Allies of President Hugo Chavez secured a new parliamentary majority Sunday but the opposition has won over a third of the National Assembly’s seat, “threatening the Chavez government’s ability to pass socialist reforms” [in the words of Reuters,] before 2012 presidential elections. Or, as the New York Times’ coverage begins:
“Supporters of President Hugo Chávez won a majority in legislative elections held on Sunday, but the opposition secured at least one-third of the seats, giving it the ability to block critical legislation and top federal appointments.”
A quick glance around both the US and the Venezuelan press demonstrates there are a variety of ways to spin the results Sunday’s highly anticipated vote. Here’s a quick sampling:
The Wall Street Journal’s headline/lead: “Chavez stripped of Key Majority” / “Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez suffered a major political blow in congressional elections, losing the ability to pass new laws at will after opposition candidates banded together.”
The headline from Venezuela’s El Universal: “Opposition Breaks Absolute Majority of PSUV.” [The paper also Sunday’s voter turnout was just over 66%].
Venezuela’s El Nacional has the preliminary parliamentary seat breakdown, according to the National Electoral Council, as its headline: “Oficialismo Wins 96 deputies; Opposition 61 and PPT 2.” [El Nacional also prints a good breakdown of the vote, by state].
At least one opposition blogger, titles his first post-election post, “Venezuela has officially ceased to be a democracy” pointing to the fact that the opposition appears to have won a slim majority in terms of national popular vote (the opposition says 52%). Venezuela News and Views: “In Bolivarian Venezuela the opposition gets MORE VOTES than the regime…and yet it is beaten at least 90 to 65 seats!” [For more on changes in the Venezuelan electoral law which raise concerns about chavista “overrepresentation”, El Universal has a backgrounder as does Ojo Electoral].
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan state news agency maintains Sunday’s vote was still a “Great Socialist Victory.” For his part, Chavez himself addressed supporters, by way of Twitter, just minutes after the CNE announced the results, calling Sunday’s vote a “solid victory” – one “sufficient enough to continue deepening Bolivarian Democratic Socialism.”
So, quickly, cutting through the spin, what might all of this mean?
First, returning to Reuters, Sunday’s results does mark a significant improvement for the opposition. “While not an outright defeat for Chavez,” Reuters writes, “the result confirms Venezuela's opposition forces are galvanizing.” According to the spokesman for the opposition umbrella group, MUD, Armando Briquett, “This gives us a lot of political power…We are very happy.” Analyst Michael Shifter at the Inter-American Dialogue, meanwhile, says Sunday’s results “change the political dynamics of Venezuela.” Shifter, in the Wall Street Journal:
“It's a respectable result which the opposition can build on for the 2012 presidential race. It shows they are back in the game and Chávez is vulnerable.”
According to Venezuela analyst Greg Wilpert, Sunday’s results are “a mixed bag for the opposition.” But, Wilpert adds, for the opposition, “it's a step forward in the sense that they've committed themselves to playing the democratic game” after backing the 2002 coup against Chavez and boycotting 2005 parliamentary elections.
What does this mean for the way Chavez will govern ahead of the 2012 presidential poll? One possibility is that the Chavez government will become increasingly pragmatic in its policy making. Here’s Prof. Miguel Tinker Salas, in the AP’s reporting:
“It might force him to be more pragmatic and increasingly more focused on internal matters, especially now that he's got his eye looking toward 2012.”
Those issues include rising crime and insecurity, infrastructure problems, as well as economic woes. [Kevin Casas Zamora in Foreign Policy, as well as Joaquin Villalobos in El País, have recent opinions on the former].
Meanwhile, some anti-chavistas worry that, even with Sunday’s results, the government could sidestep the national assembly, either “devolving some lawmaking capacity to community groups loyal to him” or “passing key legislation before the new legislators take office in January.” All things that we’ll be watching over the coming months.
To other stories from this weekend:
· Two stories on Colombia from the LA Times. First, Chris Kraul looks at the effects of Plan Colombia, ten years after its implementation, arguing that security has improved in the country as a result of the controversial initiative. The LA Times: “Colombian national police claim to be present in all 1,100 counties, up from 950 in 2000. Violent crime has dropped to a fraction of what it was in 2002, when there were an average of 10 kidnappings a day.” But this has not been without costs and unintended consequences. Critics argue Plan Colombia’s “extensive eradication program has simply pushed coca production to neighboring countries, notably Peru.” And an aggressive military response has brought notable increases in human rights violations. Again, quoting the Times: “A study released this year by the New York-based peace group Fellowship of Reconciliation found that the Colombian military may have committed 3,000 extrajudicial killings from 2002 to 2009.”
· Second, the paper’s Ken Ellingwood returns to Hillary Clinton’s Mexico-Colombia comparison of a few weeks ago, arguing that “when it comes to drug cartels,” the two countries are quite distinct.
· With more on Mexico and the drug wars. The New York Times ran an editorial Friday on last week’s much-discussed editorial from El Diario de Juarez. The Times’ demand: “The Mexican government needs to do more to aggressively investigate and prosecute violence against the press. And it needs to do more to protect judges, mayors, civil servants and human-rights workers and police officers.” Ditto from Human Rights Watch which has sent a long letter to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, criticizing his administration’s “contradictory messages on human rights.” The letter ends with a series of recommendations, which can be read in full here. Al-Jazeera reports on the latest shooting of a local official in Mexico. On Friday the mayor of Gran Morelos in the state of Chihuahua was “shot in the head several times.” Molly Molloy, moderator of Frontera List, has a piece at Narco News on the difficulties of Mexican journalists seeking political asylum in the US. And the AP yesterday, with news that the head of Zeta operations in Cancun was detained by the military over the weekend. Jose Angel Fernandez, aka “El Pelon,” is believed to have run an extortion ring for the Zetas and recently “ordered a bar attacked with gasoline bombs because its owner refused to pay protection money.”
· In Colombia, the former president of the Colombian Congress, Sen. Javier Caceres, has been jailed after his arrest last week for “alleged ties to illegal armed groups.”
· And on last Friday’s headline about the killing of FARC #2, Mono Jojoy, Juanita Leon at LA Silla Vacía has a concise analysis of the possible political effects.
· At the UN last week, Honduran President Pepe Lobo and OAS Sec. General José Miguel Insulza apparently met to discuss the return of Mel Zelaya to Honduras.
· The New York Times reports on Cuba’s new policies for entrepreneurs, which include, according to a recent piece in Granma, allowing small business owners to “rent spaces for their businesses, hang out a shingle, and if things go well, hire a few employees.” Yoani Sanchez, at the Huffington Post, says she has been denied the right to travel away from Cuba – the eighth such denial in three years. Sanchez had been invited to attend the 60th anniversary of the International Press Institute and the presentation of the Internet for the Nobel Peace Prize in New York.
· And in opinions, Mary Anastasia O’Grady lashes out at the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and CFR’s Julia Sweig for their recent visit with Fidel Castro, calling the latter “a trusted friend of the dictatorship.” And, in the Washington Post, Jackson Diehl uses a talk by AEI’s Roger Noriega to point to what he calls the “intriguing” case of possible Venezuela “collaboration” in Iran’s nuclear program. His call: the US must more actively support the Venezuelan opposition.
· Finally, if you haven’t watched Stephen Colbert’s testimony before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security last week, here’s your link.
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