Venezuelan Elections: Madison Avenue Style
Lacava, Gloria
Venezuelans are preparing to go to the polls on December 4 to elect their sixth consecutive president since overthrowing the dictator Marcos P&rez Jim6nez in 1958. Democracy does not...
...This could become so serious as to lead to a formal split of the party in the medium term which would certainly benefit the Left," the parliamentary candidate added...
...The electioneering cost, however, has not been reflected in the quality of the debate...
...The nationalized oil industry provides 97% of foreign exchange and 70% of all fiscal revenues...
...The most potent force among Left groupings is the Movement to Socialism (MAS) which is running ex-guerrilla, Teodoro Petkoff, for president...
...Congress Is a Remnant" The leitmotif of Lusinchi's campaign has been the Pacto Social, a corporatist style arrangement which calls for the participation of CTV-appointed officials in the comanagement of the public sector, now accounting for 70% of the economy...
...Congress is a remnant of the tradition of autocracy in Venezuela," Petkoff recently told this reporter, adding that party interests prevail over those of the electors, a criticism unanimously voiced by the Left...
...Now MAS is striving for a kind of middle-class respectability and to be identified.with popular culture...
...But even so, "it is a pipe dream," a Venezuelan psychologist recently said, "for when Lusinchi becomes president, he will have to rule in the interests of the economic groups which financed his campaign...
...He proposes a reform of the electoral process by means of direct elections of governors and congresspeople, and shorter terms for congressional and municipal representatives...
...As in previous campaigns, lip service is paid to the need to revive agriculture and the ailing construction industry, and create new jobs...
...In order to enlarge its mass following, the party developed a strategy aimed at discarding the image of the Left as bearded terrorists bent on the violent overthrow of the system...
...MAS alone is expected to gain 17% of this total...
...He is strongly supported by ex-President P6rez who, after parrying judicial charges of corruption, has made a grand political comeback and is now considered to be the most influential Social Democrat leader...
...Ultimately, the Left's success at the polls--especially in the presidential vote-will depend on the ability of the government to gloss over serious economic problems, and allay fears in the financial community...
...Now the COPEI Administration has been pressured by the IMF to refinance its debt with 400 foreign banks, but Herrera has managed to postpone discussions until after the December elections so as 38 to shift political responsibility for the coming austerity measures onto his likely AD successor...
...On the left, MAS's leader Teodoro Petkoff also talks of co-management, mainly in steel and aluminum industries, but advocates workers' self-management in sugar mills and public transportation...
...media expert David Garth advised COPEI presidential candidate and party founder Rafael Caldera to divorce his image from the Herrera Administration and present himself as the country's savior...
...Thus, although September polls give AD's Jaime Lusinchi a commanding 40% of the vote and COPEI's Rafael Caldera, 25%, the combined total Nov/Doc 1983 they are likely to receive falls far short of the 90% garnered by both parties in 1978...
...With a voting population of eight million, this makes the Venezuelan effort to woo voters by far the most expensive in the world...
...Monetarist restraints imposed 37update * update * update* update by ruling COPEI President Luis Herrera Campins have brought inflation down to 6% in 1983 from the 16% rate registered in 1980...
...At any rate, election results should confirm Venezuelan socialism as the largest leftist electoral force in presentday Latin America...
...NACLA Report 36update . update . update update Herrera Campins-"returning the country mortgaged three times over...
...An IMF intervention could weigh heavily on the future of Venezuelan politics...
...The rationale given by Herrera for tight money policies was the need to end the "gay and irresponsible merry-go-round" which had flourished during the AD Administration of Carlos Andr6s Perez (1973-78...
...Lusinchi is also backed by the party labor bureaucracy which controls the Venezuelan Labor Confederation (CTV), the largest union in the country with over a million members...
...But if the incoming government is in a position to reschedule the foreign debt with international banks-as majgr creditors are now predictingthen Venezuela's political system is not likely to be altered by structural changes of an anti-democratic nature...
...Rangel heads the People's Unity Alliance (AUP), a loose coalition including the Communist Party of Venezuela...
...Mortgaging the Country President Herrera will leave behind a foreign debt of $33 billion, the fourth largest in Latin America...
...NACLA Reportupdate update pdate update Former guerrilla Teodoro Petkoff promotes "socialism with democracy" as MAS's presidential candidate...
...Banned from participation in the political process for most of the 1960s, parties today claiming a socialist ideology have emerged as the third force in Venezuelan politics...
...In addition, the government did nothing to prevent the cash outflow frenzy in the two months preceding the imposition of exchange controls on February 18...
...The Pacto Social will undoubtedly favor state and labor bureaucrats, not workers, over the entrepreneurial sector...
...Social tensions resulting from IMF-imposed austerity measures could lead to serious repression with an increasingly active role for the armed forces...
...A major factor in the growing weight of the Left in Venezuelan politics has been the economic stagnation of the last years...
...A 1970 Communist Party split, MAS has grown from 40,000 members in 1977 to 120,000, constituting the largest single party on the left...
...As candidate Petkoff says, "Herrera accused the former administration of mortgaging the country, but he is returning it mortgaged three times over...
...Caldera, who was president between 1968 and 1973, represents the conservative wing inside COPEI, traditionally an elitist-oriented, Church-based party...
...If this projection proves correct, the combined Left could very well outweigh the Christian Democrats in Congress...
...The cost of the campaign, in high gear for the last Gloria Lacava, a Venezuelan journalist, is a doctoral candidate in Latin American history at New York University...
...By contrast, front-runner Jaime Lusinchi, of the AD opposition, has the benefit of a united party behind his candidacy...
...With two senators, Nov/Dec 1983 eleven deputies and strong bases in the young, urban middle class, Petkoff strives to extend MAS "even to the last forgotten Indian in the Venezuelan backlands...
...year and a half, will reach well over $225 million...
...Unlike AUP, led by Rangel, however, MAS has projected an image of greater internal unity, a factor which seems to favor its future electoral performance...
...But as a result, GDP growth has fallen to a minuscule 0.6...
...Due to his 1978 campaign claims of a government "for the poor," Herrera had gained the reputation of being like a watermelon: green (COPEI's official color) outside and red inside, but eventually his economic policies proved his conservatism...
...Despite such righteous indignation, the Herrera Administration was equally inept at managing the economy and controlling credit expansion...
...Running for the fourth time, he is supported by the laissez-faire entrepreneurs to whom he has promised to hand back inefficient state-owned enterprises...
...Since its gradual electoral comeback beginning in 1968, the Left has never enjoyed such an advantageous climate...
...But the real battle for Socialists is the congressional elections, also scheduled for December 4, when they hope to increase their total representation to 25...
...The polls give Petkoff 12% of the vote, more than double his nearest rival on the left, Jos6 Vicente Rangel...
...Candidate is Ex-Guerrilla Over the last five years the Left has been the clear beneficiary of voter dissatisfaction with the major parties...
...at both the ruling Christian Democrats (COPEI) and their Social Democratic challenger, Democratic Action (AD), the latter for the excessive spending in its last presidential period, 1973-78...
...Democracy does not come cheaply here...
...Charges of corruption and mismanagement are being levelled AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland greets AD presidential candidate Jaime Lusinchi in Washington in April 1982...
...But if any real political differences existed within COPEI, they faded away during Herrera's rule," a highranking leftist candidate for Congress said...
...After the oil boom of the mid-1970s, government revenues have shrunk by $4 billion since early 1982 because of declining oil prices...
...Venezuelans' discontent is manifested in declining enthusiasm for the two-party dominance of AD and COPEI...
...Besides the political benefits derived from Venezuelans' discontent with traditional parties, the Left has grown out of a slow process of internal reconstruction, following the 1960s legacy of disunity and isolation...
...In addition, the crisis of authoritarian regimes in South America suggests that the suppression of democracy does not guarantee social and economic stability, a lesson surely not lost on Venezuela...
...Originally a mass-based populist force, the Social Democrats now rely on party bureaucracy, with their National Executive Committee in charge of all policy making...
...State enterprises and autonomous public agencies, which are responsible for the lion's share of the foreign debt, contracted unchecked shortterm loans to meet long-term obligations, becoming insolvent by the end of 1982...
...1 no longer believe a switch of government is going to take the country out of the crisis," said a small-business woman from Puerto Cabello, 250 kilometers west of Caracas, who in the past voted for AD...
...Political characterizations aside, Caldera's exclusion of Herreristas from COPEI's congressional slate now indicates that a clash, largely based on personalities, is very possible...
...The highest social cost of the Christian Democrat austerity measures has been a steep rise in unemployment, which labor experts estimate may reach a 25% rate by the end of this year...
...AD held office between 1958 and 1968 and since then has alternated power with COPEI...
...His government program includes a tax reform, in a country where taxes are still relatively low and regressive, and the breaking up of private monopolies...
...Given the unpopularity of the ruling Christian Democrats, U.S...
...Petkoff, who turned away from orthodox Marxism and advocates "socialism with democracy," had been battling in the Senate to extend participatory democracy to all levels of society...
...In the midst of the worst economic crisis in 25 years, the traditional party campaign is again a Madison Avenue style contest which avoids serious discussion of the issues and gives preference to vituperation and personal attacks...
...They now control municipal councils in several important cities, including the industrial Ciudad Guayana, and have managed a series of significant victories in key labor and professional organizations...
...After taking 7.7% of the presidential vote and 13.1% of the congressional vote in 1978, the Left formed a united front in the 1979 municipal elections and captured 18.5% of the vote...
Vol. 17 • November 1983 • No. 6
