Examining the Venezuelan Opposition

A week before elections in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez says he will respect the results of Sunday’s legislative vote. He’s called on the opposition to do the same, says EFE. Election observers have also begun to arrive – although notably absent are observers from the European Union, the OAS, and the Carter Center, all of whom were not invited for the run-up to Sunday’s elections, unlike 2005. This time each political coalition is being allowed to bring in up to 30 observers from abroad, the Miami Herald says, but the paper maintains what they are able to report on is being “tightly controlled.” Rather, electoral monitoring Sunday will be primarily carried out by four Venezuelan NGOs, allowed to register 624 observers each. [The paper does add that Venezuela is hardly alone in keeping international observers “at bay.” Neither the US nor Brazil, for example, have allowed international organizations to monitor their election results].

Reuters’ Frank Jack Daniel has a long piece out examining the state of the Venezuelan opposition ahead of Sunday’s legislative vote. The piece is worth a full-read – filled with interviews with a variety of Chavez opponents, among them the young governor of Miranda, Henrique Capriles Radonski, Leopoldo Lopez, the former mayor of Caracas, and the recently elected mayor of Petaré, Carlos Ocariz. Such individuals make up what Daniel calls a “new, savvier opposition” who “believe they can overcome what they and others consider distortions in Venezuela's democracy.” And September 26 will be a significant “test” of their “aspirations.”

The key insights from Daniel’s piece? First, the opposition seems far from unified. Despite the addition of a handful of new faces, “the Democratic Unity alliance which includes some 30 anti-Chavez organizations “could collapse after the elections, especially if it has a poor showing,” Reuters reports. And even if it survives past September 26, Daniel continues, “bitter infighting can be expected over who will become the candidate to face Chavez in 2012.”

Second, what success the opposition has made has come through its partial adoption of chavista concerns and strategies – namely taking the country's popular sectors seriously. Again, Daniel:

“The new wave of young leaders… are campaigning and doing social work in the shanty towns that cover Caracas's hills, putting the fight against poverty at the center of the debate and even co-opting some of Chavez's policies and tactics.”

In addition, “they often speak admiringly of the combination of poverty reduction and market economics that made leftist Lula such a success in neighboring Brazil.” One of the young faces of the opposition highlighted in the piece, the Petaré mayor, Carlos Ocariz, has even tried to emulate, at the municipal level, “Mexican and Brazilian social programs that offer financial reward to poor families if their children have a high school attendance rate.”

Third, Daniel characterizes Venezuelan democracy under Chávez as still “vibrant,” albeit with significant distortions. Again, to quote Reuters:

“Political debate is noisily conducted on TV screens, in newspapers and on street corners. Parties splash campaign publicity on billboards and hand out flyers on street corners. Participation in community councils founded by Chavez gives millions of Venezuelans a say in how local development is carried out, and a dozen elections since Chavez took office in 1999 have taken place without significant election day fraud."

The principal shortcoming of chavista democracy – one which has, in part, hampered the organization of the opposition: the fact that the government has created a “clearly uneven” electoral playing field based on “political discrimination.” That has included threats that social spending will be diverted away from municipalities and states which elect opposition and selectively barring certain opposition candidates from running in elections through a process called “inhabilitation.” [On the first point, however, Daniel does point out that up to this point the central government has continued to provide “the legally apportioned budget and an additional share of tax and excess oil income to states and municipalities, although sometimes it is slow in doing so.” The opposition fears that this could change when a new body, overseen by the president, assumes greater control over resource allocation next year].

Fourth, many Venezuelans – even Chavez’s political base in the urban popular sectors – seem to be tiring of political polarization. Daniel’s case in point: the 2008 election of Carlos Ocariz, a foreign-trained technocrat, previously employed at the Inter-American Development Bank, in the poor municipality of Petaré. But again, the Chávez model of increased social inclusion has been requirement for such candidates to succeed. Ocariz, for example, continues to give “30 percent of the municipality's budget for investment to grassroots groups, including community councils -- the foundation of Chavez's notion of participatory democracy.”

And finally, with respect to Sunday’s vote, it’s Chavez’s PSUV who will almost certainly come out on top. Nationally, the PSUV is now running slightly ahead of the opposition. And due to redistricting, in legislative voting (which occurs by district, not nationally) the opposition would seem lucky if they were to win one-third of the seats in parliament.

Moving on:

· In Chihuahua Mexico, the AP reports this morning that a “mob” of dozens of angry citizens beat two alleged kidnappers to death Tuesday. The incident highlights growing resident frustration, not only with the cartels but also with state security forces. The AP: “Residents shouted at the federal officers and held signs that read ‘We are tired, fed up with kidnappings, no more kidnappings in Asencion.’” Continuing in Mexico, Bloomberg says Mexican President Felipe Calderon has rejected reports that his party’s political leader, Cesar Nava, suggested making an accord with organized crime syndicates in the country. That story had been reported by Juarez’s El Diario, which has since retracted, saying an imposter, claiming to be Nava, had told the paper this. From Reuters, news that threatened Mexican journalist Jorge Luis Aguirre, editor of Ciudad Juarez-based online newspaper “La Polaka,” has been granted asylum in the US after fleeing to El Paso in 2008. Reuters: “Aguirre is one of the first Mexican reporters to be granted political asylum in the United States.” Meanwhile, in Austin, Texas, journalists from around the region gathered last week for the Austin Forum for Journalism in the Americas, organized by the Knight Center and the Open Society Institute. Focus was on the coverage of organized crime and journalism in Latin America, and, says CIPER, attendees condemned growing threats of violence faced by journalists across the region.

· BBC Mundo reports on mass protests which have erupted in Cusco against a major irrigation development project in the Southern part of the Peru. According to the report, classes have been canceled throughout Cusco and commercial activity has “come to a halt” due to the protests.

· From the LA Times yesterday, a report on next year’s presidential elections in Nicaragua. The piece warns that the campaign could become “dirty and violent,” likely pitting sitting President Daniel Ortega against another strongman, Liberal Arnoldo Aleman. Best quote of the article:

“Many Nicaraguans bemoan the fact they are faced with such a bleak choice, aware that the genuine opposition to Ortega is more fragmented than plate glass in a shooting gallery.”

· Evo Morales got the attention of some Tuesday, telling CNN he is considering a third term in 2015, given the fact that his 2010 election was the first under the country’s new constitution (AFP). [The new constitution allows for re-election once]. Speaking Monday at Hunter College for the presentation of Argentine journalist Martin Sivak’s new biography of the Bolivian president, Evo quickly rejected the notion of indefinite re-election in Bolivia. “Under the Bolivian constitution, there is no indefinite re-election,” the president responded to an audience member’s question about his views of indefinite re-election in Bolivia.

· Also related to UN General Assembly meetings in New York, Reuters says President Obama plans to meet briefly with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos Thursday. The meeting would be the first between the two leaders. According to the White House, the meeting would focus on “ways we can strengthen our bilateral relationship going forward.”

· In Chile, EFE says that the families of Mapuche indigenous activists, jailed under the country’s Pinochet era anti-terrorist law, have rejected a proposed dialogue with the government. The government’s initiative “does not have the goal of resolving the demands of the (hunger) strikers,” Mapuche spokesperson Natividad Llanquileo said outside a prison in Concepcion. The hunger strikes have demanded the annulment of the anti-terror act and the “demilitarization” of their region.

· Finally, a report on Brazil and the global economy from the Washington Post and a look at changes in the Cuban economy, through the eyes of Miami’s Cuban-American community, in the New York Times.