Socialist triumph

Published : Mar 13, 2009 00:00 IST

HUGO CHAVEZ GREETS supporters from the balcony of the Miraflores Palace in Caracas on February 15.-THOMAS COEX/AFP

HUGO CHAVEZ GREETS supporters from the balcony of the Miraflores Palace in Caracas on February 15.-THOMAS COEX/AFP

THE people of Venezuela overwhelmingly voted in a referendum held on February 15 in favour of scrapping the two-term constitutional limit on the presidency. President Hugo Chavez narrowly lost a referendum in December 2007 by half a percentage point. This time the electorate gave an unambiguous endorsement.

In 2007, there were 66 other amendments to the Constitution clubbed along with the amendment to the two-term limit. This sent a confused message to the electorate at that time. The February referendum revolved around the single-point issue of the President and other elected officials being allowed to seek unlimited consecutive terms in office. Chavez can now seek election for a third term when his current term expires in 2013.

After the Venezuelan Election Commission announced the results of the referendum, there was widespread jubilation in the capital, Caracas, and in other parts of the country. An emotional Chavez, addressing his supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace, shouted: Long live the Revolution. He told his supporters that the referendum results have opened wide the gates of the future. Venezuela will not return to the past of indignity.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro was among the first to send a congratulatory message to the Venezuelan President. Dear Hugo. Congratulations to you and for your people on a victory that by its size is impossible to measure, the message said.

Chavez has been saying that winning the right to contest again was crucial for the consolidation of the socialist revolution he has started. Already two other leftist Presidents in the region, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, have won constitutional approvals to extend their terms in office by holding national referenda. All the three leaders subscribe to the goal of regional integration and the elimination of the long-standing American hegemonic influence in Latin America. Hence, the United States has reasons to be perturbed.

The U.S. and its allies had launched a vituperative campaign against the Venezuelan President in the run-up to the referendum. The U.S. State Department poured in huge amounts of money to aid the anti-Chavez campaign, which was spearheaded by right-wing student groups and conservative sections of the Catholic Church. The opposition in Venezuela, supported by the U.S., tried to hammer in the message that the lifting of the constitutional curbs on presidential terms would lead to a dictatorship under Chavez. The campaign theme of the opposition was that it would make Chavez President for Life.

Venezuelan commentators wonder why there is such a fuss in the international media about Chavez seeking a third term. They point out that Britains Margaret Thatcher was elected to four consecutive terms and Tony Blair to three consecutive terms. In most parliamentary democracies, there are no curbs on a leader seeking consecutive terms as head of government. As things stand today, Venezuela is the most democratic country in the world.

Since being elected in 1998, Chavez has gone to the electorate almost on an annual basis: Venezuelans have gone to the polls 13 times in the past 10 years. Under the new Constitution that Chavez introduced in 1997, just 20 per cent of the voters can sign a petition for a referendum on whether or not to recall the President or other high officials. The opposition itself, after collecting the 20 per cent signatures required, called a referendum in 2004 on the presidency, and Chavez won it handily. Chavez has on several occasions said that he does not want to be President for life; he has stressed that it would be a violation of the Bolivarian Constitution and the political system.

Instead, Chavez has been saying all along that his continuity in office for another term is important for the cause of building 21st century socialism in Venezuela. His policies have already significantly empowered the poor. Since he became President, poverty rates have been halved. Power has been decentralised to such an extent that the common people are running their own community programmes, known as social missions.

Chavez set up the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which already has a support base of over five million members. Most of the progressive parties in Venezuela have united under its banner. One of the goals of the PSUV is to build a second tier of leadership in the country. Chavez has said that he needs another 10 years in power to consolidate his reforms and to speed up the nationalisation of key industries.

It was no surprise to observers in the region that Chavez won the referendum so comfortably. When he took over, more than 50 per cent of the population was below the poverty line. In the past 10 years, his government has invested heavily in the poor through public health and education and job training programmes. After the government brought the national petroleum company PDVSA under its control, it put the bountiful oil revenues mainly at the disposal of the poor majority. Before 1998, medical care was mainly the prerogative of the rich and the middle class. Now it is available even in the remotest areas of the country and to all Venezuelans free of cost.

The government also set up social stability funds, which guarantee workers fundamental rights which include pensions, vacations and prenatal and postnatal leave. The minimum wage was raised to $286 a month, the highest in Latin America. The unemployment rate in Venezuela today is the lowest in its history. Three million hectares of land was redistributed to poor peasants. Basic food items are subsidised by up to 40 per cent. Two million people have been lifted out of poverty, and the rate of extreme poverty has been more than halved. Two million schoolchildren are provided free meals.

Despite the regime change in the U.S., Venezuela under Chavez is being viewed as Americas greatest foreign policy challenge in the region. The Bush administration tried the old tactic of encouraging military coups. But times have changed in Latin America, as the 2003 coup attempt against Chavez proved.

Both President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have indicated that they plan to continue with the discredited policies of the previous administration. The Democratic administration seems to be as keen as the previous administration to destabilise the progressive governments that have struck root in Latin America.

The U.S. is scared of the prospect of its influence diminishing even further in the region with Chavez at the helm of affairs in Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Chavez, soon after he was elected for the first time, helped Cuba tide over its economic problems by supplying oil at concessional rates. In 2007, he helped another of the U.S. enemies, Iran, by dispatching emergency supplies of oil to that country when there were shortages there owing to refining problems.

Chavez was the architect of the regional trade bloc, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), which is an alternative to the American-sponsored free trade zone for the region. The strong defence ties Venezuela has forged with Russia is another cause of heartburn in the corridors of power in the U.S.

Obama, in one of his first interviews after being elected President, described Chavez as a force that has impeded progress in the region. Obama, who is not known to be gaffe-prone, then went to the ridiculous extent of alleging that Chavez is exporting terrorist activities and backing malicious groups like FARC. FARC is the acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the main rebel group in neighbouring Colombia that has been fighting a guerilla war for more than four decades.

Chavez has been expending a lot of energy trying to find a negotiated settlement to the long-running war. Many of the hostages who were freed in recent months after being held for years thanked Chavez for the role he played.

Hillary Clinton, during her Senate confirmation hearing, also echoed her predecessor Condoleezza Rice in her description of Chavez. Condoleezza Rice had called Chavez a negative force in the region. James Steinberg, the number two in the U.S. State Department, was even more direct in his hostility. He told the Senate confirmation hearing that for too much time, the U.S. had ceded the playing field to Chavez, whose actions and vision for the region dont serve the interests of his citizens nor the people throughout Latin America.

Chavez, by his standards, has reacted mildly so far to the verbal attacks from the Obama administration. Responding to Obamas observation about him, he said in the second week of January that the new resident of the White House had the same stench as the previous President.

In his landmark speech in the United Nations General Assembly two years ago, Chavez had compared President George W. Bush to the devil and said that the hall retained the sulphur fumes emanated by the American leader the previous day. Chavez said the new American President still had time to correct his views. He added: No one should say that I threw the first stone at Obama. He threw it at me.

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