Polarized Politics in Chávez's Venezuela

...The alliance with the West meant the exclusion of the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) and the left wing of AD, in spite of the heroic role played by both in the for helping resistance to P6rez Jim6nez...

...Now fragmentation and internal conflict are very much out in the open...

...On the eighth anniversary of the February 4, 1992 attempted coup, Arias Cdrdenas, along with two other former comandantes of the uprising, Yoel Acosta Chirinos and Jestis Urdaneta, issued a manifesto calling on Chavez to stay true to the coup's ideals...

...In the Constituent Assembly, for example, tugs-of-war between MVR delegates and many of their allies--especially the more moderate MAS-took place over articles concerning the sale of stock in the state-run petroleum company, the legalization of abortion, state control of the social security system and the revival of retroactive severance payments...

...5 Indeed, until the split among the comandantes the number of officers Chavez had named to top government posts was on the increase, presumably because the internal rivalry and factionalism among the civilian movement made them less dependable...

...Political Polarization in Chavez's Venezuela 1. El Nacional (Caracas), November 23, 1999...

...Nevertheless, he did commit himself to investigating 46 corruption charges formulated by Urdaneta while he was still head of the political police...

...The result was ambiguously worded articles which provide escape hatches for those resistant to change...

...In addition to sharing power, the parties agreed to establish a "mixed economy" with social protections and to ally politically with the United States in the Cold War...

...Internal democracy and ideological clarity are two imperatives that ChAvez and his MVR can no longer postpone...

...9 Soldiers check identification documents at a military roadblock in the state of Apure...

...Friction also manifested itself within the ChAvez movement between retired officers and those who accused the military of flagrant violation of human rights...

...The mass disturbances of February 27, 1989, set off by a sharp increase in public transportation and gasoline prices under then-President Carlos Andrds Pdrez demonstrated the extent to which the nation's poor resented the severe battering they had endured throughout the 1980s...

...Despite his careful positioning of himself to the right of Chivez, he has nonetheless accepted the backing of ID, the left-leaning Radical Cause (Causa R) and even the small ultra-leftist Red Flag party...

...Polarization over the "Yes" and "No" vote in the December 15 ratification of the new Constitution left little space for nuanced positions...

...On the December 15,1999 as Venezuelan's voted to ratify country's new Constitution-a Constitution drafted by an elected Constituent Assembly overwhelmingly loyal to President Hugo Chivez-the country was hit by a devastating rainstorm that killed at least 10,000 people...

...2 (1997), pp...

...The Pole's fragmentation has cut into Chivez's following, though he still leads Arias CUrdenas in the polls...

...As soon as he announced his intention to run for the presidency, the AD candidate, Antonio Ledezma, withdrew A campaign poster for Arias Cdrdenas, Chdvez's rival in the May 28 election, with "Judas" scrawled on it...

...While the economies of many other Latin American nations have partially recovered from the contraction of the 1980s, that of Venezuela has remained in a continued slump, during which time increasing numbers of the working class-and former members of the shrinking middle class-have only been able to find work in the informal sector...

...The polarization generated by Hugo ChAvez comes in marked contrast to the four decades of alternating rule of AD and Copei which produced no meaningful differentiation between the two contending parties...

...Specifically, they pointed the finger at the president of the interim Congress, Luis Miquilena, and Foreign Relations Minister Josd Vicente Rangel, two veteran leftist politicians who they felt had monopolized the ears of the President...

...The uneasy coalition between military comandantes and civilian political activists that formed the party's base has fractured, and one of the President's closest military comradesin-arms, Francisco Arias Cdrdenas, has declared himself to be a rival candidate for the presidency...

...Second, fissures in the broader pro-Chdvez electoral alliance, the Patriotic Pole (PP)-essentially an alliance between the MVR and two smaller leftist parties, MAS and Homeland for All (PPT)-have also begun to appear...

...Chdvez creates distrust toward people like ourselves who formulate criticisms from a progressive perspective," complained the ID leader...

...Most of those who entered Chivez's movement following the 1992 coup attempts came from the periphery of a host of leftist and ultra-leftist organizations...

...The electoral calculations of each party combined with the personal ambition of its leaders-rather than ideological commitment-is the order of the day...

...The roots of the MVR itself are particularly heteroVol XXXIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2000 31REPORT ON VENEZUELA geneous...

...That the pro-leftist PPT, which shares a vision of radical change with the MVR, was shunted aside and not the more pragmatic MAS is telling...

...32, No...

...An attempted military coup led by Chdvez in February 1992, followed by another in November, indicated that anger had also built up in the armed forces...

...The final display of disenchantment came in the 1998 elections, in which the popularity of each presidential candidate was directly proportional to the degree to which he or she was able to convincingly articulate an antipacted-democracy discourse...

...These "mega-elections" were scheduled to take place within two months of the December constitutional ratification, but the catastrophic flooding forced postponement...

...At a mass that Sunday, the Archbishop of Caracas, Ignacio Velasco, attributed the floods to "the wrath of God" provoked by the arrogance of one individual-Hugo ChAvez...

...While the comandantes leveled charges of petty corruption against Miquilena, it was widely understood that deep political resentments were at the basis of the charges...

...In accordance with the deal, AD, which triumphed in the presidential elections of that year, granted the losing parties of the Pact a "fair share" of the spoils in the form of ministries and governorships in order to avoid an embittered opposition...

...The defection of Arias Cdrdenas, the second in command during the February 4, 1992 military uprising and a key member of the MVR, changes the political landscape by creating a credible "anti-Punto Fijo" opposition...

...ing to participate in the national elections of 1998, it began to attract rank-and-file members of AD and Copei, disenchanted with their respective parties as a result of rampant corruption and the failure to devise any convincing strategy of economic development...

...Chivez and Arias accuse each other of betraying the principles of the political process they began on February 4, 1992...

...The PPT continued to endorse ChAvez as well as the Pole's gubernatorial candidates in eight states until May 15, when party leaders announced that Chivez's hostility toward their candidates had forced them to withdraw their support for ChAvez in the May 28 election As for MAS, a last-minute agreement with MVR granting it three gubernatorial candidacies avoided a similar rupture, although MAS supporters are campaigning for the group's own slates in various states...

...President ChAvez has concentrated his efforts on political reform during his first year in office and is only now beginning to prioritize social and economic policy...

...8 During the constitutional debates, for example, some of Chivez's supporters, such as journalist-turned-politician Alfredo Pefia, felt that plans for privatization were moving too slowly and opposed the proposed constitutional ban on the sale of state oil company stock...

...See Ellner, Venezuela's Movimiento al Socialismo: From Guerrilla Defeat to Innovative Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), pp...

...Some Chdvez supporters have grown wary of the growing influence of the military The differences within the under his government...

...9. Author's interview with Alfredo Pefia, Washington, D.C., February 2, 2000...

...Months before, spokesmen for the Catholic Church had abandoned the hierarchy's long-standing avoidance of partisan politics by harshly criticizing ChAvez and his new Constitution...

...5. Author's interview with Herndn Gruber OdremBn, Governor of the Federal District, Caracas, November 29, 1999...

...ChAvez skillfully calmed fears of militarization and strongman rule by naming Isafas Rodriguez, a well-liked civilian and relative newcomer to the MVR, as vice-president, a position created by the new Constitution...

...7. Venevisibn TV News Program, March 14, 2000...

...4. The ex-guerrillas who broke off from the Communist Party to form MAS in 1971 at first retained the notion of the primacy of the struggle for state power and embraced the slogan "socialism in our lifetime...

...The coincidence of the reaffirmation of ChAvez's power and the worst natural disaster of the century was too much for the President's adversaries to resist...

...Chivez's main opponent, Henrique Salas Rtmer, who had positioned himself as a centrist anti-party independent, lost credibility when, just a week before the vote, AD and Copei openly declared their support for his candidacy...

...They attacked what they claimed was his authoritarian Steve Ellner, the co-editor of The Latin American Left: From the Fall of Allende to Perestroika (Westview, 1993), has written extensively on Venezuelan history and politics...

...everyone from Hugo Chavez to many of the once-laudatory political scientists blame Punto Fijo for establishing a pattern of exclusion that kept new actors, including emerging social groups and even the rank-and-file of AD and Copei, on the margin of decision making...

...The MVR had been subject to increasing tension between those who favor a strong presence of retired and active military officers in the government and those wary of such a trend...

...ChAvez showed little sympathy for his old comrades' charges and, in fact, chastised the comandantes for having gone public at the outset of an electoral campaign rather than channeling their critique internally...

...2. Steve Ellner, "Recent Venezuelan Political Studies: A Return to Third World Realities," Latin American Research Review, Vol...

...In each case, Chivez urged moderation and compromise...

...But recently, ng process...

...Prior to Arias' exit from the Chdvez camp, the polarization between Chavistas and anti-Chavistas masked a complex political setting in which both the governing Patriotic Pole as well as the opposition were deeply divided...

...ChAvez has maintained his popularity despite the deepening economic crisis-unemployment reached 18% last year, the highest rate in fifteen years-an auspicious sign for any politician...

...First, the added time has allowed latent conflicts within Chdvez's party, the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), to come to the surface...

...Actually, clear signs of the erosion of Punto Fijo democracy had presented themselves long before the ChAvez victory of 1998...

...A number of profit-limiting measures roused the ire of the business sector, including restrictions on the privatization of oil and Once extolled consolidate de Venezuela, the pact, signed now blamed fc new actors decision-makii social security, support for job security, labor benefits for the self-employed and housewives, and a more generous system of "retroactive" severance payments...

...Chivez's support is concentrated in the poor urban barrios, where the majority of the nation's population now resides...

...He has adroitly shunned association with the old discredited parties and has accepted endorsement only from nontraditional organizations...

...The Democratic Left consists of the historical leaders of MAS who split off from the party last year...

...4 Then, in April 1997, when the Chavista movement abandoned its policy of electoral abstentionism by decidSome Chavez supporters favor the military's strong presence in government, applauding the discipline of officers as a muchneeded corrective to civilian inefficiency...

...The marginal sectors of the population, which fervently support ChAvez, are now pitted against the old elites and the middle class, which since Chdvez's election in December 1998 have become increasingly hostile to his government...

...In another departure from traditional neutrality, Venezuela's main business organization, Fedecdmaras, also actively campaigned against the Constitution...

...201-218...

...Corporate actors like the Church and the business sector have, in effect, stepped into the vacuum created by the collapse and loss of credibility of the two parties that had governed Venezuela for the past 40 years, the social democratic Democratic Action Party (AD) and the Social Christian Copei Party...

...The newly assertive stance of the Catholic Church and Fedecdmaras on electoral matters-along with a more vocal stance on the part of the media-reflect the dramatic shifts in power and politics in Hugo Chivez's Venezuela...

...We are constructing our revolution here," said Arias in reference to Chivez's friendship with Fidel Castro, "and we do not need advice [from abroad...

...The system created by the Punto hmocracy in Fijo agreement, a "pacted democrae Punto Fijo cy" that created a certain political stability by shunting aside those in 1958, is who stood for "destabilizing" radi>r excluding cal reform, had long been extolled by political scientists impressed by from the the stable resilience of the Venezuelan political system...

...One of the three comandantes, Acosta Chirinos, let Chivez know in private of his disappointment that Arias had been bypassed...

...style, but they were particularly incensed that the document retreated from its predecessor's unequivocal defense of the right to life from the moment of conception...

...In the 1993 presidential elections, for the first time since 1958, a candidate who had split from the bipartisan pact-exCopei leader Rafael Caldera, running as a candidate of the newly formed center-left coalition called Convergencia-was elected to the presidency, and AD and Copei polled a combined vote of less than 50...

...During the restoration of public order following the floods, for example, Rangel had supported the investigation of alleged human rights violations committed by the country's political police who were under Urdaneta's command...

...Speaking in the coastal city of Coro, Venezuela's original capital, the three comandantes called on Chdvez to distance himself from certain politicians associated with the political practices of the past and to deepen the struggle against corruption...

...At the same time, his audacity in questioning the sacredness of private property makes the upper and middle classes tremble, the new Constitution's guarantees regarding property rights notwithstanding...

...Some MVR supporters applaud the discipline of officers as a much-needpoliticians of his ed corrective to civilian inefficiency and point to the general prestige of the armed forces in sharp contrast to the disrepute of most civilian political institutions...

...Now fragmentation and internal conflict are very much out in the open...

...Recently, the leftist PPT, irked by the unwillingness of MVR leaders to back three of its incumbent governors for reelection, has formally dropped out of the alliance...

...3. Author's interview with former MAS leader Eduardo Pozo, Caracas, November 30, 1999...

...The internal tensions and contradictions within the MVR and the Patriotic Pole came to a head with the pronouncements of the three military commanders and the wave of subsequent defections from the Chdvez camp...

...In endorsing Peia as Caracas' mayor, the MVR turned down support for the PPT's Arist6bulo IstLriz, a former mayor of that city...

...2 Chdvez now lashes out at "puntofijismo" for being synonymous with elitist rule and the antithesis of the "participatory democracy" his party claims to embrace...

...6 In a subsequent interview he stated, "I am not going to abandon Bolivar for Castro...

...Patriotic Pole have persisted because no mechanisms exist to bridge them or to arrive at common goals and a common platform...

...from the race...

...ChAvez conjures up the bogeyman of old-time, cor30 NM2LA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30REPORT ON VENEZUELA rupt politicians and political cliques, even though the traditional parties are largely out of the picture," says Eduardo Pozo, a leader of the newly formed party, Democratic Left (ID), a split-off from Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), one of ChAvez's allies...

...The concerns of the 26 Chavista officers in the Constituent Assembly were mainly limited to issues related to the armed forces, such as the special status conferred on the indian communities in the frontier region...

...In addition, Chivez's much-touted public works program, "Plan Bolivar 2000," had been reduced mainly to the work of soldiers, and allocations for the program were channeled through the army at the state level...

...8. Agustfn Blanco Mufioz, Habla el comandante (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1998), p. 322...

...Nevertheless, Arias faces credible charges that he is a surrogate of the corrupt traditional parties...

...As twice-elected governor of the oil-rich state of Zulia, Arias took a hard-line approach to the clientelism long practiced by the traditional parties by deleting the names of party activists from public payrolls and even purging the state's Metropolitan Police of party loyalists...

...ID and other groups had the unenviable task of campaigning against the new Constitution while attempting to keep AD and Copei at arm's length...

...The incident reflected several very real sources of conflict...

...Speaking for the commercial sector, Albis Mufioz expressed fear that the Constitution pointed in the direction of a "Communist regime...

...In the interim, the political landscape has been altered...

...t the outset of his presidential campaign, Arias distanced himself from Chivez's policies, placing himself clearly to the right of his former comrade-in-arms...

...6. El Nacional, March 11, 2000...

...The main fear of many independent civilian supporters of Chavismo-ranging in ideology from center to left-is that the Constitution goes overboard in providing the armed forces autonomy by eliminating civilian checks on the institution, thus opening the doors to militarism...

...47-48...

...This bipartisan arrangement dates back to the 1958 overthrow of dictator General Marcos Pdrez Jimdnez and the signing of an accord between AD and Copei (and a third center-left party which has since disappeared) called the Pact of Punto Fijo...

...Others are wary of the officers' top-down style and worry about their growing influence...

...After the mega-elections-assuming he remains in office-Chvez will need to turn his attention to the consolidation and transformation of the MVR, as he pledged he would in the wake of the declaration of the three comandantes...

...Pefia formulated these and other proposals at the risk of being called, in his words, "an addict of neoliberalism...

...Chdvez's willingness to engage in dialogue with squatters and his boldness in threatening to expropriate unused land for industrial and agricultural purposes are popular with the poor...

...3 s this article is written, Venezuelans are bracing for yet another round of elections in which all elected offices, from the presidency down to local mayoralties and neighborhood juntas, are up for what Chdvez has called "relegitimation...

...Following the flooding in December, Pefia called for the privatization of the international airport and port facilities in the state of Vargas, just outside of Caracas, in order to accelerate the area's recovery...

...One of the movement's strengths has been its success in drawing in nationally prestigious figures of distinct political outlooks, and Chivez has boasted 32NACL4 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32REPORT ON VENEZUELA from the outset of the ideological heterogeneity of his movement, including, he says, both "leftists" and "rightists...

...Finally, at the outset of the campaign for the May elections, retired military officers sought MVR endorsements as gubernatorial candidates in as many as 18 of the nation's 23 states...

...In the political battles following his election as president, Chivez adroitly exploited polarization by harping on the presence of AD and Copei in the enemy camp in order to undermine the credibility of his adversaries...

...Though Ledezma firmly denies that he supports Arias, and Arias does not acknowledge his support, the candidate has received the backing of no less a symbol of the "old politics" than ex-President Carlos Andrds Pdrez, who was impeached for corruption in 1993 and is now a resident of Miami...

...Arias' criticisms of the government have not been the only ones to originate from within the ranks of Chavismo...

...7 More important, Arias and those closest to him have criticized Chivez's redistributive policies and conflictive style for scaring off the foreign capital so badly needed to revitalize the economy...

...They admired Chivez for having dared place the attainment of state power on the agenda, in sharp contrast with the rest of the left which had opted for electoral politics following the guerrilla period of the 1960s...

...The proposal formulated last year by PP coordinator Eustoquio Contreras to coalesce into one party fell on deaf ears...