Venezuela:
Between
Ballots And Bullets
By James Petras
16 November, 2007
James
Petras Site
Introduction
More seriously, the former
Minister of Defense, General Raul Isaias Baduel, who resigned in July,
has made explicit calls for a military coup in a November 5th press
conference which he convoked exclusively for the right and far-right
mass media and political parties, while striking a posture as an ‘individual’
dissident.
The entire international
and local private mass media has played up Baduel’s speeches,
press conferences along with fabricated accounts of the oppositionist
student rampages, presenting them as peaceful protests for democratic
rights against the government referendum scheduled for December 2, 2007.
The New York Times, the Wall
Street Journal, the BBC News and the Washington Post have all primed
their readers for years with stories of President Chavez’ ‘authoritarianism’.
Faced with constitutional reforms which strengthen the prospects for
far-reaching political-social democratization, the US, European and
Latin American media have cast pro-coup ex-military officials as ‘democratic
dissidents’, former Chavez supporters disillusioned with his resort
to ‘dictatorial’ powers in the run-up to and beyond the
December 2, 2007 vote in the referendum on constitutional reform. Not
a single major newspaper has mentioned the democratic core of the proposed
reforms – the devolution of public spending and decision to local
neighborhood and community councils. Once again as in Chile in 1973,
the US mass media is complicit in an attempt to destroy a Latin American
democracy.
Even sectors of the center-left
press and parties in Latin America have reproduced right-wing propaganda.
On November the self-styled ‘leftist’ Mexican daily La Jornada
headline read ‘Administrators and Students from the Central University
of Venezuela (UCV) Accuse Chavez of Promoting Violence’. The article
then proceeded to repeat the rightist fabrications about electoral polls,
which supposedly showed the constitutional amendments facing defeat.
The United States Government,
both the Republican White House and the Democrat-controlled Congress
are once again overtly backing the new attempt to oust the popular-nationalist
President Chavez and to defeat the highly progressive constitutional
amendments.
The Referendum: Defining
and Deepening the Social Transformation
The point of confrontation
is the forthcoming referendum on constitutional reforms initiated by
President Chavez, debated, amended and democratically voted on by the
Venezuelan Congress over the past 6 months. There was widespread and
open debate and criticism of specific sectors of the Constitution. The
private mass media, overwhelmingly viscerally anti-Chavez and pro-White
House, unanimously condemned any and all the constitutional amendments.
A sector of the leadership of one of the components of the pro-Chavez
coalition (PODEMOS) joined the Catholic Church hierarchy, the leading
business and cattleman’s association, bankers and sectors of the
university and student elite to attack the proposed constitutional reforms.
Exploiting to the hilt all of Venezuela’s democratic freedoms
(speech, assembly and press) the opposition has denigrated the referendum
as ‘authoritarian’ even as most sectors of the opposition
coalition attempted to arouse the military to intervene.
The opposition coalition
of the rich and privileged fear the constitutional reforms because they
will have to grant a greater share of their profits to the working class,
lose their monopoly over market transactions to publicly owned firms,
and see political power evolve toward local community councils and the
executive branch. While the rightist and liberal media in Venezuela,
Europe and the US have fabricated lurid charges about the ‘authoritarian’
reforms, in fact the amendments propose to deepen and extend social
democracy.
A brief survey of the key
constitutional amendments openly debated and approved by a majority
of freely elected Venezuelan congress members gives the lie to charges
of ‘authoritarianism’ by its critics. The amendments can
be grouped according to political, economic and social changes.
The most important political
change is the creation of new locally based democratic forms of political
representation in which elected community and communal institutions
will be allocated state revenues rather than the corrupt, patronage-infested
municipal and state governments. This change toward decentralization
will encourage a greater practice of direct democracy in contrast to
the oligarchic tendencies embedded in the current centralized representative
system.
Secondly, contrary to the
fabrications of ex-General Baduel, the amendments do not ‘destroy
the existing constitution’, since the amendments modify in greater
or lesser degree only 20% of the articles of the constitution (69 out
of 350).
The amendments providing
for unlimited term elections is in line with the practices of many parliamentary
systems, as witnessed by the five terms in office of Australian Prime
Minister Howard, the half century rule of Japan’s Liberal Democratic
Party, the four terms of US President Franklin Roosevelt, the multi-term
election of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair in the UK among others.
No one ever questions their democratic credentials for multi-term executive
office holding, nor should current critics selectively label Chavez
as an ‘authoritarian’ for doing the same.
Political change increasing
the presidential term of office from 6 to 7 years will neither increase
or decrease presidential powers, as the opposition claims, because the
separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers will continue
and free elections will subject the President to periodic citizen review.
The key point of indefinite
elections is that they are free elections, subject to voter preference,
in which, in the case of Venezuela, the vast majority of the mass media,
Catholic hierarchy, US-funded NGO’s, big business associations
will still wield enormous financial resources to finance opposition
activity – hardly an ‘authoritarian’ context.
The amendment allowing the
executive to declare a state of emergency and intervene in the media
in the face of violent activity to overthrow the constitution is essential
for safeguarding democratic institutions. In light of several authoritarian
violent attempts to seize power recently by the current opposition,
the amendment allows dissent but also allows democracy to defend itself
against the enemies of freedom. In the lead up to the US-backed military
coup of April 11, 2002, and the petroleum lockout by its senior executives
which devastated the economy (a decline of 30% of GNP in 2002/2003),
if the Government had possessed and utilized emergency powers, Congress
and the Judiciary, the electoral process and the living standards of
the Venezuelan people would have been better protected. Most notably,
the Government could have intervened against the mass media aiding and
abetting the violent overthrow of the democratic process, like any other
democratic government. It should be clear that the amendment allowing
for ‘emergency powers’ has a specific context and reflects
concrete experiences: the current opposition parties, business federations
and church hierarchies have a violent, anti-democratic history. The
destabilization campaign against the current referendum and the appeals
for military intervention most prominently and explicitly stated by
retired General Baduel (defended by his notorious adviser-apologist,
the academic-adventurer Heinz Dietrich), are a clear indication that
emergency powers are absolutely necessary to send a clear message that
reactionary violence will be met by the full force of the law.
The reduction of voting age
from 18 to 16 will broaden the electorate, increase the number of participants
in the electoral process and give young people a greater say in national
politics through institutional channels. Since many workers enter the
labor market at a young age and in some cases start families earlier,
this amendment allows young workers to press their specific demands
on employment and contingent labor contracts.
The amendment reducing the
workday to 6 hours is vehemently opposed by the opposition led by the
big business federation, FEDECAMARAS, but has the overwhelming support
of the trade unions and workers from all sectors. It will allow for
greater family time, sports, education, skill training, political education
and social participation, as well as membership in the newly formed
community councils. Related labor legislation and changes in property
rights including a greater role for collective ownership will strengthen
labor’s bargaining power with capital, extending democracy to
the workplace.
Finally the amendment eliminating
so-called ‘Central Bank autonomy’ means that elected officials
responsive to the voters will replace Central Bankers (frequently responsive
to private bankers, overseas investors and international financial officials)
in deciding public spending and monetary policy. One major consequence
will be the reduction of excess reserves in devalued dollar denominated
funds and an increase in financing for social and productive activity,
a diversity of currency holdings and a reduction in irrational foreign
borrowing and indebtedness. The fact of the matter is that the Central
Bank was not ‘autonomous’, it was dependent on what the
financial markets demanded, independent of the priorities of elected
officials responding to popular needs.
As the Chavez Government
Turns to Democratic Socialism: Centrists Defect and Seek Military Solutions
As Venezuela’s moves
from political to social transformation, from a capitalist welfare state
toward democratic socialism, predictable defections and additions occur.
As in most other historical experiences of social transformation, sectors
of the original government coalition committed to formal institutional
political changes defect when the political process moves toward greater
egalitarianism and property and a power shift to the populace. Ideologues
of the ‘Center’ regret the ‘breaking’ of the
status quo ‘consensus’ between oligarchs and people (labeling
the new social alignments as ‘authoritarian’) even as the
‘Center’ embraces the profoundly anti-democratic Right and
appeals for military intervention.
A similar process of elite
defections and increased mass support is occurring in Venezuela as the
referendum, with its clear class choices, comes to the fore. Lacking
confidence in their ability to defeat the constitutional amendments
through the ballot, fearful of the democratic majority, resentful of
the immense popular appeal of the democratically elected President Chavez,
the ‘Center’ has joined the Right in a last ditch effort
to unify extra-parliamentary forces to defeat the will of the electorate.
Emblematic of the New Right
and the ‘Centrist’ defections is the ex-Minister of Defense,
Raul Baduel, whose virulent attack on the President, the Congress, the
electoral procedures and the referendum mark him as an aspirant to head
up a US-backed right-wing seizure of power.
The liberal and right wing
mass media and unscrupulous ‘centrist’ propagandists have
falsely portrayed Raul Baduel as the ‘savior’ of Chavez
following the military coup of April 2002. The fact of the matter is
that Baduel intervened only after hundreds of thousands of poor Venezuelans
poured down from the ‘ranchos’, surrounded the Presidential
Palace, leading to division in the armed forces. Baduel rejected the
minority of rightist military officers favoring a massive bloodbath
and aligned with other military officials who opposed extreme measures
against the people and the destruction of the established political
order. The latter group included officials who supported Chavez’
nationalist-populist policies and others, like Baduel, who opposed the
coup-makers because it radicalized and polarized society – leading
to a possible class-based civil war with uncertain outcome. Baduel was
for the restoration of a ‘chastised’ Chavez who would maintain
the existing socio-economic status quo.
Within the Chavez government,
Baduel represented the anti-communist tendency, which pressed the President
to ‘reconcile’ with the ‘moderate democratic’
right and big business. Domestically, Baduel opposed the extension of
public ownership and internationally favored close collaboration with
the far-right Colombian Defense Ministry.
Baduel’s term of office
as Defense Minister reflected his conservative propensities and his
lack of competence in matters of security, especially with regard to
internal security. He failed to protect Venezuela’s frontiers
from military incursions by Colombia’s armed forces. Worse he
failed to challenge Colombia’s flagrant violation of international
norms with regard to political exiles. While Baduel was Minister of
Defense, Venezuelan landlords’ armed paramilitary groups assassinated
over 150 peasants active in land reform while the National Guard looked
the other way. Under Baduel’s watch over 120 Colombian paramilitary
forces infiltrated the country. The Colombian military frequently crossed
the Venezuelan border to attack Colombian refugees. Under Baduel, Venezuelan
military officials collaborated in the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda
(a foreign affairs emissary of the FARC) in broad daylight in the center
of Caracas. Baduel made no effort to investigate or protest this gross
violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, until President Chavez was informed
and intervened. Throughout Baduel’s term as Minister of Defense
he developed strong ties to Colombia’s military intelligence (closely
monitored by US Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA) and extradited
several guerrillas from both the ELN and the FARC to the hands of Colombian
torturers.
At the time of his retirement
as Minister of Defense, Baduel made a July 2007 speech in which he clearly
targeted the leftist and Marxist currents in the trade union (UNT) and
Chavez newly announced PSUV (The Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela).
His speech, in the name of ‘Christian socialist’, was in
reality a vituperative and ill-tempered anti-communist diatribe, which
pleased Pope Benedict (Ratzinger).
Baduel’s November 5
speech however marks his public adherence to the hard-line opposition,
its rhetoric, fabrications and visions of an authoritarian reversal
of Chavez program of democratic socialism. First and foremost, Badual,
following the lead of the White House and the Venezuelan ‘hard
right’, denounced the entire process of Congressional debate on
the Constitutional amendments, and open electoral campaigning leading
up to the referendum as ‘in effect a coup d’etat’.
Every expert and outside observer disagreed – even those opposed
to the referendum. Baduel’s purpose however was to question the
legitimacy of the entire political process in order to justify his call
for military intervention. His rhetoric calling the congressional debate
and vote a ‘fraud’ and ‘fraudulent procedures’
point to Baduel’s effort to denigrate existing representative
institutions in order to justify a military coup, which would dismantle
them.
Baduel’s denial of
political intent is laughable – since he only invited opposition
media and politicians to his ‘press conference’ and was
accompanied by several military officials. Baduel resembles the dictator
who accuses the victim of the crimes he is about to commit. In calling
the referendum on constitutional reform a ‘coup’, he incites
the military to launch a coup. In an open appeal for military action
he directs the military to ‘reflect of the context of constitutional
reform.’ He repeatedly calls on military officials to ‘assess
carefully’ the changes the elected government has proposed ‘in
a hasty manner and through fraudulent procedures’. While denigrating
democratically elected institutions, Baduel resorts to vulgar flattery
and false modesty to induce the military to revolt. While immodestly
denying that he could act as spokesperson for the Armed Forces, he advised
the rightist reporters present and potential military cohort that ‘you
cannot underrate the capacity of analysis and reasoning of the military.’
Cant, hypocrisy and disinterested
posturing run through Baduel’s pronouncements. His claim of being
an ‘apolitical’ critic is belied by his intention to go
on a nationwide speaking tour attacking the constitutional reforms,
in meetings organized by the rightwing opposition. There is absolutely
no doubt that he will not only be addressing civilian audiences but
will make every effort to meet with active military officers who he
might convince to ‘reflect’…and plot the overthrow
of the government and reverse the results of the referendum. President
Chavez has every right to condemn Baduel as a traitor, though given
his long-term hostility to egalitarian social transformation it may
be more to the point to say that Baduel is now revealing his true colors.
The danger to Venezuelan
democracy is not in Baduel as an individual – he is out of the
government and retired from active military command. The real danger
is his effort to arouse the active military officers with command of
troops, to answer his call to action or as he cleverly puts it ‘for
the military to reflect on the context of the constitutional reforms.’
Baduel’s analysis and action program places the military as the
centerpiece of politics, supreme over the 16 million voters.
His vehement defense of ‘private
property’ in line with his call for military action is a clever
tactic to unite the Generals, Bankers and the middle class in the infamous
footsteps of Augusto Pinochet, the bloody Chilean tyrant.
The class polarization in
the run-up to the referendum has reached its most acute expression:
the remains of the multi-class coalition embracing a minority of the
middle class and the great majority of the working power is disintegrating.
Millions of previously apathetic or apolitical young workers, unemployed
poor and low-income women (domestic workers, laundresses, single parents)
are joining the huge popular demonstrations overflowing the main avenues
and plazas in favor of the constitutional amendments. At the same time
political defections have increased among the centrist-liberal minority
in the Chavez coalition. Fourteen deputies in the National Assembly,
less than 10%, mostly from PODEMOS, have joined the opposition. Reliable
sources in Venezuela (Axis of Logic/Les Blough Nov. 11, 2007) report
that Attorney General Beneral Isaias Rodriguez, a particularly incompetent
crime fighter, and the Comptroller General Cloudosbaldo Russian are
purportedly resigning and joining the opposition. More seriously, these
same reports claim that the 4th Armed Division in Marcay is loyal to
‘Golpista’ Raul Baduel. Some suspect Baduel is using his
long-term personal ties with the current Minister of Defense, Gustavo
Briceno Rangel to convince him to defect and join in the pre-coup preparations.
Large sums of US funding is flowing in to pay off state and local officials
in cash and in promises to share in the oil booty if Chavez is ousted.
The latest US political buy-out includes Governor Luis Felipe Acosta
Carliz from the state of Carabobo. The mass media have repeatedly featured
these new defectors to the right in their hourly ‘news reports’
highlighting their break with Chavez ‘coup d’etat’.
The referendum is turning
into an unusually virulent case of a ‘class against class’
war, in which the entire future of the Latin American left is at stake
as well as Washington’s hold on its biggest oil supplier.
Conclusion
Venezuelan democracy, the
Presidency of Hugo Chavez and the great majority of the popular classes
face a mortal threat. The US is facing repeated electoral defeats and
is incapable of large-scale external intervention because of over-extension
of its military forces in the Middle East; it is committed once more
to a violent overthrow of Chavez. Venezuela through the constitutional
reforms, will broaden and deepen popular democratic control over socio-economic
policy. New economic sectors will be nationalized. Greater public investments
and social programs will take off. Venezuela is moving inexorably toward
diversifying its petrol markets, currency reserves and its political
alliances. Time is running out for the White House: Washington’s
political levers of influence are weakening. Baduel is seen as the one
best hope of igniting a military seizure, restoring the oligarchs to
power and decimating the mass popular movements.
President Chavez is correctly
‘evaluating the high command’ and states that he ‘has
full confidence in the national armed forces and their components.’
Yet the best guarantee is to strike hard and fast, precisely against
Baduel’s followers and cohorts. Rounding up a few dozen or hundred
military plotters is a cheap price to pay for saving the lives of thousands
of workers and activists who would be massacred in any bloody seizure
of power.
History has repeatedly taught
that when you put social democracy, egalitarianism and popular power
at the top of the political agenda, as Chavez has done, and as the vast
majority of the populace enthusiastically responds, the Right, the reactionary
military, the ‘Centrist’ political defectors and ideologues,
the White House, the hysterical middle classes and the Church cardinals
will sacrifice any and all democratic freedoms to defend their property,
privileges and power by whatever means and at whatever cost necessary.
In the current all-pervasive confrontation between the popular classes
of Venezuela and their oligarchic and military enemies, only by morally,
politically and organizationally arming the people can the continuity
of the democratic process of social transformation be guaranteed.
Change will come, the question
is whether it will be through the ballot or the bullet.
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