Time to think

Growing political tension in Venezuela overshadows President Chàvez's important achievements throughout his years in power, Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chàvez's opponents at home have demanded that his leadership be put to a referendum. The country's main political parties -- Democratic Action, Copei and First Justice -- along with some labour union leaders, media executives and former managers at the state oil company have long rejected what they describe as the regime's repressive and autocratic policy. But while the middle and upper classes are trying their hardest to overthrow the Chàvez regime, the lower classes still support and praise his projects to raise their living standards.

"There are people who have lost privileges and that is why they are trying by all means to overthrow the president," Venezuela's Ambassador to Egypt Victor R Carazo told Al-Ahram Weekly.

With a population of 25 million inhabitants, Venezuela owns the biggest oil reserves in the Western hemisphere, has a wide variety of natural resources, including the third biggest river in South America -- the Orinoco -- and magnificent tourist sites, including the world's highest waterfall, Angel Falls. Nevertheless, the country has for many decades struggled against poverty and social instability.

Much of the country's 19th and early 20th century history was characterised by periods of dictatorial rule and revolutionary turbulence. The military officially ended its direct involvement in politics in 1958 and until the mid-1990s two parties took turns in leading the government. But frequent economic crises and corruption scandals led to an overall decline of support for this system, culminating in the 1998 election and 2000 re-election of former paratrooper Chàvez. He was set to rule a country where street children wandered and indigenous people often migrated to the capital to try and make ends meet and were ready to beg if they had to.

Chàvez then adopted the so-called Bolivarian Revolution policy -- invoking the legacy of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bol’var as a symbol of the struggle for national liberation and Latin American unity -- to try and ease the plight of the impoverished. He introduced important reforms in education, including the so-called Robinson Literacy Campaign, headed by the Ministry of Education, the National Institute of Cooperative Education and the Venezuelan Armed Forces. According to Carazo the initiative has succeeded in teaching one million Venezuelans to read and write in the past six months alone.

Furthermore, the ambassador added, "new universities are being established as part of the Bolivarian School Project, a model intended to transform primary education and attract children to learning, giving important benefits to the students like hot meals for free, and the opportunity to learn the same subjects as in other institutions but in less crowded classrooms."

The Plan Barrio Adentro (Inside Shantytown Plan), on the other hand, aims at providing free health care to residents of poor neighbourhoods.

Sociologist Gregory Wilpert, who lives in Caracas, explains that because the middle class tends to rely on private health care and education it does not feel Chàvez's initiatives have been beneficial. It also resents the fact that only those with incomes in the top 20 per cent or so are required to pay income taxes.

The harshest way the opposition has reacted against the president's policy is by accusing the government of committing crimes against humanity since 2002. Further accusations refer to the detention of at least 513 pro-referendum protesters in late February and early March. Carazo told the Weekly that the security forces were only carrying out their mission to protect high-level officials who were at the time attending the G15 summit. "The government had given the green light to the demonstration, but the protesters went beyond their limits and it is difficult [at this point] to determine how the clashes started," he said.

Despite the growing tension at a domestic level, Chàvez has been keen to press on with his social initiatives and huge infrastructure projects. One of them has been the Mariscal Sucre project, which aims to make Venezuela a net gas exporter by 2007. On the other hand, at the beginning of this year, Venezuela and China signed the Technical and Economic Cooperation Treaty for the reactivation and development of the Venezuelan rail service. The national rail system is planned to be a network of approximately 4,000 kilometres, to be developed over 20 years, and constructed in such a way that will bear in mind economic and social needs.

On the political level, in order to counter accusations of authoritarianism, Chàvez set up an "initiative to let the people evaluate elected officials' work halfway through their terms", Carazo added, referring to Article 72 of the 1999 Constitution which allows one consecutive re-election of an incumbent president to a six-year term, as well as referendums to revoke the presidency if need be. "President Chàvez is not afraid of a referendum. If ordered by the National Electoral Council, he will submit to it and respect the people's decision," Carazo told the Weekly.

Chàvez's opponents submitted referendum petitions with more than three million signatures in December but the electoral council has said that more than one million citizens have to confirm their signatures for the petition to have any legitimacy. The confirmation process has been scheduled for the tentative dates of 20 to 24 May.

Though appreciative of Chàvez's openness to censure, some believe it unfair that he be judged at this stage. Wilpert, for one, retorts: "the opposition does not seem to realise that even if they were in the majority -- which is doubtful -- a fundamental rule of the democratic game is that leaders are elected for a pre-defined term and that if one wants new leaders, one has to wait for the next constitutionally-scheduled elections and not for a dip in the popularity polls."