Elections are Venezuela’s last chance

www.dailytimes.com.pk Kurt Weyland

Both sides will have to work hard if they want to win. The fractious opposition will need to go beyond rejection of Chávez, elaborate a programme for the country’s reconstruction, and unite behind an attractive candidate. President Chávez will need to clarify the content and meaning of his “Bolivarian Revolution”

Venezuela is mired in a dangerous stalemate. President Hugo Chávez clings to power despite the obvious failings of his government: severe economic deterioration and dangerous political polarisation. The opposition, tainted by their botched coup of April 2002, now seeks to force Chávez from office through a costly general strike.

Both sides justify their intransigence with one-sided interpretations. His sympathisers glorify Chávez as a defender of the poor besieged by a selfish, coup-plotting elite. His fiercest opponents demonise Chávez as an autocrat pursuing a Cuban-style revolution and destroying democracy. Both interpretations are flawed.

The Chávez government has not helped Venezuela’s poor in any significant way. On the contrary, his belligerent rhetoric and inept governance scared off investors, inciting economic decline and boosting unemployment and poverty. Now Chávez lacks majority backing even among the poor.

The opposition comprises most of Venezuela’s organised civil society, not only business, but also trade unions, professional associations, and NGOs. So Venezuela’s polarization does not pit “the poor” against “the oligarchy,” but a populist against civil society.

The opposition’s view — shared by rightists in the Bush administration — is equally unconvincing. Rather than initiating a revolution, Chávez merely spouts fiery rhetoric. While his democratic credentials are dubious, he has not acted in an openly authoritarian fashion. True, he has systematically concentrated power in his own hands and has undermined governmental checks and balances. But while harassing the opposition, he has not overturned the minimal principles of democracy. Indeed, he now invokes his formal democratic legitimacy to fend off demands for his resignation.

But Chávez’s insistence on the inviolability of the current constitution is hypocritical. Four years ago, Chávez deviated from the old constitution by using a plebiscite to engineer a new one, tailor-made for him. Now he invokes that charter to block calls for a plebiscite on his continuation in office.

The paradox here is that Chávez’s earlier example may provide the solution to today’s standoff. As Chávez used para-constitutional means to advance a desire for change in 1999, so the international community should not be confined by the present constitution in pressing to resolve a crisis that is ruining the country.

In fact, the Latin American members of the “group of friendly nations” trying to mediate this conflict can draw on interesting experiences to design such a solution. After all, confrontations like this are not unusual in Latin America’s rigid presidential systems. When chief executives with fixed terms of office lose political support, they cannot be removed through a no-confidence vote, as in parliamentary systems. Presidential systems therefore risk lengthy stand-offs that threaten democracy —as in Venezuela today.

But over the last decade, Latin American politicians have made presidential systems more flexible by finding innovative ways to remove unpopular presidents. One of Chávez’s discredited predecessors was impeached on flimsy charges of malfeasance; Ecuador’s Congress declared a disastrous chief executive “mentally incompetent”; in Peru, an autocratic president, after months of domestic and international pressure, was forced into exile.

While politicians interpreted the law with a good deal of creativity in these instances, they usually did so to ensure the survival of fragile democracies facing a crisis. As long as these manoeuvres do not proliferate and turn into easy ammunition for the opposition of the moment, they may provide a safety valve for presidential systems. International monitoring can also safeguard against frivolous use of such mechanisms.

It is to be hoped that the group of friendly nations can help design an innovative solution to Venezuela’s standoff. To be acceptable to both sides, such a solution must deviate from the favourite proposals of each. The opposition prefers an “up-or-down” vote on Chávez’s continuation in office, which it would most likely win — and which Chávez will never accept.

Chávez insists on the recall referendum mechanism included in his constitution, which the opposition cannot tolerate: removing the president in this way would require a larger absolute number of votes than Chávez garnered in the last election. But rising abstention makes this virtually impossible. Both proposals are thus politically unfeasible.

Only a democratic mechanism for conflict resolution that has an uncertain outcome has any chance of being adopted. That mechanism is an election, to be held as soon as possible (realistically, by this summer). Both sides will have to work hard if they want to win. The fractious opposition will need to go beyond rejection of Chávez, elaborate a programme for the country’s reconstruction, and unite behind an attractive candidate.

President Chávez will need to clarify the content and meaning of his “Bolivarian Revolution.” Since Chávez is a skilled campaigner and the opposition so far lacks unity, he will have a realistic chance of winning — which should make a new contest acceptable to him.

Pressure from the group of friendly nations may induce both sides to accept this last chance to avoid a political and economic meltdown. Elections can be made legitimate through a constitutional amendment shortening the presidential term, as proposed by Jimmy Carter in his recent mediation effort. Since this is designed to defuse an exceptional crisis, it would not become a precedent that encourages frivolous attacks on Latin America’s democratically elected governments. An election now in Venezuela will save, not undermine, democracy. —DT-PS Kurt Weyland is an Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas. His book, “The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela” was published by Princeton University Press (2002)