Meanwhile, down in Venezuela. A candidate for wet work.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Venezuela's Fake Democrat
By BERNARD ARONSON
Published: August 14, 2004
The most important struggle for democracy in the Western Hemisphere is now playing out in Venezuela, one of Latin America's oldest continuing democracies, and a leading supplier of oil to the United States.
The immediate forum for this struggle is a referendum tomorrow on whether to recall President Hugo Chávez. Mr. Chávez - a former army colonel who led a failed coup attempt in 1992 - was elected on a populist platform in 1998, and, after rewriting Venezuela's Constitution, again in 2000.
In an interesting twist, the referendum that could unseat Mr. Chávez, is, itself, part of the populist restructuring of Venezuela's democratic institutions that he has carried out- including creating a unicameral legislature and renaming the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Nevertheless, when citizen groups petitioned to hold a referendum, the Chávez-dominated courts and National Electoral Commission forced them to collect millions more signatures than necessary - and then to recertify many of those signatures. While the process dragged on, public employees who signed the referendum petition were fired, demoted and denied national identity cards and passports. Only after pressure from the Organization of American States and former President Jimmy Carter did the commission agree to let the referendum proceed.
There is no question that the struggle in Venezuela is rooted in the country's past. The corruption, crime, poverty and inequality under 40 years of rule by two political parties fueled a wave of popular disgust with traditional politics and a deep desire for change that carried Mr. Chávez to the presidency. But the struggle also marks a shift of sorts, one that highlights disturbing trends across Latin America.
Like former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, Mr. Chávez represents a new breed of Latin autocrat - a leader who is legitimately elected but then uses his office to undermine democratic checks and balances and intimidate political opponents.
Two months ago, for example, the Chávez-controlled National Assembly added 11 justices to the Supreme Court, and changed the requirement for confirmation from two-thirds of legislators to a simple majority, guaranteeing Mr. Chávez control of the judiciary. As a result, should Mr. Chávez lose the referendum, the court is likely to ratify his stated intention to run for president in the election to fill his vacancy, even though a disinterested reading of the Venezuelan Constitution suggests that he would be ineligible.
Mr. Chávez's record of subverting democracy doesn't stop there. Though much of the Venezuelan media remains in private hands and is clearly allied with the opposition, it is slowly being strangled by regulations that deny it access to hard currency. And, whenever Mr. Chávez wishes, he decrees that all private television and radio stations, along with the state-owned news media, carry his speeches live.
What's more, his government has manipulated the criminal justice system to thwart political opponents. Henrique Capriles Radonski, a leader of Justice First, a reformist political party, and the elected mayor of the Baruta district of Caracas, languishes in jail on a clearly fraudulent charge of fomenting a riot. María Corina Machado, a director of Súmate, a civic group allied with the opposition, is being prosecuted on charges equivalent to treason because her organization accepted a grant of more than $50,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy, which is financed in part by Congress, to educate Venezuelans about their voting rights. Yet only one Venezuelan has been arrested in the killings of more than 25 opposition demonstrators in clashes with supporters of Mr. Chávez over the last three years.
The outcome of the referendum remains in doubt because Mr. Chávez has been spending state oil revenues freely and registering new citizens and voters en masse. (At the same time, signers of the recall petition have found their customary voting places moved at the last minute.) Moreover, Mr. Chávez retains passionate support among Venezuela's poor.
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