If you pay a lot
of attention to the international corporate mainstream media,
you will have heard that Venezuela is an economic basket case
whose leader is a media-bashing Fidel Castro wannabe who's about
to be recalled by the voters. You may have even read some of
that in the opinion sections of The Panama News, along with
contrary views.
There is,
however, another side to the story that's rarely told by the
major news corporations. That includes Panama, and the trend
will continue for now, as this reporter was the only journalist
present at Excedra Books on May 27, when Ramón Alfredo
López Martínez, the cultural attaché at the
Venezuelan Embassy in Panama City, defended the government he
serves.
López's
presentation was long and in a few parts tedious. Beginning with
a brief video about the events surrounding the abortive April
2002 coup, he systematically responded to four common
allegations:
* That Hugo
Chávez is a dictator;
* That Hugo
Chávez is a Castro-style communist;
* That there is
no freedom of expression in Venezuela; and
* That the state
controls everything in Venezuela.
The video,
"Conspiracion Mortal," offered a version of the events
leading to last year's coup attempt that has not been heard much
outside of Venezuela.
You may recall
that on April 11, 2002, a large crowd, urged on by Venezuela's
commercial broadcasters, made its way toward the presidential
palace in Caracas with the intention of overthrowing President
Chávez. The palace was guarded by troops and a crowd of
government supporters. Sniper fire broke out, killing several
people. A group of military officers, accusing Chávez of
ordering the troops to fire on demonstrators, declared
themselves in rebellion. Chávez was taken into custody
and the head of the Chamber of Commerce was declared head of a
new ruling junta. Rioting broke out in the poor neighborhoods
where there is strong support for Chávez, and troops
loyal to the president restored him shortly thereafter. Since
the president's restoration, there have been major arguments
about who really shot whom on the day of the coup.
Ah, but
according to López and the video he showed, the order of
events described above was wrong, and that, he argues, says a
great deal about who's telling the truth and who isn't.
Conspiracion Mortal might be easily dismissed as commie
propaganda, but for the fact that one of its main sources is
Otto Neustald, a respected reporter for CNN's Spanish-language
network who has no particular political allegiances in
Venezuela. He was covering the story in Caracas that day, and he
and others noted something VERY odd --- the rebellious military
officers announced that protesters had been shot down at
Chávez's orders BEFORE any shooting started. The
conclusion that the video and López draw is that the
shooting was part of the coup plot, not something that the
president ordered, and that those who were trying to overthrow
the government exposed themselves by their bad timing.
The
attaché then launched into a lengthy review of Venezuelan
political history since 1998. In December of that year some four
decades of two-party rule by the Accion Democratica and COPEI
parties came to an end with Chávez taking about 56
percent of the vote despite the two major parties' fusion behind
a single candidate. "This is the origin of democratic
change in Venezuela," López claimed.
There followed
an April 1999 referendum in which Venezuelans by a 92 percent
majority called for the creation of a Constituent Assembly to
"reform all of the state institutions." Chávez
supporters won 121 of the 131 seats in that assembly the
following July, and in December of 1999 the voters approved the
new constitution that they wrote. "It was a revolutionary
process," López said, "but a democratic and
peaceful revolutionary process."
The new
constitution provided that all elected public officials would
have to face new elections, which were held in July of 2000. In
that round of voting Chávez won some 60 percent of the
vote. His political party, the Movement for the Fifth Republic,
won only 75 seats in the 165-member unicameral legislature, but
with 11 allies from smaller parties gained a working majority.
On the opposition side, Accion Democratica won the most seats
with 25, while COPEI won 7 and a number of other parties split
the rest.
The new
constitution provided that certain things could pass by a simple
legislative majority (which Chávez has) and other things
require a two-thirds majority (which he doesn't have).
One of the
things that could be and was adopted by a simple majority was an
enabling law allowing the president to issue certain decrees.
That Chávez did, on a host of matters from the name of
the country (now the "Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela") to oil and gas regulations, and most
controversially, decrees on development along the coastlines and
land tenure. Chamber of Commerce president and later dictator-
for-a-day Pedro Carmona brought a lawsuit to have all of these
decrees nullified, but did not prevail.
The new
constitution provided for several different kinds of
plebiscites --- initiatives and referenda to pass or repeal
laws, advisory votes and recalls of public officials. All of
these four processes have different rules under the
constitution, López explained.
This past
December and January, the opposition called a management lockout
that was supported by labor strikes in some sectors and
bolstered by street protests and other measures in an effort to
force an advisory vote on whether Chávez should step
down. The president insisted that an advisory vote on a public
official stepping down is merely an unconstitutional shortcut
for a recall and insisted that if the opposition wants to recall
him, they will have to follow the constitutional procedures.
Although the
argument caused a 63-day crisis in Venezuela's crucial oil
industry, differences between the two sorts of plebiscites has
not been much discussed by the international corporate news
media.
A Venezuelan
advisory vote can be held more or less any time. Its proponents
must gather the signatures of 10 percent of the voters. With 50
percent of the votes plus one more, the measure passes.
For a recall,
however, proponents must gather the signatures of 20 percent of
the voters in a given district for a lower-level official and
nationwide for a president. Such petition drives can only take
place after half of the official's term has been served --- that
will be in August, in Chávez's case. In a recall
election, there must be at least a 25 percent voter turnout for
any result to be binding. Moreover, to recall a public official
there must be more votes, in absolute terms, than were cast to
elect him or her. Thus to recall Chávez, at least
3,757,774 votes would be required as he received one vote less
than that in the 2000 election at which 56.6 percent of the
registered electorate showed up at the polls.
All this
suggests that even if the polls published by Venezuela's
opposition press are to be taken at face value, the conclusion
most frequently reached by the international corporate news
organizations --- that Chávez is likely to lose a recall
vote later this year --- may be more a matter of wishful
thinking than reality.
According to
López, the opposition's bid to hold a vote under the
easier consultative referendum rules did enormous economic
damage to Venezuela. Although he dismissed the lockout and
strike as "half effective at its height," disruption
of the oil industry cost the country $3.626 billion, and another
$2 billion in cash was taken out of the country. The
attachÈ also noted that "during 63 days, the
commercial media didn't broadcast one single
commercial."
There ensued a
long discourse on the Venezuelan economy (the tedious part of
the lecture). "Oil for Venezuela is like the canal is for
Panama," López explained, defending his boss's role
in OPEC, which has entailed visits to world leaders that
Washington doesn't much like in an effort to win higher prices
for his country's main export. "The US has twisted this to
say 'he's a terrorist because he visited Iraq and Libya,"
he argued, but "when Chávez came to power Venezuela
was getting a nickel a liter and his foreign policy was aimed at
raising that, which has happened."
López
also noted the special deals that Venezuela has given to Latin
American neighbors that don't have oil, including Panama.
Chávez has been criticized in the US and by the
Venezuelan opposition for giving Cuba preferential petroleum
deals, but the attaché said that the Cubans pay the same
prices that Panama does, but pay in part by providing doctors
for the Venezuelan public health care system.
"This
concerted, systematic campaign about the 'Cubanization' of
Venezuela conflicts with the basic communist principle of
expropriation," López alleged. His country's
constitution, like those of Panama and the United States,
guarantees private property rights and requires compensation
when property is taken by eminent domain.
López
also defended a proposed new press law that was under
consideration back in Caracas as he spoke. "In Venezuela,
not one medium has been closed," he argued, adding that
"if there's a fault, it's with the media." He said
that the legislation is not for the purpose of limiting freedom
of expression, but to stop the incitement of violence.
"What we're looking to do is to prevent the kind of thing
that happened on April 11," he concluded.
Also in this
section:
Panama News Briefs
Venezuelan Embassy presents
the other side of the story
Horror on the way to
Houston
Torrijos runs cautious
campaign
Miss Universe
2003
Instability in
Ecuador
