VENEZUELA: DEMOCRACY IS SUBVERSIVE
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
Mar@ip.etecsa.cu
It's too early yet to make a complete assessment of what happened in Venezuela in the days between last April 11 and 14, but some essential aspects can be examined. One of them is the wordplay in order to alter reality. Just remember the headlines in the media to witness an exercise in idiomatic virtuality. An example: "Hugo Chávez resigns" (El Nuevo Herald's online edition, April13, 2002), a headline that practically was the same in the rest of the media. This virtual news was indispensable, in Venezuela and abroad, in order to change reality and allow an immediate consolidation of the "transition" team.
Swiftness is vital in any military coup, but even more in this case, due to its lack of support and effective control of military command and units with real power. All of this was in evidence a few hours later. Also very important was the need to imprint right away in the public's mind a very weak argumentation: the President had resigned. In that manner the legal proceedings were played down. Remember that the Venezuelan private media had hammered the public with news about popular protests, strikes of private entrepreneurs, resignations of some military officers, etc., trying to paint the picture of a state of ungovernability and of a power vacuum. The result of this barrage on the conscience, and consequently on the attitudes of the common citizen would be: "There's an unbearable situation, the military speak to the President. He understands and resigns. Nothing to do but stay home."
In truth it was a coup with a touch of audacity, but very much of the top ranks --a few generals in a country of too many stars--, an assault of Panzer media. It lacked an Al Capone in uniform, or an up to date postmodern version of Curzio Malaparte's old Technique of the Coup d'Etat. And it also lacked the main part: the people for the key moment of consolidation.
On the other hand, the urgency to change reality with virtual headlines also had the intention of avoiding discreet consequences of an international character. (I stress "discreet consequences", and not many at that.) They had to show a fait accompli to the gentlemen presidents of the Group of Rio, who were meeting in Costa Rica, so that they overlooked the strict sanctions foreseen in the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) in case of a military coup in a member country. The regional organization could later send a mission that would make certain recommendations, which translated to plain language would be to hold elections and leave Chávez out of the picture.
One fact is undeniable: what happened in Venezuela was a military coup with a civilian cover that included apparently aseptic characters, acceptable to the standing global establishment. No political parties in the main roles, only that part of the civil society that stars in the media --and usually controls it. That is, the adequate and presentable characters, a small part of society, not all of it, not even the majority.
With this scenario there was an attempt in Venezuela --who beat Argentina by a nose-- to implant the new democratic model that in the not so distant future could reign in Latin America. It isn't a throwback to the classic military dictatorship up front, a coup-leader-turned-president, but a new makeup of the essentials: the alliance of economic power with the armed forces in order to have the control of an explosive environment such as the ones in the region. The Venezuelan cosmetic surgery included President Chavez's "resignation", in order to whitewash the military coup. That is the reason for the headlines and the wording of the news.
But the fact is that Chávez did not "fall" --another headline-- nor did he quit. There is ample evidence of it, what most of the media --in Venezuela and abroad-- ignored or hid until the counter-coup achieved victory.
In an interview with Cuban television --April 12-- María Gabriela Chávez, the President's eldest daughter, said that her father had told her "at no moment at all did he resign". Ms Chavez was able to talk on the telephone with her father on that day, and he asked her to transmit the following message to everyone: "I am a jailed president."
I believed in her declaration, but some could think that daughterly love is biased. Julio Montes is no son of Chávez, but he is the Venezuelan Ambassador in Havana. Montes is an exceptional witness, for he was at the Miraflores Palace (the presidential residence) with Chávez until the latter's arrest. "They demanded of him," said Montes to Cuban TV in a telephone interview, "his resignation or his immolation". He did not resign and the military took him away. Another one also present on that critical moment was Aristóbulo Isturiz, Minister of Higher Education, who declared to Cuban TV that Chávez told the military that imprisoned him that he "would never sign the resignation."
But, sure, "Cuban TV is Castro, and we know he is a close friend of the resigning president", or words to that effect could have been said by editors, a rationalization so that they could ignore these and other information. London's BBC, who certainly is neither Castroite nor a Chavez follower, showed an alleged letter of renunciation by the Venezuelan president, but unsigned.
If the above were not enough, Isaías Rodríguez, the Chávez administration's Attorney General --at the moment sacked by the Junta-- declared to Venezuelan TV that the President was in custody, but that "he hadn't signed his resignation". He was cut off from the air.
Obviously --and this is the strongest argument--, if a document of resignation signed by Chávez would have been available to the junta, a facsimile would have been published all over the world. That signature would have been evidence in favor of the thesis of the "transition", not of a coup, and would have covered up other wrongdoings.
But let's skip all that has been said for the sake of argument. Suppose that Chávez did resign, that it wasn't a coup, but that the president gave up his post. According to the Constitution, approved by a national referendum won by Chávez's political alliance, the procedure in such cases is for the Vice-president to be sworn in as President. But first Congress should convene and confirm the former president's resignation. Nothing of the sort happened. But if the constitutional procedure seems too favorable to Chávez, the previous 1961 Constitution had similar mechanisms.
Well, let's not ask for the impossible, for neither of the two existed: the aseptic president of the coup's junta, Mr. Pedro Carmona, with the flourish of a pen dissolved Congress, abolished the Constitution, sacked the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, the Attorney General, the Defender of the People and invalidated 49 approved bills --among them one limiting foreign investments in oil. He also dismantled every organ that directly or indirectly came from democratic elections overseen by international observers.
Why this havoc on legality? Because it was a coup, the restoration of an ancien régime, and the strategy demanded to suspend every legal hold that would allow the return of Chávez or his substitution by the Vice-President.
In the face of all those measures that sweep away every legitimate institution, President Bush declared that "now the situation will be one of tranquility and democracy," according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
Does President Bush ignore that Chávez has won office twice in internationally overseen elections? Or has he learned through experience of a superior form, a more democratic way of becoming president of a country? Has he choked on another pretzel? Is this the preamble to a new concept of democracy? Or perhaps, as many think, has he been polishing the pipeline? (Allow me to remind you that the president of the junta, Mr. Carmona, owns VENOCO, a Venezuelan petrochemical company. It seems oil pipelines turn democracy on and off.)
In tune with the White House the media also spoke of a "democratic transition" government. The editor's virtuality disqualified the ousted government as a democracy, although it had submitted the presidency twice to the will of the voters. The junta's regime was "a government of the people, by the people and for the people", in spite that it violated every rule of the book that had been approved in free elections. And the president was the illegal one, although he also became the first political prisoner of his country in the last three years.
But the real history was different. In the scant 47 hours that the junta lasted, the people began to take to the streets and demonstrate in front of Fort Tiuna in Caracas, where the leaders of the coup were, as well as in front of Miraflores Palace. Many governors did not accept the coup and military units demanded respect for the legal institutions. If the president had resigned, they insisted on seeing the evidence, and then Constitutional replacement should take place. The counter-coup of legality was underwayl.
Several are the lessons that should be learned from the Venezuelan experience, and we might write about them shortly. One of them is essential: the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has shown its preference for institutionalized democracy. The problem is that in that case, for some people, it's subversive.
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Manuel Alberto Ramy is the Radio Progreso Alternativa and Progreso Weekly correspondent in Havana, as well as from Spain's El Economista.
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