Chavez empowered

Supporters of Chavez during an outdoor legislative session at Plaza Bolivar in Caracas on January 31.-FERNANDO LLANO/AP

President Hugo Chavez gets the authority to rule by decree to implement his vision of "socialism of the 21st century".

IN the last week of January, the Venezuelan National Assembly gave President Hugo Chavez the authority to pass laws by decree for a period of 18 months. Chavez had asked for these powers so as to accelerate the country's progress towards building "socialism of the 21st century". After he was sworn in for a new six-year term, Chavez vowed to usher in "socialism, Venezuelan style". He said the first thing he would do was to ask the legislature to "approve the mother of all revolutionary laws" that would allow him to nationalise the energy and telecom sectors. His wish was duly granted. Chavez had publicly dedicated his election victory to "the Cuban people and to President Fidel Castro".

Washington, along with the discredited political parties in Venezuela, has not wasted any time in raising the alarm that the country was hurtling towards authoritarian rule. They conveniently chose to forget that this is not for the first time that "rule by decree" has been resorted to in Venezuela. The present Venezuelan Constitution, as well as the earlier 1961 Constitution, allows the President to do so. In fact, Chavez is the fifth Venezuelan President to "rule by decree" for a temporary period of time.

The debate on the issue by the legislature was televised live so that the Venezuelan people were kept in the loop. The leaders of the coalition parties supporting Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution spoke about the urgent need to grant the President's wish. The Vice-President of the National Assembly, Roberto Hernandez, reminded Venezuelans that they were living in revolutionary times. He said that revolution is "characterised by having as its fundamental objective, social justice." He emphasised that "social justice for revolutionaries cannot wait". Vice-President Jorge Rodrigues dismissed the allegations of some Opposition leaders that Venezuela was heading for totalitarian rule. He said the temporary "rule by decree" would ultimately strengthen the rule of law and democracy in the country.

In the United States, President George W. Bush told a conservative television network in late January that he was "concerned" about the state of democracy in Venezuela and "about efforts at nationalisation". Immediately after being sworn in, Chavez announced the government's decision to re-nationalise key sectors of industry, such as telecommunications and power. Chavez said the government would exert even more control over the country's hydrocarbon sector. Another step he took was to end the autonomy of the country's Central Bank, making available its sizable reserves for developmental projects.

Not surprisingly, the American media were full of stories about Chavez becoming a "dictator" and his alleged attempts at "throttling democracy". The Western media's actual concern was driven by the Venezuelan government's plan to establish full control over the country's natural resources and ease out the big foreign oil companies, many of them American-owned. They have described the nationalisation exercise as the widest ranging since the early 1970s.

In early January, Chavez announced plans to nationalise C.A. Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV), the country's biggest publicly traded company. It was under state control until 1971. Also on the anvil for nationalisation are privately owned electricity companies and oil projects in the Orinoco River Basin. Big Western multinationals have huge stakes in all these projects. Chavez said in early February that by May 1 the government would control 60 per cent of the stake in the four projects in the Orinoco belt. He said that the multinationals were welcome to stay on if they were willing to be minority stakeholders. In the last week of January, Chavez publicly warned the U.S. Ambassador in Caracas, William Brownfield, for making critical remarks about his plans to nationalise key industries. The envoy would be "expelled" if he persisted in "meddling" in domestic politics, Chavez said.

The newly designated Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, an old Latin America hand, was quick to describe Chavez as a "threat to democracy" in the region. During his Senate Foreign Relations Confirmation hearings in the last week of January, Negroponte, known for his encouragement of "death squads" during his tenure as U.S. Ambassador in the Honduras, said Chavez's behaviour "is threatening to the democracies in the region". The Council for Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), a Washington-based think tank, said in a statement that Negroponte's involvement in Central America's "dirty wars" of the 1980s, should disqualify him from playing any role in public affairs. Chavez said on his popular weekly television show "Allo Presidente" that both Bush and Negroponte should be tried for "war crimes". This was in response to a question on the Iraq war. He added that Bush was "more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade".

Incidentally, Washington did not express any criticism in 1974 when President Carlos Andres Perez assumed "rule by decree" powers. He used this authority to pass legislation that, among other things, allowed the freezing of the prices of essential goods and the raising of the minimum wage. Perez was close to Washington and posed no threat to the American oil lobby. Perez was also one of the earliest votaries of globalisation in Latin America. What scares Washington is Chavez's determination and speed to implement his vision of "socialism of the 21st century".

Among the initial steps he plans to take is the merging of all the coalition parties supporting him into one cohesive Left-wing party. Chavez's opponents allege that he is trying to do what Fidel Castro did soon after the Cuban revolution of 1959. All the major Left wing parties had merged under the banner of the Cuban Communist Party, led by Fidel Castro. Chavez said recently, for the first time, that he was a Marxist, but he denied that he was aping the Cuban or any other model of socialism. "We are in an existential moment of Venezuelan life. We are heading towards socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it," Chavez said in an address to the nation.

He has stressed on several occasions the need for a single united party to expedite the revolution. "The revolution requires a united party, not an alphabet soup," he said recently. He explained that such a party should be "a political instrument at the service of not blocs or groupings but of the people and the Revolution, at the service of socialism". He did not want the proposed party to follow the "Bolshevik" model adopted by the majority of the Left parties of Latin America during the 20th century. He said the Bolsheviks "ended up as an anti-democratic party and the wonderful slogan `all power to the Soviets' ended up as `all power to the party'".

Chavez wants the socialist project to be "Indo-Venezuelan, home grown, Christian, and Bolivarian". Though there is some reluctance on the part of more established parties like the Communist Party and Podemos to give up their identities, observers feel that it is only a question of time before they join up. Chavez has already formed a party called the United Socialist Party and asked all the like-minded parties to wind up and join. He bluntly pointed out that the Venezuelan people voted for his Bolivarian project and not for their parties.

Chavez has been talking about the "five motors" required to advance the socialist revolution. These include an "enabling law" passed in the last week of January, which would help the government implement its decisions rapidly; the creation of a constituent assembly to provide the legal framework for the radical changes; the developing of a "Bolivarian" educational system to inculcate socialist values; the devolution of power to the more marginalised regions, and the accelerated creation of communal councils that would eventually "dismantle the bourgeois state".

The "communal councils", consisting of 200-400 families, started functioning from last year. The councils have the final say in implementing decisions affecting their areas. All those who are over 15 years of age can participate in the decision-making process of the councils. The government announced this year that it would disburse $5 billion directly to the councils, whose number is expected to be 21,000 by the end of this year.

Another successful form of participatory democracy was the creation of "missions" in small communities. These "missions" provide health care, subsidised food and other social services in areas that until recently were devoid of basic necessities.

After Chavez came to power, the government has actively encouraged the cooperative sector. Today, more than 10 per cent of the adult population is employed in this sector. The government has been expropriating factories that remained idle and handing it over to workers. Besides nationalising key sectors, the state has also created new industries.

Opinion polls show that the majority of Venezuelans support Chavez. Region-wide polling by Latinobarometro (a leading agency) revealed that Venezuela nearly tied with Uruguay for the top place in showing satisfaction with the state of democracy in their countries. The people have reasons to be happy. In the last eight years, the poverty rate has declined substantially. More than 2,000 health centres have been created, servicing millions of poor Venezuelans. Around 47 per cent of the population buys food from 15,000 highly subsidised food distribution shops set up by the government.