With
Chávez's illness, is the left all right in Venezuela?
by Robert
Valencia --- Council on Hemispheric Affairs
When Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez spent a long absence from his country in Cuba earlier
last year, opponents and sympathizers alike wondered about his future
as his nation's undisputed commander in chief. But mounting
speculations about the exact nature and implications of his ailment
proliferated. Later, it began to circulate that Chávez was suffering
from an advanced case of colon cancer after information was made
public by the Spanish media. After his health circumstances became
known, Chávez pledged to the nation that he would continue ruling
Venezuela "until 2031." In fact, he boasted that he would
consider the years between 2020 and 2030 to be his "golden
decade."
The question now is
whether Chávez was just being waggish or whether he realizes that
his ultimate fate is not necessarily in his hands. Many experts are
asking whether Chávez's health will permit him to keep the
Bolivarian Revolution nimble, with some arguing that Chávez won't be
able to accomplish all of his visions. This is because he may have
"only…two
years to live," and he may be physically
unable to run for the presidency, possibly even for the 2012
electoral cycle.
Indeed, Chávez's current
health condition has fostered many questions about the expectations
of his left-leaning constituency in Venezuela, a cohort that already
has presented some socioeconomic problems to his leadership within
the country's widely accepted ideological bounds, some of these had
helped spawn no shortage of previous diplomatic blunders and triumphs
abroad. The country's traditional concerns for the poor have centered
on whether the delivery of promised benefits would continue rather
than be aborted by a precipitous oil earnings. Nevertheless, a
rabidly anti-Chávez Wall Street Journal, insisted that his cure for
Venezuela's past and current maladies has always been for Chávez to
"deepen the socialist revolution: socialism, socialism and more
socialism. We have to deepen the struggle and defeat the vices of the
past that still persist among us: violence, insecurity, corruption,
selfishness, individualism."
The Latin American left
has at least one thing in common: ensuring that these countries ---
where the movement is in ascendency --- should foster their own
societies' destinies so as to not to be dependent on an all-powerful
Washington, as in the past. But some of the most notable differences
now to be seen are countries such as moderate left-leaning Brazil,
which is at least being looked upon by its neighbors as a model of
prosperity and fiscal discipline. Yet, could the region's future
could be the evolution of those kind of progressive societies rather
than Venezuela and its swashbuckling leader. For some, this
represents a far less wrenching experience than having Venezuela as
the hotly pursued model. But Chávez is seemingly intent on seeking
to retrofit the Cuban model on Venezuelan soil, just as Havana
appears to be scrapping much of the system that simply did not work.
Case in point: the Bolivarian Revolution, which unquestionably has
gravitated around the figure of Chávez, has no viable rival or
logical successors challenging the president. Chávez is no pushover,
but a formidable foe, even if wide grasp and significant regional
role includes familiarity with agribusiness, financial, construction,
oil, and steel. Chávez's role model and exemplar Fidel Castro, in
turn, appears to rely upon his brother Raúl, who is currently at the
helm of the island which he is rapidly transforming into a modern
society, even though Washington refuses to acknowledge this. For his
part, and in light of his serious illness, Chávez, at least
temporarily, has granted some authority that was given to Vice
President Elías Jaua, even though the Venezuelan president has
retaken some of the powers that had been shifted at the height of his
cancer scare.
As a result of Chávez's
medical problems, the Venezuelan opposition sees itself sitting on a
political goldmine. For as long as it can be remembered, the
opposition has been unable to coalesce into a unified bloc with a
charismatic leader capable of challenging Chávez's enormous clout in
poor urban neighborhoods and rural areas. It possibly had its best
prospects with the prospective candidate of renowned newspaper editor
Teodoro Petkoff in 2006, but even though he was at first a supporter
of Chávez and then turned against him, he eventually decided to
support Manuel Rosales who, in the end, was not able to present a
credible threat to Chávez's tenure. Last month, a number of the
opposition candidates participated in a televised debate, precisely
aimed at stitching the country's disparate forces together under the
unified banner of the Coalition
of Democratic Unity. The participants1
include Zulia state's Governor Pablo Pérez Álvarez, Miranda state
Governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, and María Corina Machado, who
was the founder of the anti-Chávez group known as Súmate, who won
her anti-Chávez2
spurs by being a prominent leader of the golpista faction that
attempted a failed coup against Chávez3
in 2002. This time, the opposition was not able to aim much of a
visceral attack at Chávez, but rather chose to tackle such national
problems including the questions of security, employment, and
education, while stepping up attacks against the increasing drug
trade and very high crime rates assailing the country.
Indeed, the Chávez
administration has
long experienced a slew of controversial
societal pressures, such as hyperinflation, the need to reform the
judicial system, and issues surrounding the expropriation of lands
and private enterprise. These have played out against a backdrop of
increased insecurity and unprecedented crime levels common throughout
Latin America. But such bad news barely seems to have affected his
popularity ratings. According to the Instituto
Venezolano de Analisis de Data (IVAD),
President Chávez has an approval rating of 71.5 percent, and if
elections were to take place today, he would defeat leading
opposition figure, in this case Capriles Radonski, 55.5 percent to
31.8 percent.
Things also seem to be
running as usual for Chávez in the realms of regional and
international diplomacy. Two of his strongest allies in Latin
America, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Cristina Fernández de
Kirchner in Argentina, won impressive victories in their respective
elections. Furthermore, the bilateral relations between Bogotá and
Caracas have significantly improved under Colombia's Juan Manuel
Santos, in a setting that produced nothing short of heartburn for the
former president of Colombia --- and Chávez's nemesis --- Álvaro
Uribe.
Chávez's illness has not
deterred him from displaying his contempt for the White House, and,
in particular, his passion for his perennial project of strengthening
other Latin American countries' determination to organize Latin
America into a mainly leftist bloc viscerally opposed to Washington.
In a recent interview with El Universal, President Chávez called
President Barack Obama a "clown"
for his criticism of Venezuela's ties with Cuba and Iran and his
allegations that Chávez is threatening basic democratic values ---
and he even went on to say that the United States gave
cancer to him and other South American leaders.
Meanwhile, Chávez took the initiative of responding by hosting the
first conference of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States (Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños --- CELAC)
in December, which pointedly excluded the United States from its
membership roster. He then surprised the rest of the hemisphere by
managing to travel to Uruguay for a MERCOSUR summit --- his first
trip abroad after being diagnosed with cancer --- where he kept up
his efforts to enter the trade bloc.
Without a doubt,
Venezuela's destiny remains under the effective control of President
Chávez, who's popularity and demeanor never seem to falter. The
hefty pay raise he has just given the armed forces is scheduled to
buy a lot of loyalty in the military, but is this scenario what makes
for a revolutionary society? Things certainly could spin out of his
control, partly due to the huge variable of his day-to-day health.
Furthermore, Venezuela
remains a ticking time bomb as today's
hyperinflation batters the economy and basic food items become
selectively scarce, particularly if the world price of oil weakens.
While the opposition
will have little success in trying to convince Venezuelans outside of
the middle class that Chávez will eventually mean totalitarianism
for the country, the Venezuelan president must realize that his
Bolivarian Revolution is genuinely seen by many of his countrymen as
a threat to free and independent institutions, and that his sometimes
heavy-handed rule could lead to a robust comeback by his foes. This
is not entirely out of the question if Chávez fails to respect the
spirit of the law, let alone its letter.
