| VENEZUELAN LEADER'S FUTURE IN VOTERS' HANDS |
| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Monday, August 09 2004 |
| |
| The Venezuelan opposition has tried everything to get rid of President Hugo Chavez: from massive protests to national strikes, from virtually shutting down the oil industry to attempting a military coup. But nothing has worked. Now the opposition gets a chance to kick him out of power -- ironically, through a democratic process that he himself put into place.
On Sunday, Aug. 15, Venezuelan voters go to the polls to decide whether they want Chavez to stay in power or whether they want him to leave. The long-awaited referendum is the result of a concerted effort by the opposition, which had to collect millions of signatures to put it on the ballot. There were many legal and political hurdles to overcome -- the signatures were invalidated on two occasions, the date postponed -- but now the president's foes are finally getting what they wanted. Or are they?
Opposition leaders were sure that if they put Chavez's tenure to a vote, he would lose and have no recourse but to leave two years before his term ends. They based their assumption on poll after poll that gave him high unfavorable numbers. They accuse him of being authoritative and corrupt, of controlling the country's key institutions and of leading his revolution toward a Cuban-style communist regime. They say he is a threat to democracy in the country and to stability in the region. They want nothing more than to see him out of Miraflores, the presidential palace in Venezuela. But their efforts might backfire.
The most recent polls show a shift in public support for the Venezuelan leader. A survey conducted by U.S. pollster Evans/McDonough Co. in mid-July found that 49 percent of registered voters are against recalling Chavez; 41 percent are in favor of him leaving office. Another poll done in June by Washington, D.C.-based polling company Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc. also showed that 49 percent of Venezuela's registered voters would support Chavez in the referendum versus 44 percent who would vote to recall him. This last one, paradoxically, was commissioned by an opposition media company.
At this time, few people -- other than the parties involved -- would dare to predict the outcome, but seasoned analysts agree that the former army paratrooper could pull it off. "Chavez has been working on a massive voter-registration campaign that will add over one million votes in his favor," said Sergio Bendixen, who worked as a pollster and political consultant in Venezuela for 15 years. "He also has tremendous economic resources to pour millions into social programs in favor of the poor."
Those resources come from multimillion-dollar revenues from PDVSA, the state-controlled oil company. Part of that money is being used to fund educational programs, greater health care and the creation of cooperatives. To his critics, social development is nothing more than buying votes, but sympathizers argue that it's the people's oil, and they should get direct benefit from its revenues.
Tensions are high on both sides, with the government accusing the opposition of plotting violent demonstrations and the anti-government forces accusing Chavez of planning a massive fraud. Enrique Mendoza, governor of the state of Miranda and a possible presidential hopeful should Chavez be ousted, rejected a call to violence by former president Carlos Andres Perez, who claims it's the only way to remove Chavez from office. And Mendoza said that opposition leaders have prepared their own monitoring system to safeguard the vote.
But Chavez is so confident of his victory and the transparency of the system that not only is he allowing representatives of the Carter Center and the Organization of American States to monitor the voting, but he has invited numerous celebrities to be international observers, such as Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nobel Prize winners Rigoberta Menchu and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, entertainers Barbra Streisand, Danny Glover and Mr. Bush-basher himself, Michael Moore.
The opposition has fought long and hard to bring Chavez's presidency to a recall. Losing would be a devastating blow, but a reality that would have to be faced with civility. After all, he has been democratically elected twice, and the failure of the recall would solidify his position. But if Chavez loses or tries to manipulate the results, the world needs to stand up for the opposition and demand his ouster to defend democracy in the country and assure stability in the region. |
