The WSJ has an editorial on Venezuela's "structure and culture":
The Wall Street Journal January 10, 2003 12:10 a.m. EST
THE AMERICAS
MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY, EDITOR
The French Liberal Who Foresaw Venezuela's Mobocracy
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Is Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a democratic leader whose power should be sustained in the name of constitutional law? Or is his rule a threat to freedom?
Nineteenth-century classical liberals who did so much to advance democratic political philosophy may well have agreed with the latter proposition. But it is unlikely that they would have considered the removal of Mr. Chavez the singular solution to what ails the democracy.
The crisis in Venezuela is only about Mr. Chavez in the short run. In the longer run, the problems will end only when the country formulates a constitution that restrains government. Without such a commitment, Venezuela risks exchanging one tyrannical system for another.
In 1815, French liberal Benjamin Constant warned that without enforceable limits to government, any system and any leader was likely to prove despotic. "Men of party, no matter how pure their intentions, are always reluctant to limit sovereignty," he wrote. "They mistrust such and such a kind of government, such and such a class of rulers; but let them organize authority in their own way, let them commit it to delegates of their choosing and they will come to believe there is no limit to it."
Constant never visited Venezuela but his writing on the "principles of politics," about what happens when the state is unrestrained was a prophecy of the South American nation nonetheless. One reason the Venezuelan opposition, while united against Mr. Chavez, cannot seem to find a path beyond calling for his demise is undoubtedly because it cannot imagine a structurally changed political environment.
The opposition says that it will proceed with a Feb. 2 non-binding referendum, already approved by the National Electoral Council, even though Mr. Chavez is refusing to fund it. This is likely to clarify the public's will and may accelerate the peaceful process of getting rid of the menacing Mr. Chavez. Yet even if the president heads off to Cuba, the roots of the political crisis will remain until Venezuelans find a consensus built around the notion of limited government.
This is no small task for a country that for decades has tolerated, and even encouraged, arbitrary power. The 1999 constitution drawn up by Mr. Chavez's party is a disaster, particularly because it expanded the government's obligations as a provider and therefore its reach. But encroachments on liberty didn't start with that document. The subtle dismantling of constitutional protections has been going on for decades. As Venezuelan-born journalist Carlos Ball wrote in this column in 1999, Venezuelan congressmen "through their political parties, colluded in order to suspend -- for 30 years -- specific constitutional clauses that protected private property and free enterprise."
By the time Mr. Chavez was ready to run for office, the ground was fertile for his radical stance because so many assaults on the constitution had pushed so many Venezuelans into poverty.
For Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, for at least 13 other Democratic members of the U.S. Congress who have written to George Bush on behalf of Mr. Chavez and for the American left, democracy in Venezuela seems to mean simply that elected officials can do what they please. Yet Mr. Chavez long ago ceased to qualify as a democratic leader. His verbal assaults and state-sponsored aggression against property owners, political opponents, the church, the judiciary and the media demonstrate his idea of how democracy works.
By fomenting divisiveness, this president encourages violence and has eroded what little institutional order the country had. His supporters, armed with bottles, stones and bullets have been videotaped attacking peaceful opposition marchers. His best friend in the region is the dictator Fidel Castro, a man who famously perfected the use of agents provocateurs to do his dirty work. This week, a former pilot of the Venezuelan equivalent of Air Force One alleged -- although without proof -- that Mr. Chavez funneled money to al Qaeda.
What has happened in Venezuela could have been predicted. Constant did so when he wrote about the perils of granting sovereignty. "It is necessary, indeed imperative, to understand its exact nature and to determine its precise extent." Create law that establishes unlimited power in the hands of the elected and, he warned, "you create and toss at random into human society a degree of power which is too large in itself and which is bound to constitute an evil, in whatever hands it is placed." When there is absolute power, "popular government is simply a violent tyranny."
Venezuelans often complain that the moral fabric of their society has deteriorated. Constant also foresaw this. "Arbitrary power destroys morality for there can be no morality without security," he wrote. "When arbitrary power strikes without scruple those men who have awakened its suspicions, it is not only an individual whom it persecutes, it is the entire nation which it first humiliates then degrades." Likewise Constant predicted how absolute and therefore arbitrary power would foster privilege despite its pledge to increase equality. In reference to the surrender of freedom that comes with wide sovereignty he said: "By giving ourselves entirely, we do not enter a condition equal for all, because some derive exclusive advantage from the sacrifice of the rest."
For Constant there was no value in defending a constitution, which failed to restrain the state. "Why do we wish to punish those who plot against the state? Because we fear the replacement of a legal organization by an oppressive power. But if the authority itself exercises this oppressive power, what advantage can it possibly offer?"
This is very much the argument used by the former coup-plotter Chavez himself, who when sworn in as president pledged to dispense with the "morbid" constitution. Now the opposition, with good justification, is saying the same thing. But Venezuelans don't seem to have learned the lesson in all this. Government-owned oil company executives are up in arms about Mr. Chavez's interference in their business, but not one has called for the government to relinquish its ownership of oil. Their jeremiads would carry more weight if they would commit to changing more than just the man in power.
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ABOUT THE EDITOR
Mary Anastasia O'Grady is editor of The Americas, which appears every Friday. The column discusses political, economic, business and financial events and trends in the Americas. Ms. O'Grady is also a senior editorial-page writer for the Journal, writing on Latin America and Canada. She joined the paper in 1995 and was named a senior editorial-page writer in 1999.
Prior to working at the Journal, Ms. O'Grady worked as an options strategist first for Advest Inc. in 1981 and later for Thomson McKinnon Securities in 1983. She moved to Merrill Lynch & Co. in 1984 as an options strategist.
In 1997, Ms. O'Grady won the Inter American Press Association's Daily Gleaner Award for editorial commentary, and in 1999 she received an honorable mention in IAPA's opinion award category for her editorials and weekly column. Born in Bryn Mawr, Pa., she received a bachelor's degree in English from Assumption College in Worcester, Mass. She has an M.B.A. in financial management from Pace University in New York.
Ms. O'Grady invites comments to mary.o'grady@wsj.com. |
