of his jubilant supporters from the Peoples Balcony in the Presidential Palace, Chavez said the revolution has triumphed the country of Simon Bolivar, the liberator, reborn. Venezuela will never return to neoliberalism and will continue in the transition to socialism of the 21st century. The capital city of Caracas was blazing with fireworks to celebrate the historic day. Chavez congratulated the opposition on quickly acknowledging the election results. They have recognised the truth. They have recognised the victory of the people, said Chavez. He also struck a conciliatory note, adding that he would include everybody while formulating government policies. I commit to being a better President than I was in the past few years. I extend from here my recognition of all who voted against us, recognition of their democratic weight, he said.
In the 2006 presidential election, Chavez beat his right-wing opponent even more handily, polling 62 per cent of the vote. The opposition was divided at the time. Henrique Caprilles Radonski, the 40-year-old telegenic right-wing candidate this time, tried to position himself as a progressive politician. The entire opposition, 30 parties in all, had united behind him under the banner of the Democratic Unity Roundtable, known by its Spanish acronymMUD.
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), led by Chavez, was formed after the 2006 election. Most of the left-wing parties supporting Chavez had merged into the PSUV. It is now the largest left-wing party in Latin America, with a membership of more than five million. The Venezuelan electorate is sharply polarised as the latest election results have shown. Sections of the middle class, who otherwise would have voted for Chavez, have been perturbed by the rising crime graph and chronic power outages.
The opposition controls most of the media in the country. State-owned television channels have around 5.9 per cent of the viewership, according to recent data gathered by the local affiliate of the United States company Nielsen Media Research International. Major newspapers such as El Nacional and El Universal are also stridently anti-government. Only 12 per cent of the radio services are publicly owned. Most of the privately owned radio stations, which are popular in the country, are controlled by businessmen who have no love lost for Chavez. Despite the facts on the ground, the Western media continue to insist that the media in Venezuela are monopolised by the government and that they had played a key role in ensuring the victory of Chavez.
Unlike previous challengers of Chavez, Caprilles said he would continue with most of Chavezs domestic policies if elected, including providing subsidised food and housing for the poor and increasing access to education and health care. The Western media tried to portray Caprilles as a statesman in the mould of the former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but the average Venezuelan saw through the facade. Caprilles, a scion of a wealthy family, has been a political conservative from a very young age. He had participated enthusiastically in the short-lived U.S.-sponsored coup against Chavez in 2002, and even staged a violent demonstration in front of the Cuban embassy in Caracas. He was a member of the right-wing Catholic Christian group Tradition, Family and Property, which was supportive of the military governments that ruled much of Latin America in the 1960s and the 1970s.
On the campaign trail, Caprilles was at least honest enough to state that he was against Cuban doctors and paramedics working among the poor people in Venezuela. Around 29,000 Cuban doctors are serving in Venezuela. He also said that he was against selling Venezuelan oil at subsidised rates to less developed countries and countries under unilateral American sanctions, such as Iran and Syria. Venezuela has been sending refined crude to these two countries. It now exports a higher proportion of its oil to the U.S. than before. Since 2005, some poor neighbourhoods in the U.S. have been receiving Venezuelan oil aid in the harsh winter months.
At the same time, Venezuela has diversified its oil sales. China, and to a lesser extent India, are the emerging markets for its oil. Chavez has pledged to double the oil exports to Asia in order to reduce the countrys dependence on the U.S. oil market. Venezuela has emerged as the biggest oil producer, overtaking Saudi Arabia. It has the largest proven oil reserves, 18 per cent of the worlds total. When he first came to power in 1999, Chavez along with Muammar Qaddafi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq, had played a key role in ensuring that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) got a high price for oil from the West. Chavez also forced Western oil companies to pay royalties at much higher rates. The West has got rid of Saddam and Qaddafi. The George Bush administration tried its best to oust Chavez in 2002 by orchestrating a coup, but failed. Since then Washington has been adopting less devious methods to remove their nemesis in the region.
For the past two years, the U.S. embassy in Caracas has been working overtime to prop up a credible challenger to Chavez. Secret cables leaked by WikiLeaks show opposition politicians lining up at the U.S. embassy seeking organisational help and funding. On top of the U.S. agenda was finding a candidate who would be able to convince the electorate that there would be no return to the old days when the business elite ruled the roost and the poor were subjected to the whims of international banking institutions. But the leadership of the MUD was heavily loaded with politicians who were avowed supporters of neoliberal policies. A position paper prepared for Caprilles, which was leaked to the media, talked about reintroducing neoliberal policies if he was elected. Among the proposals contemplated were a reduction of food subsidies and the closing down of Mercals, the cooperative stores set up in impoverished areas. Three small parties, part of the MUD coalition, deserted Caprilles on election eve after the revelations. Caprilles claimed that the document had been fabricated by his political opponents.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department seems to have formulated contingency plans to deal with Chavez after his inevitable victory. Patrick D. Duddy, a former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, in a document published by the Council on Foreign Relations, spelt out the options for Washington. If Chavez is re-elected in a process judged acceptably free and fair, the United States should seek to reset the bilateral relationship with an eye to the eventual renewal of high-level communications on areas of mutual interest, the report said. If the election results appear fraudulent or apparently legitimate results are nullified, the United States should encourage international pressure to restore democracy and suspend bilateral business as usual until a legitimate government is restored.
Now that Chavez has won a convincing victory, it will be interesting to see what position Washington will adopt towards him. The Venezuelan President, on his part, seems to have a preference for President Barack Obama. He had joked on the campaign trail that if he were an American, he would vote for Obama. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, while on a recent visit to New Delhi, told this correspondent that Mitt Romney is crazier than George W. Bush.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter recently praised the electoral system in Venezuela as the best in the world. It is similar to the voting system in India. Among the aspects of the electoral system that Carter highlighted was the touchscreen voting system that both stores votes electronically and via paper ballots, allowing easier verification of the results. In the run-up to the election, Chavez had expressed his fears that the Far Right had planned in advance not to recognise his victory. Chavez and Caprilles had both signed a document promising to recognise the results of the election. Caprilles kept his side of the bargain and was quick to congratulate Chavez.
Cuban President Raul Castro was among the first world leaders to send a congratulatory message to Chavez. Your victory is our victory! And the victory of South America and the Caribbean, Argentine President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner tweeted. The Obama administration did not react immediately but some Republican lawmakers were quick to accuse Chavez of stealing the elections.
During the election campaign, Chavez had vowed to accelerate the pace of reforms if re-elected so as to make the Bolivarian revolution irreversible and put his concept of 21st century socialism into practice. The democratic revolution has made tremendous strides in bridging the economic disparity that had characterised Venezuelan society previously.
Information based on data provided by various international organisations, including United Nations agencies, shows that Venezuela has made tremendous strides since Chavez first came to power in 1999. Unemployment dropped from 14.5 per cent in the total labour force in 1999 to 7.6 per cent in 2009. The gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rose from $4,104 in 1999 to $10,801 in 2011. In 1999, more than 23 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line. In 2011, the ratio decreased substantially to 8.5 per cent. Infant mortality rates have also become significantly lower. According to U.N. statistics, Venezuela has the least unequal society in Latin America.
The crime and inflation graph has shown an upward trend. Not surprisingly, these were hot-button election issues and had slightly dented the popularity of Chavez. The Venezuelan government will no doubt redouble its efforts to rein in the crime wave and curb petty corruption and inflation. Caracas is considered one of the most lawless capital cities of Latin America.
Among the important achievements has been the governments ability to provide free health care and education and a profit-free food distribution system. The Hydrocarbons Act of 2006, followed by the Venezuelan governments decision to regain full control of the vast proven oil and gas reserves in the Orinoco delta, has facilitated the generation of more oil revenue.
On the foreign policy front, Venezuela has played a key role in reshaping the political map of Latin America. American hegemonic influence is now limited to a few pockets. Regional organisations such as the CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) are all set to replace U.S.-dominated groupings such as the Organisation of American States (OAS). Chavez was also the moving force behind ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), a grouping that consists of staunchly anti-imperialist states such as Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. His victory will also strengthen organisations such as the Non-Aligned Movement that have been striving for a multi-polar world.
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