Teodoro
Petkoff
"Venezuela Faces the Future"
January
25, 2008 |
|
A
crowded room listened to Mr. Petkoff analyze the rise
and prospects of the Chávez regime in Venezuela. |
Download
a large (120 MB) .wav sound file of the event (right
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Venezuela’s
Prospects for Democracy
By
Taylor Boas
Hugo
Chávez’s Venezuela is a
hybrid state: it combines the anatomy of a democratic regime
with the physiology of an authoritarian one. While possessing
democratic institutions such as political parties and labor
unions, its actual functioning departs starkly from the democratic
ideal. Yet, argued leftist critic Teodoro Petkoff, the narrow
defeat of a referendum on constitutional reform in December
2007 thwarted an even more drastic potential outcome, the
institution of a de facto totalitarian state.
Petkoff,
a former guerrilla leader, two-time presidential candidate
and planning minister under Chávez’s
predecessor, Rafael Caldera, began his talk at CLAS by analyzing
the “Copernican change” in Latin American politics
that has resulted in the left’s recent electoral success.
The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, he maintained, brought
an end to the United States’ Cold War strategy of preventing
leftists from coming to power in its sphere of influence. In
the 1990s, Latin America’s left-of-center political parties
not only were able to govern without fear of U.S. military
intervention, they also no longer had to define themselves
in terms of the Soviet Union or Cuba merely because their ideological
stances differed from that of the United States.
This
newfound freedom has led to the emergence of a broad array
of leftist governments in Latin America, which Petkoff grouped
into two general categories. The leaders of the first group,
the “democratic and modern” left, learned
from the Cold War and the region’s military dictatorships
and have fully embraced democratic methods and goals. The second
group, in which Petkoff placed Hugo Chávez, views democracy
in purely instrumental terms. Its leaders may seek power
through elections, but they do not respect democratic norms
in the exercise of power once in office.
Chávez’s rise to power in Venezuela occurred
at a moment in which the country’s two traditional political
parties, Acción Democrática (AD) and the Christian
Democratic Party (COPEI), had been severely discredited by
their inability to respond to deepening social and economic
problems. The first sign of political crisis was the “Caracazo” of
1989, in which thousands of people took to the streets to protest
economic austerity measures, and at least 300 civilians were
killed by security forces. Three years later, left-leaning
military officers launched two coups against President Carlos
Andrés Pérez, the first of which was led by Chávez.
The traditional parties’ loss of legitimacy was confirmed
in 1993, when corruption charges drove Pérez from office
and Rafael Caldera was elected president as the head of a coalition
of small, leftist and center-right parties — including
the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), which Petkoff helped found
in 1971. Several of these parties, including MAS, went on to
support Chávez in his successful 1998 bid for the presidency,
prompting Petkoff to break from the party.
Since
taking office in 1999, Chávez has withstood
both legal and extralegal efforts to unseat him. Petkoff cited
four particularly strong bases of political support as central
to the president’s hold on power. The “spinal column” of
his regime is the sector from which he originated: the armed
forces. A second key constituency is the “boli-bourgeoisie,” the
nouveau riche who have profited under Chávez’s
rule, many through corrupt business dealings. The Venezuelan
state bureaucracy — which has doubled in size during
the Chávez administration — constitutes a third
power base. Finally, Chávez retains strong popular support.
Through his misiones, social programs targeting the
poor, the president has helped bring about major improvements
in the lives of millions of long-neglected Venezuelan citizens.
While
Chávez’s oil-fueled social spending has
gained him a large following among the poor, Petkoff questioned
its long-term sustainability as well as the general health
of the Venezuelan economy. The current boom in oil prices has
facilitated economic growth on the order of 10 percent per
year from 2005 to 2007, but, Petkoff argued, the nature of
this growth has created a number of economic problems. With
so much money pouring into the economy, inflation has soared
to three times the Latin American average, while price controls
on basic goods such as milk, beans and sugar have led to shortages.
The country’s economic problems are exacerbated by an
overvalued currency: the official rate has been fixed at 2,150
bolívars to the dollar since 2005 while the black market
rate is more than twice as high, at over 5,000 bolívars
to the dollar. This discrepancy makes non-oil exports expensive
and imports cheap, discouraging domestic investment. While
Venezuela earned $60 billion in oil revenues in 2007, it spent
$45 billion on cheap imports, Petkoff maintained. The government’s
promotion of imports is “the most important enemy of
[Chávez’s] own policy of endogenous development,” he
added.
In
this context of strong political support combined with a
potentially unstable economic situation, Chávez proposed
a series of wide-ranging constitutional reforms in a December
2007 referendum. These reforms, Petkoff insisted, would have
eliminated the last vestiges of Venezuela’s old democracy.
While governors and mayors would continue to be elected under
the proposed regime, a superstructure of unelected secondary
vice presidents would be created above them, diluting their
authority. Although the president would have enjoyed potentially
unlimited reelection, governors and mayors would still have
been subject to term limits. The reforms also proposed “ambiguous” changes
in the legal status of private property — something that
may have alarmed even those with only modest assets.
|
Mr.
Petkoff attributed the rise of Chávez,
at least in part, to the dissatisfaction of the Venezuelan
electorate with their traditional political parties. |
Finally,
the reforms would have changed the structure of the Venezuelan
military. In a country where “Bolivarian” is
widely understood as a synonym for chavista, the official
name of the National Armed Forces would have been changed to
the Bolivarian Armed Forces. And Chávez’s
personal control over the military would have been more than
merely symbolic. While the president currently oversees promotions
to the rank of general, the proposed reform would have given
Chávez direct authority over the career advancement
of all officers. According to Petkoff, such changes would ensure
that “cadets at the academy understand immediately that
to be promoted you must lick the soil of the boots of the president.”
In
the narrow defeat of the proposed constitutional reforms
by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent, Petkoff found reason
to be cautiously optimistic about Venezuela’s political
future. Chávez miscalculated, Petkoff argued, by trying
to turn the constitutional referendum into a vote for or against
his own political movement. The president not only suffered
his first electoral defeat since winning office in 1998, he
also garnered 3 million fewer votes than in December 2006,
when 7.3 million people (63 percent) voted for his reelection.
Many of those voting “No” in the 2007 referendum
did so because they disagreed with the proposed changes, not
necessarily because they opposed Chávez. But the referendum’s
defeat has damaged Chávez’s aura of invincibility,
in part because he put so much political capital into the campaign.
If the president’s charismatic authority is seen as declining,
Petkoff suggested, the loyalty of his supporters in the military,
state apparatus and “boli-bourgeoisie” may begin
to waver.
For
Petkoff, the most promising aspect of the constitutional
reform referendum was the emergence of a new opposition movement
committed to democratic tactics. In the first stage of opposition
to the Chávez administration, from 1999 to 2003, opponents
sought the president’s ouster through an attempted coup,
open criticism by the military and a 62-day-long oil sector
strike. In addition to being anti-democratic, these efforts
were counterproductive, as they ended up strengthening Chávez’s
political position. The second stage of opposition, beginning
with the 2004 recall referendum, was also a miscalculation,
in Petkoff’s view. The president’s opponents alleged
electoral fraud despite the absence of confirming evidence
and then went on to boycott the 2005 municipal elections, facilitating
chavista victories.
In
the third, most recent stage of opposition, Petkoff characterized
anti-Chávez forces as being both more democratic and
more prudent. Most importantly, the emerging protest movement,
led by middle-class university students, has learned from the
tactical mistakes of earlier efforts. Rather than advocating
Chávez’s ouster, the student movement opposes
the president’s most controversial policies, such as
the proposed constitutional reform and the closing of Radio
Caracas Televisión in May 2007. The current Venezuelan
opposition movement, Petkoff concluded, “is married [to]
the idea of a democratic strategy, and from my point of view,
it is the only field in which we can confront Chávez
with possibilities of success.”
Teodoro
Petkoff, founder of the Venezuelan newspaper Tal Cual,
is a prominent left-wing critic of President Hugo Chávez
as well as a former guerrilla leader, two-time presidential
candidate and planning minister under Chávez’s
predecessor Rafael Caldera. He gave a talk entitled “Venezuela
Faces the Future” as a part of the Andean Directions
series on January 25, 2008.
Taylor Boas is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Political Science.
