Venezuela: the mostly unreported version
The Panama News By: Eric Jackson
If you pay a lot of attention to the international corporate mainstream media, you will have heard that Venezuela is an economic basket case whose leader is a media-bashing Fidel Castro wannabe who's about to be recalled by the voters. You may have even read some of that in the opinion sections of The Panama News, along with contrary views.
There is, however, another side to the story that's rarely told by the major news corporations. That includes Panama, and the trend will continue for now, as this reporter was the only journalist present at Excedra Books on May 27, when Ramon Alfredo Lopez Martinez, the cultural attache at the Venezuelan Embassy in Panama City, defended the government he serves.
Lopez's presentation was long and in a few parts tedious. Beginning with a brief video about the events surrounding the abortive April 2002 coup, he systematically responded to four common allegations:
- That Hugo Chavez is a dictator;
- That Hugo Chavez is a Castro-style communist;
- That there is no freedom of expression in Venezuela; and
- That the state controls everything in Venezuela.
The video, "Conspiracion Mortal," offered a version of the events leading to last year's coup attempt that has not been heard much outside of Venezuela.
You may recall that on April 11, 2002, a large crowd, urged on by Venezuela's commercial broadcasters, made its way toward the presidential palace in Caracas with the intention of overthrowing President Chavez. The palace was guarded by troops and a crowd of government supporters. Sniper fire broke out, killing several people. A group of military officers, accusing Chavez of ordering the troops to fire on demonstrators, declared themselves in rebellion. Chavez was taken into custody and the head of the Chamber of Commerce was declared head of a new ruling junta. Rioting broke out in the poor neighborhoods where there is strong support for Chavez, and troops loyal to the president restored him shortly thereafter. Since the president's restoration, there have been major arguments about who really shot whom on the day of the coup.
Ah, but according to Lopez and the video he showed, the order of events described above was wrong, and that, he argues, says a great deal about who's telling the truth and who isn't. Conspiracion Mortal might be easily dismissed as commie propaganda, but for the fact that one of its main sources is Otto Neustald, a respected reporter for CNN's Spanish-language network who has no particular political allegiances in Venezuela. He was covering the story in Caracas that day, and he and others noted something VERY odd -- the rebellious military officers announced that protesters had been shot down at Chavez's orders BEFORE any shooting started. The conclusion that the video and Lopez draw is that the shooting was part of the coup plot, not something that the president ordered, and that those who were trying to overthrow the government exposed themselves by their bad timing.
The attache then launched into a lengthy review of Venezuelan political history since 1998. In December of that year some four decades of two-party rule by the Accion Democratica and COPEI parties came to an end with Chavez taking about 56% of the vote despite the two major parties' fusion behind a single candidate. "This is the origin of democratic change in Venezuela," Lopez claimed.
There followed an April 1999 referendum in which Venezuelans by a 92% majority called for the creation of a Constituent Assembly to "reform all of the state institutions." Chavez supporters won 121 of the 131 seats in that assembly the following July, and in December of 1999 the voters approved the new constitution that they wrote. "It was a revolutionary process," Lopez said, "but a democratic and peaceful revolutionary process."
The new constitution provided that all elected public officials would have to face new elections, which were held in July of 2000. In that round of voting Chavez won some 60% of the vote. His political party, the Movement for the Fifth Republic, won only 75 seats in the 165-member unicameral legislature, but with 11 allies from smaller parties gained a working majority. On the opposition side, Accion Democratica won the most seats with 25, while COPEI won 7 and a number of other parties split the rest.
The new constitution provided that certain things could pass by a simple legislative majority (which Chavez has) and other things require a two-thirds majority (which he doesn't have).
One of the things that could be and was adopted by a simple majority was an enabling law allowing the President to issue certain decrees. That Chavez did, on a host of matters from the name of the country (now the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela") to oil and gas regulations, and most controversially, decrees on development along the coastlines and land tenure. Chamber of Commerce president and later dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona brought a lawsuit to have all of these decrees nullified, but did not prevail.
The new constitution provided for several different kinds of plebiscites -- initiatives and referenda to pass or repeal laws, advisory votes and recalls of public officials. All of these four processes have different rules under the constitution, Lopez explained.
This past December and January, the opposition called a management lockout that was supported by labor strikes in some sectors and bolstered by street protests and other measures in an effort to force an advisory vote on whether Chavez should step down. The president insisted that an advisory vote on a public official stepping down is merely an unconstitutional shortcut for a recall and insisted that if the opposition wants to recall him, they will have to follow the constitutional procedures.
Although the argument caused a 63-day crisis in Venezuela's crucial oil industry, differences between the two sorts of plebiscites has not been much discussed by the international corporate news media.
A Venezuelan advisory vote can be held more or less any time. Its proponents must gather the signatures of 10 percent of the voters. With 50% of the votes plus one more, the measure passes.
For a recall, however, proponents must gather the signatures of 20% of the voters in a given district for a lower-level official and nationwide for a President. Such petition drives can only take place after half of the official's term has been served -- that will be in August, in Chavez's case. In a recall election, there must be at least a 25% voter turnout for any result to be binding. Moreover, to recall a public official there must be more votes, in absolute terms, than were cast to elect him or her. Thus to recall Chavez, at least 3,757,774 votes would be required as he received one vote less than that in the 2000 election at which 56.6% of the registered electorate showed up at the polls.
All this suggests that even if the polls published by Venezuela's opposition press are to be taken at face value, the conclusion most frequently reached by the international corporate news organizations -- that Chavez is likely to lose a recall vote later this year -- may be more a matter of wishful thinking than reality.
According to Lopez, the opposition's bid to hold a vote under the easier consultative referendum rules did enormous economic damage to Venezuela. Although he dismissed the lockout and strike as "half effective at its height," disruption of the oil industry cost the country $3.626 billion, and another $2 billion in cash was taken out of the country. The attache also noted that "during 63 days, the commercial media didn't broadcast one single commercial."
There ensued a long discourse on the Venezuelan economy (the tedious part of the lecture). "Oil for Venezuela is like the canal is for Panama," Lopez explained, defending his boss's role in OPEC, which has entailed visits to world leaders that Washington doesn't much like in an effort to win higher prices for his country's main export. "The US has twisted this to say 'he's a terrorist because he visited Iraq and Libya," he argued, but "when Chavez came to power Venezuela was getting a nickel a liter and his foreign policy was aimed at raising that, which has happened."
Lopez also noted the special deals that Venezuela has given to Latin American neighbors that don't have oil, including Panama. Chavez has been criticized in the US and by the Venezuelan opposition for giving Cuba preferential petroleum deals, but the attache said that the Cubans pay the same prices that Panama does, but pay in part by providing doctors for the Venezuelan public health care system.
"This concerted, systematic campaign about the 'Cubanization' of Venezuela conflicts with the basic communist principle of expropriation," Lopez alleged. His country's constitution, like those of Panama and the United States, guarantees private property rights and requires compensation when property is taken by eminent domain.
Lopez also defended a proposed new press law that was under consideration back in Caracas as he spoke. "In Venezuela, not one medium has been closed," he argued, adding that "if there's a fault, it's with the media." He said that the legislation is not for the purpose of limiting freedom of expression, but to stop the incitement of violence. "What we're looking to do is to prevent the kind of thing that happened on April 11," he concluded.