Arab news - Editorial: Venezuela
www.arabnews.com 5 January 2003
The general strike in Venezuela, already disastrous in economic terms, is threatening to turn even uglier, now that the first two lives have been lost in a mysterious shooting into a crowd of demonstrators. The strike has already polarized Venezuelan society into the predominantly poor supporters of President Hugo Chavez and the middle classes and the upper class elite, who are resisting the president’s proposed reforms.
Venezuela needs reforms, but the president chose the wrong strategy. He chose to confront the entrenched interests of the country’s superrich, when a wiser man would have sought to negotiate and compromise. By picking battles that did not need to be fought, Chavez has sabotaged the implementation of his on radical political agenda. The result is the chaos into which this important oil-producing country has sunk.
Part of Chavez’s problem is that he is a military man, used to giving orders and having them carried out. A modern industrial democracy does not work that way. What he has very probably achieved by his headstrong behavior is throw away the chance to engineer long-overdue changes. It seems inconceivable that any sort of settlement of this bitter general strike will lead to the sort of consensus necessary to implement more than the most superficial of reforms.
The concern now is that the strikers are now calling on the armed forces to join them. This is the point where their protests depart from the legitimate. It is not the business of armed forces to involve themselves in politics. Latin America has suffered enough from the maladministration of military men. If the strikers cannot attain their aims by protest, then they should acknowledge they have failed and return to their jobs.
By seeking to involve the military, they are placing their country in the gravest danger. Some units may be persuaded to intervene while others will rightly see it as their duty to stay loyal to the democratically elected president. If the military splits, the result could be civil war. Such a thing ought to be unthinkable to all parties. But the first blood has already been drawn and tempers are running higher. If the strike does not collapse soon, the government’s own stocks of fuel will start to run out and public order could evaporate completely.
Chavez may still be the elected head of state but the time is fast approaching when he must consider his own position. Can he really continue to occupy his office if, by doing so, his country will be plunged into armed conflict? His reform program is in ruins, Venezuelan society has been split into two rival camps and paralyzed by the general strike.
The answer may be that the president calls a snap election, to renew the reform mandate. Such a contest is likely to be as violent as it would be bitter, but it may be the least of the evils facing the country. If Chavez loses, then, the reform agenda will have been halted, but it will not go away. Other wiser heads can take up the torch of reform at a later date. If, however, he wins, then his political opponents will have lost ground, to the extent that their will to resist change will have been broken. Either way, by returning to the ballot box, Venezuela will have been steered away from civil war.