quote:

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President Hugo Chavez has asked tens of thousands of followers to oust opposition mayors and governors who could lead a recall referendum the nation's constitution allows once he is halfway through his term.

"On to battle," Chavez said Saturday. "We must go on the offensive against the referendum."

Chavez spoke to a crowd protesting an August 14 Supreme Court decision to acquit two generals and two admirals for their role in the April 11-12 coup that removed Chavez from power for less than 48 hours.

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Chretien, by contrast, can safely remain in power. Martin's "coup" against him will be nothing of the sort, unless you count strong agitation among Martin and his followers to get him into the driver's seat.

[ August 25, 2002: Message edited by: wei-chi ]

In 1992, Chavez did lead an unsuccessful coup. He and other military officers were disgusted and radicalized by the Venezuelan government's brutal repression of demonstrations against rising food prices in 1988, in which hundreds of people were killed, and other econmic austerity measures. The coup failed and Chavez served two years in prison for his participation, before gaining a pardon.

[I just noticed you edited your post to remove your reference to Chavez gaining power in a coup. But it's worth remembering the motive for the 1992 coup attempt.]

[ August 25, 2002: Message edited by: Terry Johnson ]

The Perez government wasn't so hot back then. Venezuela has been pretty stable since 1958. But looking at the list of accomplishments since Chavez (finally) took office reads like a massive centralisation of power that puts the PMO here to shame. I'm not saying Chavez doesn't have good intentions, but it doesn't look too hot.

examples:
-he designed a new constitution and to secured an extended term in office for himself.
-his present mandate expires in 2007, but he can be re-elected for a six-year period. (Previously, Venezuela's Presidents were limited to a single, five-year term.)
-He also has a new Supreme Court and a unicameral National Assembly that, (since he abolished the old Senate), is stacked with his allies.
-Chávez has given Venezuela's armed forces an unprecedented role in his government, handing out key posts to senior officers.

Of course, it would seem that the Venezuelan Supreme Court is not entirely beholden to his will, and he at least nominally has accepted the decision. However, in recent days he has shown a willingness to put the justices on notice that he wants to kick ass and take some names.

Further, it seems to me that Chavez's general attitude has been fairly restrained by South American standards. I don't recall seeing any mentions of extralegal shootings, arrests or other such acts of revenge on opponents of the government that tend to be common among governments that have resisted a coup attempt. Indeed, it is my recollection that some of the major figures were permitted to seek asylum in Colombia, where a right-wing government actively seeks US aid and assistance in a wide variety of areas.

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He opposes the $1.3-billion program, consisting mainly of military aid, to combat the drug trade in neighboring Colombia, both because he thinks the program will lead to a wider war, with more refugees coming into Venezuela, and because he doesn't think the United States should be involved.

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The programs are being paid for with the income from Venezuela's oil, which is at an all-time high. Previously, the nation's oil wealth benefited only a small, well-connected elite who kept themselves in power for 40 years through a two-party duopoly. The elite, who controlled the media as well, kept the vast majority poor, disenfranchised, and disempowered. With the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 on a platform of sharing the nation's oil wealth with the poorest, all that has changed. The poor are now not only recipients of these programs, they are engaged in running them. They're turning abandoned buildings into neighborhood centers, running community kitchens; volunteering to teach in the literacy programs, organizing neighborhood health brigades and registering millions of new voters.

Infuriated by their loss of power, the elite use their control over the media to blast Chavez for destroying the economy, cozying up to Fidel Castro, antagonizing the US government, expropriating private property, and using dictatorial rule. They also accuse him of using the social programs that have so improved the lives of the poor as a way to buy votes.

The opposition managed to collect enough signatures to trigger this Sunday's referendum on the president's mandate. Chavez supporters, bolstered by almost every poll, expect to win. "The opposition can lie all they want about Chavez," said Olivia defiantly, "but the facts speak for themselves. Before no one cared about us, the poor. Now they do." When I asked her what was going to happen on Sunday, she grinned. "First we're going to vote. And then we'll gather in front of the presidential palace for a huge victory party."

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Deja vu, but a great article, well worth reading in its entirety.

[ 15 August 2004: Message edited by: leftcoastguy ]

quote:

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Originally posted by leftcoastguy:
. . . and I am surprised he is not dead.

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[ 15 August 2004: Message edited by: leftcoastguy ]

quote:

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Originally posted by wei-chi:
Yeah, I knew it wasn't right as soon as I posted it.

The Perez government wasn't so hot back then. Venezuela has been pretty stable since 1958. But looking at the list of accomplishments since Chavez (finally) took office reads like a massive centralisation of power that puts the PMO here to shame. I'm not saying Chavez doesn't have good intentions, but it doesn't look too hot.

examples:
-he designed a new constitution and to secured an extended term in office for himself.
-his present mandate expires in 2007, but he can be re-elected for a six-year period. (Previously, Venezuela's Presidents were limited to a single, five-year term.)
-He also has a new Supreme Court and a unicameral National Assembly that, (since he abolished the old Senate), is stacked with his allies.
-Chávez has given Venezuela's armed forces an unprecedented role in his government, handing out key posts to senior officers.

source

---

quote:

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Chavez defeated the vote 58 percent to 42 percent, based on 94.5 percent of the ballots counted, National Electoral Council President Francisco Carrasquero said in a televised press conference in Caracas. The ballot lasted more than 18 hours and drew more than 60 percent of the nation's 14 million voters.

``Today's victory is a victory for the constitution,'' Chavez, 50, said after singing the national anthem from a balcony of the presidential palace draped with Venezuela's red, blue and yellow flag. In the square below, supporters wearing red berets and T- shirts danced, sang and set off fireworks.

Crude oil futures fell from record highs after Chavez won the vote. Prices had climbed on concern the referendum could prompt violence and disrupt supplies from Venezuela, a member of OPEC and the fourth-largest exporter of oil to the U.S.

Oil for September delivery fell 38 cents to $46.20 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 9:16 a.m. London time. Earlier it had risen to $46.91 a barrel, the highest intraday price since oil futures began trading in 1983.

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This is from the BBC news website:

"Dissenters accuse Mr Chavez of authoritarianism and economic mismanagement, but he has an ardent following among the poor."

Noteworthy that they don't respond to the 'dissenters' accusations with counterclaims, they just mention his 'following among the poor.' It reads as if he just might be an authoritarian incompetent, but the [misguided?] poor love him nonetheless.

It would be a treat if one could read similar charges against the politicians who gladly implement nonsensical IMF shock treatments, ...

"Dissenters accused Pinochet of economic mismanagement and authoritarianism, but he has an ardent following from the rich and his fellow officers."

The Economist

quote:

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Furthermore, the president has remained popular among Venezuela?s poorest, despite the way his policies have impoverished the country. Since he was first elected six years ago, Venezuelans? average income has fallen by around a quarter. The recent surge in oil prices has showered the government in oil revenues, allowing Mr Chávez to introduce some populist social programmes that may have swung him the vote. But these handouts are unlikely to compensate fully for years of steep economic decline, nor for roaring inflation (around 30% last year).

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quote:

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Originally posted by leftcoastguy:
Maybe the left will have something to celebrate tonight. Chavez sounds quite inspirational, and I am surprised he is not dead.

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The other thing he did in the early days was use the military to do a lot of useful stuff, building housing, helping medically, and so forth. This allowed him to do some social programs without spending a lot of money (which was hard to do because the oil company was corrupt and not handing over much). Which, again, let him help the people some while only moderately upsetting the elites; sure, they squalled, but it's not like he had big ticket budget items saying "spend money on poor". But the important part (and this was planned) was it reconnected the military with the people, making the rank and file less likely to be willing to screw the people over. Chavez was following a policy also of recruiting, and promoting, the poor. So with poor people in the military, and kept connected with their roots rather than making them into a separate group, he could hope to neutralize the traditional Latin American military coup problem.

So when he started to try to do social programs and clean out PDVSA, the rich got screaming mad. And they mounted that coup. But what they didn't understand was the legitimacy that constitutional process had given Chavez and, indeed, the government as government whether Chavez was at the head or not. The people, including lots of the army, weren't willing to lose their constitution or the man who had given it to them. That groundwork is the reason the coup ultimately failed. If Chavez had moved straight into the social programs on high gear from the beginning of his mandate, he'd have been out before he built up momentum; the coup would have been earlier, and would have succeeded. If he hadn't taken the measures he did with the military, the coup would have stayed.
In the aftermath of the coup, he was able to turf a bunch of old-line guys in the military and of course the main coupsters were charged with crimes and skipped the country. In this way they are marginalized but he didn't do anything nasty.
So then you get the big lockout which the media call a strike, and rather than repressing it, Chavez gives them enough rope and then nails them. Specifically, he lets them carry on for long enough that everyone gets pissed off with the opposition for ruining the economy rather than with Chavez for . . . hard to say what, exactly, he's not repressing anyone . . . and finally it peters out. The lockout enables Chavez to sack all the management from PDVSA, which had been a thorn in his side, an octopus siphoning the oil money and nearly impossible to get a handle on because of the layers of crap and deception and corruption. Chavez needed to sweep clean if he was going to get control of the situation, and they handed him the chance, not believing he'd have the guts to use it. Thought they couldn't be replaced. Meanwhile he minimized the impact on the poor by cracking down on attempts at hoarding and price gouging, stopped the capital flight part of the capital strike by imposing tight monetary controls, and created the cheap government-run grocery stores. The general lockout is now a memory, but the grocery stores remain.
With the reformed oil company and, luckily for him, high oil prices, and the disarray in the opposition from beating the lockout, Chavez was able to kick social programs and reforms into high gear, making facts on the ground, real improvements, that will be hard to reverse and which also as a useful side effect make it clear to anyone in the barrios that the anti-Chavez media are on crack.
The failure of direct violence and economic sabotage left the opposition falling back on democratic methods of getting rid of Chavez--their weakest card. It also meant that they were put in the position of using the very constitution that Chavez had brought in and they had tried to stamp out, giving it legitimacy. The long drawn out nature of democratic methods gave Chavez a breathing space in which to keep deepening reforms and gradually getting saboteurs and corruption out of the government, without too much fear that the opposition would be going back to direct violence and sabotage in a big way. I find myself wondering if he didn't deliberately let them get enough fraudulent signatures past to push him to referendum, just so they'd keep hoping and working to turf him democratically.
Now he's got another major mandate and oil prices remain high. The opposition, although they worked together on this campaign, remain pretty fragmented and will probably do some backbiting. Their position is weaker than ever--they don't have the PDVSA, they don't have the military, the rat union federation continues to lose ground and people to the new democratic union federation Chavez started, and the poor are making small businesses left and right; capital flight will have less and less effect. It's going to be damned hard to slow him down at this point. All they've got left is the media, and nobody who isn't already a fanatical anti-Chavist is listening any more. The only plausible method would be a destabilizing push from Colombia. But Chavez' government seem well aware of that possibility and prepared for it both diplomatically and militarily.

Nonetheless, RPolson's layout of Chavez's programs in a historical context pretty well nearly convinces me that he had a long-range program and had given a lot of thought as to how best to defeat the elites of Venezuela.

Even if he hadn't done that much planning, his strategy of reconnecting the military with the poor has definitely blocked the easy formation of death squads by any future leaders, and has opened channels of opportunity for those same poor people to make something of themselves by taking part in the projects so mentioned.

quote:

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"We must go out on to the streets," opposition leader Antonio Ledezma said on live television. "Who's going to swallow this tale that 5 million Venezuelans voted for Chávez? The people of Venezuela must remain on a war footing."

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(from the Guardian article)

quote:

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Originally posted by wei-chi:
-he designed a new constitution and to secured an extended term in office for himself.
-his present mandate expires in 2007, but he can be re-elected for a six-year period. (Previously, Venezuela's Presidents were limited to a single, five-year term.)
-He also has a new Supreme Court and a unicameral National Assembly that, (since he abolished the old Senate), is stacked with his allies.
-Chávez has given Venezuela's armed forces an unprecedented role in his government, handing out key posts to senior officers.

source

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[ 17 August 2004: Message edited by: Holy Holy Holy ]

[ 17 August 2004: Message edited by: CrazyMiranda ]

quote:

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Originally posted by CrazyMiranda:
Chavez opposing the re-count raises questions.

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quote:

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Originally posted by CrazyMiranda:
Chavez opposing the re-count raises questions.

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[ 17 August 2004: Message edited by: albireo ]

[ 17 August 2004: Message edited by: CrazyMiranda ]

quote:

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NEW YORK, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Fitch Ratings held its rating on Venezuela steady on Monday but said it could change its view in coming weeks if political stability improves following President Hugo Chavez's victory in Sunday's recall referendum.

Standard and Poor's rating agency also said the South American country's creditworthiness would improve if the political situation stabilizes.

"For now there is no change in the rating. We rate Venezuela as 'B-minus.' That has not changed today," said Morgan Harting, lead Fitch sovereign analyst for Venezuela. "But it could change over the coming weeks if we feel that there is improved political stability."

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[ 17 August 2004: Message edited by: CrazyMiranda ]

quote:

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Originally posted by CrazyMiranda:

It does raise questions.

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In the last election Chavez led a front of his Fifth Republic Movement (93 seats) and the Movement Towards Socialism (6 seats) to a big victory, with 99 seats, over the mildly social-democratic (perhaps still tinged with corruption?) Democratic Action's 32 seats, the Christian Democrats' 4 seats, and 30 others.

Today the governing "Change Bloc" seems to have only 86 seats, split between the Fifth Republic Movement's 68, a group of 9 called "We Can," and 6 others.

The "Movement Towards Socialism," which has grown to 11 deputies, is now part of the "Parliamentary Autonomy Bloc" along with a couple of old leftists elected with Chavez who have formed the "Transparency" group, plus Democratic Action (now only 24), a Social Democrat group of 4, the Christian Democrats' 7, and 35 assorted others. So this bloc has, between them, only 7 seats less than the governing bloc, and 11 seats more than Chavez' own party.

[ 17 August 2004: Message edited by: Wilfred Day ]

quote:

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CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 17 -- President Hugo Chavez is riding high after his overwhelming victory in a recall vote this week, but analysts say his triumph may have limited impact on the deep economic and political problems threatening this major oil-producing country.

Chavez, a charismatic former army officer, emerged with greater legitimacy from the balloting, in which nearly 60 percent of voters rejected a bid by the political opposition to end the president's term two years early. Chavez also is benefiting from a growing economy and soaring oil prices.

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Venezuela's opposition in disarray

quote:

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VOTE AFTERMATH: Aside from concurring that they do not accept the result of the recall vote, opposition forces cannot agree on how to react to the president's victory

Venezuela's opposition will have a tough time recovering after failing to oust President Hugo Chavez in a recall vote, a setback that quickly spurred infighting among the president's foes.

For opposition leaders, the defeat was an agonizing remainder of their past failures to oust Chavez.

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quote:

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Chávez has started to deliver the badly needed social goods, using his old alma mater, the armed forces, as his preferred delivery vehicle. In April, he started Project Bolívar 2000, which put the military to work building roads and organizing wholesale food sales in slums. State funds began flowing from army garrisons rather than through local government. On weekends, Chávez tours the country, listening to the complaints of campesinos and doling out personal favors to the needy.

His personalist rule inevitably leads Chávez to take criticism personally. Despite his unprecedented levels of popular support, he has recently launched tirades against the foreign press and his scattered opponents: businessmen, intellectuals and the church. Both the country and the region are now about to learn where he truly intends to go, and what he intends to do.

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quote:

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Originally posted by DrConway:
Reuters: Venezuela needs political stability - Fitch, S&P

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quote:

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When the rule of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was reaffirmed in a landslide 58-42 percent victory on Sunday, the opposition who put the recall vote on the ballot was stunned. They obviously don't spend much time in the nation's poor neighborhoods.

I knew Chavez would win the referendum when I met Olivia Delfino in a poor Caracas barrio that our international election delegation visited. Olivia came running out of her tiny house and grabbed my arm. "Tell the people of your country that we love Hugo Chavez," she insisted. She went on to tell me how her life had changed since he came to power. After living in the barrio for 40 years, she now had a formal title to her home and a bank loan to fix the roof so it wouldn't leak.

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quote:

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The opposition accuse Chavez of using the social programs that have so improved the lives of the poor as a way to gain voters. In this, the opposition is right: providing people with free health care, education, small business loans and job training is certainly a good way to win the hearts and minds of the people.

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Haha! Sounds like some of the idiotic things the elite who were interviewed for the movie "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" were saying. A couple of the rich people interviewed had the nerve to say that the poor people of Venezuela didn't know what it was to struggle, the way they did. Unbelievable.

quote:

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Sunday's overwhelming victory for Chavez has given him an even stronger mandate for his "revolution for the poor." It should also give George Bush and John Kerry reason to rethink their attitude towards Hugo Chavez. Rather than demonizing him as a new Fidel Castro and stoking the opposition,

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Oh God, please don't tell me that John Kerry demonizes Chavez. Tell me that this was a factual error, or a sentence structure error.

[ 18 August 2004: Message edited by: Michelle ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Screaming Lord Byron:
The American left are pretty split on Chavez. For them, a big sticking point is the coup he led in which 18(?) people died.
I, personally, am for Chavez.

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quote:

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I wondered, as a newbie to the issue, whether there were critiques (I mean respectable ones, not right-wing-we-deserve-to-be-elite-and-they-deserve-to-be-poor ones) that were valid.

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I think Chavez deserves the support of everyone on the left. There are just too few people who actually do provide benefits to the poor, and no one can argue with the referendum result, or the fact that it was Venezuela's poor who cast their votes for him.

I do think there are things about him which can be criticized. His instincts are military, that is to say, top-down. For example, once he won election, he had his supporters in the Congress transform themselves into a Constituent Assembly. Then then rewrote the Constitution to give the President more powers. It would be hard to argue that this change was in any way part of his election platform, or was approved by the voters beforehand.

Chavez should not be uncritically supported; previous caudillos in Latin America have won vast support, ie. Peron, and yet have damaged socialism and democracy due to their autocratic leanings.

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Then then rewrote the Constitution to give the President more powers. It would be hard to argue that this change was in any way part of his election platform, or was approved by the voters beforehand.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:

What do you mean by the American "left"?

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It's been interesting watching the North American Left warm up to Chavez. When he was first elected most people didn't know much about him and, particularly on the Left, wrote him off as either a purveyor of empty rhetoric or a dictator in waiting.

As time passed, and people realized Chavez was serious about reform, people on the Left began to notice him but most were skeptical - at best. His military past and power politic tactics seemed out-of-step comapred with the de-centralized "people power" movements being fetishized at the World Social Forum. Naomi Klein carped about his long speeches. And Greg Wilpert warned Z Magazine readers, "Sheer national political force, which Chavez has in spades, is not enough to combat the international political (U.S.) and the domestic and international economic opposition." while urging more "grassroots" projects. Most on the Left ignored Chavez and claimed Lula would show the Left "the way".

quote:

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Good god. Is any of that true?

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In my opinion, no. Which should come as no surprise. We are talking about John Kerry here, right? He's a lying centre-right corporate-crony douchebag. And I say that as someone who would probably vote for him were I an American citizen.

quote:

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Rasmus was saying somewhere that there are left-wing critiques of Chavez

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I believe there are. Some have some validity, although that validity has in my opinion declined over time. But none have anything to do with John Kerry, who is not left wing by any stretch of the imagination.

quote:

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Is anything in Kerry's statement valid?

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Let's go over it a piece at a time, just to be clear.

quote:

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With the future of the democratic process at a critical juncture in Venezuela, we should work to bring all possible international pressure to bear on President Chavez to allow the referendum to proceed.

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The first sentence implies that Chavez made attempts to stop the referendum from proceeding; this is false.
I have never seen any credible statement suggesting that Chavez made any attempt to stop the referendum from proceeding. In order to invoke the referendum, the opposition had to have carried out, under the auspices of the electoral commission, a signature campaign asking for it. Despite the fact that it is clear there was opposition fraud involved and the number of signatures remaining valid after the most obvious frauds were subtracted was borderline, Chavez made no attempt to delay or unearth further fraud in the hopes of pulling the number down past the threshold. He did campaign to persuade people not to sign, but that's democratic politics; what's he supposed to do? Chavez in fact acted as and portrayed himself as the defender of the constitution throughout the process.

quote:

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Throughout his time in office, President Chavez has repeatedly undermined democratic institutions by using extra-legal means, including politically motivated incarcerations, to consolidate power.

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quote:

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In fact, his close relationship with Fidel Castro has raised serious questions about his commitment to leading a truly democratic government.

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Moreover, President Chavez’s policies have been detrimental to our interests and those of his neighbors.

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quote:

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He has compromised efforts to eradicate drug cultivation by allowing Venezuela to become a haven for narco-terrorists, and sowed instability in the region by supporting anti-government insurgents in Colombia.

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quote:

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The referendum has given the people of Venezuela the opportunity to express their views on his presidency through constitutionally legitimate means.

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quote:

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The international community cannot allow President Chavez to subvert this process, as he has attempted to do thus far.

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He must be pressured to comply with the agreements he made with the OAS and the Carter Center to allow the referendum to proceed, respect the exercise of free expression, and release political prisoners.

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quote:

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Too often in the past, this Administration has sent mixed signals by supporting undemocratic processes in our own hemisphere -- including in Venezuela, where they acquiesced to a failed coup attempt against President Chavez. Having just allowed the democratically elected leader to be cast aside in Haiti, they should make a strong statement now by leading the effort to preserve the fragile democracy in Venezuela.

---

This part is more or less true, and the only hopeful signal in the whole farrago of vicious propaganda. Just maybe Kerry will stop short of outright illegality in meddling with Venezuela. That would be nice.

Some other posters have raised some cogent questions.
On the issue of "repressed some strikes"--I'm not sure quite what's being referred to. But it should be realized that Venezuela's recent labour history involves domination by an association of corrupt, business-allied, undemocratic "rat" unions. Some of these helped the upper-class dominated opposition when the opposition decided to call that general lockout/strike. But as far as I know, those strikes were not by and large repressed; the only one that had much done to it was the oil company "strike". But the oil company "strike" was basically a lockout--it was the managers who walked out, took the keys with them, and did their best to disable stuff, from software to equipment. So after a couple months of this at the single most important institution to the country's economy, Chavez fired all the managers involved and let the workers run the place. Hardly anti-progressive. More generally, Chavez' approach to labour has been to make laws forcing unions to have democratic elections and dictating standards to which those elections must be held, thus undermining the corrupt business-unionism in favour of unions that help workers, and to start a competing union federation which has been rapidly growing.

On the constitution, it certainly seems as if the people of Venezuela are happy with it. This is not a mysterious document--Chavez had millions of copies printed in small, cheap little booklets and the folk of the barrios read it, discuss it, and consider it a foundational document that lays out their rights. It is also far-reaching. I don't know much about how it sets up the presidency and parliament. But it lays out principles of equality, including for natives etc., which Venezuela never had before. It enshrines the right to recall, not just the President, but *any* elected official. It also affirms principles not just of representative, but of participatory democratic government.

Chavez is probably on a personal level a top-down kind of guy. But the programs he pushes are frequently not at all top-down. The current crash literacy and medical programs are, although they're also about giving people the tools to help themselves. But much of the ongoing stuff is about microloans, about self-constituting local groups getting government funding to handle . . . whatever issue they happen to have defined(That's what the mysterious "Bolivarian circles" are, by the way), about community media, about giving barrio dwellers title to the dwellings they occupy, thus in turn giving them access to other things like credit because suddenly they have legal collateral, about land redistribution so that peasants become independent.

Chavez may personally be top-down in the sense that he sets policy personally and crushes opposition to it. But the policies themselves seem not to be. He is certainly not some caudillo, and he is not just running some kind of paternalistic Peron-style welfare programs. He is apparently well read, snatching time whenever he can between everything else to read. His commitment to bottom-up programs and bolstering community-level activists seems to have gotten stronger since the people saved his butt during the coup. Although it's hard to be sure about that--it may just be that he'd gotten to that part of his plans.

quote:

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He's probably the most thoroughly democratically elected leader in the Americas, north or south.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
Lula has indeed showed "the way"...the Third Way, that is.

---

I think Lula is doing a pretty good job all things considered. He's turning out to be a fairly reliable social-democrat. Not partiuclarly visionary but ready to stand up to the US at times and showing hemispheric leadership. He gets cowed sometimes but (unlike other nominal socialists like Lagos in Chile) has not been willing to totally betray his principles and kiss US butt.

It's important to remember, however, that many lefties (many of whom post here) had a fetishistic fascination with Lula and the PT and claimed that a Lula victory would mean radical global change and a new model for the Left - for example, "Lula's victory will be a critical turning point for the left not only in Latin America but throughout the world. The PT has developed a new direction for the left in government." Meanwhile, these same observers were either ignoring or openly disdainful of Chavez and the Bolivarians. Now, two years later, Chavez - far more than Lula - has "developed a new direction for the left in government".

quote:

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Originally posted by Holy Holy Holy:
It's been interesting watching the North American Left warm up to Chavez. When he was first elected most people didn't know much about him and, particularly on the Left, wrote him off as either a purveyor of empty rhetoric or a dictator in waiting.

---

Speaking for myself, I knew I liked him wholeheartedly as soon as that coup attempt happened, and the US Government was juuuuuuuust a smidgen too quick to "recognize" the new government.

I think the first time I heard about him was in late 2001 - whether before or after September 11th I don't recall though.

quote:

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As time passed, and people realized Chavez was serious about reform, people on the Left began to notice him but most were skeptical - at best. His military past and power politic tactics seemed out-of-step comapred with the de-centralized "people power" movements being fetishized at the World Social Forum.

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I've always loved men in uniform. (Ok, that was cheezy. I plead momentary blindness by the summer sun.)

Seriously, I've liked Chavez's bull-headed can-do, get-it-done attitude. No wishy-washiness; has a plan, or at least an idea, and does whatever he needs to do to get it polished up and rolling.

Now, there are flaws and defects in a personalized style of management, and I'll be the first to concede that, but in the Venezuelan environment, it seems that a good dose screwing one's courage to the sticking-place (Macbeth reference) is needed if one anticipates a rather adverse reaction from people used to the status quo (meaning: rich people).

It seems to me Chavez got more done by pushing and sweating and roaring than leftists are generally willing to credit, especially given the built-in bias towards nonhierarchical command structures and a consensus decision-making process.

The problem is, the above two processes work best in small groups (I imagine the Bolivarian circles might work like this), but on the governmental scale, one has to accept the presence of hierarchies, but also to use them to one's advantage.

quote:

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Six years later, however, Chavez's disciplined national movement is getting results where other (more favored) movements have failed, compromised or been crushed.

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In fairness to Lula, South America has had a long history of being bullied by the IMF and the United States, and it's easy to underestimate the ability of one's country to withstand that kind of bullying, especially when the country in question does not have a major resource that the US absolutely must have. In Ecuador, Gutierrez won and promised he would lead a Chavez-style government, but as Ecuador lacks oil, and is rather poor, I am given to understand that Gutierrez's program has been unsuccessful. Additionally, the BBC notes thus:

quote:

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He has also gone out of his way to reassure United States business interests and international financial institutions that he will retain the dollar as the country's currency and meet its debt obligations.

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[ 18 August 2004: Message edited by: DrConway ]

quote:

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He gets cowed sometimes but (unlike other nominal socialists like Lagos in Chile) has not been willing to totally betray his principles and kiss US butt.

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Lagos refused to vote for the war in Iraq, despite HEAVY US pressure on members of the Security Council, which Chile was at the time.

I agree that the left has generally been more supportive of Lula than of Chavez, and that Chavez has now been more successful confronting the capitalist agenda for his country which is "penury for almost everyone".

quote:

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A U.S. firm's exit poll that said President Hugo Chavez would lose a recall referendum has landed in the center of a controversy following his resounding victory.

"Exit Poll Results Show Major Defeat for Chavez," the survey, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, asserted even as Sunday's voting was still on. But in fact, the opposite was true Chavez ended up trouncing his enemies and capturing 59 percent of the vote.

[snip]

Any casual observer of the 2000 U.S. presidential elections knows exit polls can at times be unreliable. But the poll has become an issue here because the opposition, which mounted the drive to force the leftist leader from office, insists it shows the results from the vote itself were fraudulent. The opposition also claims electronic voting machines were rigged, but has provided no evidence.

Election officials banned publication or broadcast of any exit polls during the historic vote on whether to oust Chavez, a populist who has sought to help the poor and is reviled by the wealthy, who accuse him of stoking class divisions.

But results of the Penn, Schoen & Berland survey were sent out by fax and e-mail to media outlets and opposition offices more than four hours before polls closed. It predicted just the opposite of what happened, saying 59 percent had voted in favor of recalling Chavez.

[snip]

Critics of the exit poll have questioned how it was conducted because officials have said Penn, Schoen & Berland worked with a U.S.-funded Venezuela group that the Chavez government considers hostile.

Penn, Schoen & Berland had members of Sumate, a Venezuelan group that helped organize the recall initiative, do the fieldwork for the poll, election observers said.

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Oh, what a tangled web.

Edited to add: Via Sinister Thoughts, a fairly new Canadian blog. Greg has been trying to keep a fairly close eye on both Venezuela and Haiti.

[ 19 August 2004: Message edited by: Slim ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
There is a Bolivarian Circle solidarity group of some sort in Toronto...largely rooted in the Latino community I believe.

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There is not just one but two bolivarian circles in Toronto alone. The circles named "Manuelita Saenz" and "Louis Riel" both attended the bolivarian circles world forum in Caracas last year.

[ 19 August 2004: Message edited by: yiya ]

I think one of Chavez's greatest strengths (likely unintended) is that he hasn't been hamstrung by leftist "allies" in North America. Relying on international solidarity to win political change is iffy at best. North American lefties tend to expect the impossible from their allies and don't deliver much in return. I remember reading Salman Rushdie whine at length because the Sandinistas shut down a newspaper. He did it in the context of "constructive criticism" and I couldn't help thinking how a nation at war probably doesn't need "help" like that.

From what I hear the Bolivarians have, in fact, lent a lot of support, solidarity and advice to the Left in Latin America. It hasn't been easy. They were blacklisted as union-busters by the ICFTU for many years and the AFL-CIO has been actively campaigning against Chavez - and encouraging other Latin American lefties to do the same. Not to mention the fact that, until recently, his tactics and persona were seen as defacto declasse by many within the chattering classes of the Left. All that notwithstanding the Bolivarians actually seem to be building a lot of bridges: funding all sorts of projects (particularly on the media side), serving as a driving force behind the populist Latin American indigenous movement, he has become a symbol for the broader Left in Latin America.

As an aside Jeff House, my distaste for Lagos is probably somewhat misplaced. He's better than some of the alternatives. However, when the coup against Chavez happened in 2002 he told reporters that Chavez brought it on himself - and left Leaders like Vicente Fox in Mexico (hardly a socialist) looking like the real progressive leaders.

In fairness to Porto Alegre and so on, such participatory-democracy movements can work very well if the political and social environment is stable and if all people concerned realize that change will not be instant. It also requires that there not be sabotage of the process by people who have no interest in seeing broader citizen participation in the political process.

Unfortunately, this may well translate into action once elected. Those terrorist bastards are still wormholed all through the CIA, and if Kerry doesn't specifically want to take a principled and probably inconvenient stand he'll want to step aside and let them keep pulling mischief. Since I really don't think Kerry has any principles particularly, and *certainly* none that relate to the lives of anyone outside the USA, and *really certainly* none he'd actually take any action for that involved the slightest political risk, chances are he'll take the easy way out and let them have their fun.

U.S. Poll Firm in Hot Water in Venezuela

Oops. Thanks Slim.

[ 19 August 2004: Message edited by: leftcoastguy ]

The news article I quoted says 3.8 million votes AGAINST is the threshold. All the news I've seen simply quoted the percentages. I did some digging and have the raw vote data:

Venezuela's Chavez Wins Recall Vote

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According to the numbers, obtained from a tally count of 94,49% of ballots from automatic voting machines, the opposition failed to obtain more votes that those who wanted Chavez to stay. The "no" option obtained 4,991,483 votes representing 58.25%. The "yes" option obtained 3,576,517 votes, representing 41.74%.

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[ 20 August 2004: Message edited by: DrConway ]

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According to the numbers, obtained from a tally count of 94,49% of ballots from automatic voting machines, the opposition failed to obtain more votes that those who wanted Chavez to stay. The "no" option obtained 4,991,483 votes representing 58.25%. The "yes" option obtained 3,576,517 votes, representing 41.74%.

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I'm confused. Did his opponents need 3,800,000 votes or a majority of the votes?

If Chavez's opponents needed 3,800,000 votes, or 44.35% of the votes, to force an election, and they actually received 3,576,517 votes, or 41.74%, therefore it was very close, and his opponents were short by only 223,483 votes or 2.61%. Wow!

[ 20 August 2004: Message edited by: leftcoastguy ]

1 - More people who voted the President into office have to vote she or he out of office. In 2000 Chavez won 3.7 million votes.

2 - A majority of voters have to vote the President out.

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Originally posted by Mike Keenan:
I would like to know more about these electronic voting machines mentioned above.

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Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro e Indio' President

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There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 'hacendados.'

I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, "Chavez - dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped about the "socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible.

That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the "socialist" manifesto that so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela's Congress which gave land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.

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There's more about land, oil and class.

Via Ian Welsh at BOP.

[ 21 August 2004: Message edited by: pogge ]

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Originally posted by Slim:


Here's a babble thread on the subject.

See also Black Box Voting

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An on and on it goes.

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The privately-owned media virulently attacked President Chavez with only VHeadline news publishing unbiased news.

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coming right after this in the article:

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We were happy we were able to bring you the outcome on the Venezuelan referendum to oust President Hugo Chavez Frias this past Sunday. After a record turnout, where voters in some cases stood in line for six to eight hours, President Chavez received 58.2% of the vote. Our prediction was 57% to 63%. We were hoping for over 60% but the win was sufficient to let the world know who the Venezuelan electorate preferred.

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Audit of Referendum Vote Shows no Discrepancies

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Caracas, August 22, 2004—Electoral Council Board member Jorge Rodriguez announced yesterday that, “The audit reached very positive results, which allows us to close this chapter of the electoral cycle,” without having detected substantial differences between the audit and the vote. The error rate detected was one error for every 5,000 votes, or 0.02%.

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quote:

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Originally posted by exiled_armadillo:
Yeah, but isn't that like throwing down the gloves to the Americans? It seems either really gutsy or stupid, not sure which. (though I totally applaud him)

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A good strategy when someone is going to do something bad to you or someone else, is if you give their potential bad behaviour a huge amount of publicity, it may force them to reconsider.

The USA oil barons, or whatever, may want Chavez dead, but they may not be willing to kill him if the whole world knows what they are plotting.

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New split in anti-Chavez alliance

Venezuela's opposition alliance is continuing to unravel as a third political party, Primero Justicia, has announced it is pulling out.

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