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 News from Around the Americas | November 2007 
Big Day Looms for Venezuela
 Simon Romero - International Herald Tribune
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| | Supporters of Chávez urging other Venezuelans to vote yes to constitutional reforms. (David Rochkind/NYTimes) |
Caracas - In two weeks, Venezuela could be starting an extraordinary experiment in centralized socialism fueled by oil. By law, the workday would be cut to six hours. Street vendors, housewives and maids would have state-mandated pensions. And President Hugo Chávez would have significantly enhanced powers and be eligible for re-election for the rest of his life.
A new constitution, expected to be approved by referendum Dec. 2, is both bolstering Chávez's popularity among people who will benefit and stirring contempt from economists who declare it demagoguery. Signaling new instability here, dissent is also emerging from among his former lieutenants, some of whom say the president is carrying out a populist coup.
"There is a perverse subversion of our existing Constitution under way," said General Raúl Isaías Baduela, a retired defense minister and former confidant of Chávez's who broke with him this month and defected to the political opposition. "This is not a reform," Baduel said in an interview. "I categorize it as a coup d'état."
Chávez loyalists already control the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, almost every state government, the entire federal bureaucracy and newly nationalized companies in the telephone, electricity and oil industries.
Soon they could control even more. But this is an upheaval that would be carried out with the approval of the voters. While polls in Venezuela are often tainted by partisanship, they suggest the referendum could be Chávez's closest electoral test since his presidency began in 1999, but one he is still likely to win.
"We are witnessing a seizure and redirection of power through legitimate means," said Alberto Barrera Tyszka, co-author of a best-selling biography of Chávez. "This is not a dictatorship but something more complex: the tyranny of popularity."
One of the 69 amendments to the Constitution would allow Chávez to create new administrative regions, with rulers called vice presidents chosen by him. Critics said the reforms would also shift funds from states and cities, where a handful of elected officials still oppose him, to communal councils, new local governing entities that are predominantly pro-Chávez.
Interviews this week on the streets here and in Maracaibo, Venezuela's second-largest city, offer a window into the strength of Chávez's followers and the challenges of his critics. His supporters, many of whom are public servants in a bureaucracy that has ballooned in size since he came to power, have flooded poor districts to campaign for the overhaul.
"The comandante should have more power because he is the force behind our revolution," Egda Vilchez, 51, a Chávez activist, said as she campaigned for the new charter this week at a busy intersection in Cacique Mara, an area of slums in eastern Maracaibo.
Such statements might sound dogmatic, but they are voiced with a fervor in organized campaigning that is unmatched in richer areas of the largest cities, where much of Chávez's opposition is found.
Aside from a nascent student movement that has held protests of increasing defiance in recent weeks, the middle and upper classes seem largely resigned about the outcome of a referendum that is less about specific issues and more about Chávez's resilient support among the poor.
In comments after a summit meeting of Latin American leaders this month in Chile, Chávez laid out his project in simple language: "Capitalist Venezuela is entering its grave and socialist Venezuela is being born."
Indeed, socialist imagery is pervasive throughout this country, from the red shirts worn by Chávez and his followers to the chant of "Fatherland, socialism or death!" repeated at the end of his rallies. But walking into a grocery store here offers a different view of the changes washing over Venezuela.
Combined with price controls that keep farmers from profitably producing some basic foods, climbing incomes of the poorest Venezuelans have stripped supermarket aisles bare of items like milk and eggs. Meanwhile, foreign-exchange controls create bottlenecks for importers seeking to meet rising demand for many products.
Such imbalances plague oil economies elsewhere, with oil revenues often making it cheaper to import goods than produce them at home. But the system Chávez is creating is perhaps unique: a hybrid of state-supported enterprises and no-holds-barred capitalism in which 500,000 automobiles are expected to be sold this year.
Lacking here, for instance, is the authoritarianism one might expect in a country where billboards promoting Chávez have proliferated in the last year.
Looming above the Centro San Ignacio, this city's glitziest shopping mall, is one of Chávez hugging a child while he explains the "motors" of his revolution. Others show him kissing old women, decorating graduates of the military university and embracing an ally, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.
Beneath these images, chaos persists on the street level, reflecting a state flush with oil money but weak when facing systemic problems like violent crime. The country had 9,568 homicides in the first nine months of this year, a 9 percent increase from the same period last year.
Private companies here, meanwhile, have the dilemma of profiting from a growing economy while dreading what is to come, explaining the accelerating capital flight that has caused the currency, the bolívar, to plunge against the dollar since Chávez announced the constitutional overhaul in August.
Sparse details as to how Chávez's government would implement measures a like a six-hour workday or pay for a new social security system have done little for economic confidence, with Fedecamaras, the country's main business association, urging voters to oppose the new charter "by all legal means."
The proposals have also revealed sharp divisions among the president's own supporters, symbolized by the sharp criticism from Baduel, who helped re-install Chávez in power after a brief coup in 2002.
Marisabel Rodríguez, the president's former wife and the former first lady, came out against the new charter this week, saying it would lead to "absolute concentration of power." And previously pro-Chávez governors like Ramón Martínez of Sucre State, sensing that their power could be curtailed, have criticized the measures.
With the changes, term limits would be abolished only for the president, not for governors or mayors. Another item raises the threshold for collecting signatures to hold a vote to recall the president, effectively shielding him from one option voters have to challenge his power under the existing Constitution of 1999.
Other measures in the project are considered progressive by both critics of Chávez and those in his political base, which includes leftist military officials, academics, civil servants and a large portion of the urban and rural poor.
The voting age in this demographically young country, for instance, would be lowered to 16 from 18. Discrimination based on sexual orientation would be prohibited. Many of the items are vaguely worded, however, like one giving the president the power to create "communal cities."
"Clearly there are positive aspects to the reform, but the government has committed a political error by trying to rush it to voters without enough discussion," said Edgardo Lander, a sociologist at the Central University of Venezuela who is generally sympathetic to Chávez. "The opposition can argue this is illegitimate if it is approved by a low margin."
Chávez, who recently hinted at staying in power until 2031, might also be preparing for resistance if oil proceeds fail to prove abundant enough to finance his ambitions.
One of the reforms allows him to declare states of emergency during which he can shut down television stations and newspapers. |
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