[NYTr] Petras: Venezuela - Between Ballots and Bullets

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Dissident Voice - Nov 13, 2007
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/11/venezuela-between-ballots-and-bullets/


Venezuela: Between Ballots and Bullets

by James Petras

Introduction

Venezuela’s democratically elected Present Chavez faces the most
serious threat since the April 11, 2002 military coup.

Violent street demonstrations by privileged middle and upper middle
class university students have led to major street battles in and
around the center of Caracas. More seriously, the former Minister of
Defense, General Raul Isaias Baduel, who resigned in July, has made
explicit calls for a military coup in a November 5th press conference
which he convoked exclusively for the right and far-right mass media
and political parties, while striking a posture as an ‘individual’
dissident.

The entire international and local private mass media has played up
Baduel’s speeches, press conferences along with fabricated accounts of
the oppositionist student rampages, presenting them as peaceful
protests for democratic rights against the government referendum
scheduled for December 2, 2007.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC News and the
Washington Post have all primed their readers for years with stories of
President Chavez’ ‘authoritarianism’. Faced with constitutional reforms
which strengthen the prospects for far-reaching political-social
democratization, the US, European and Latin American media have cast
pro-coup ex-military officials as ‘democratic dissidents’, former
Chavez supporters disillusioned with his resort to ‘dictatorial’ powers
in the run-up to and beyond the December 2, 2007 vote in the referendum
on constitutional reform. Not a single major newspaper has mentioned
the democratic core of the proposed reforms — the devolution of public
spending and decision to local neighborhood and community councils.
Once again as in Chile in 1973, the US mass media is complicit in an
attempt to destroy a Latin American democracy.

Even sectors of the center-left press and parties in Latin America have
reproduced right-wing propaganda. On November the self-styled ‘leftist’
Mexican daily La Jornada headline read ‘Administrators and Students
from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) Accuse Chavez of
Promoting Violence’. The article then proceeded to repeat the rightist
fabrications about electoral polls, which supposedly showed the
constitutional amendments facing defeat.

The United States Government, both the Republican White House and the
Democrat-controlled Congress are once again overtly backing the new
attempt to oust the popular-nationalist President Chavez and to defeat
the highly progressive constitutional amendments.

The Referendum: Defining and Deepening the Social Transformation

The point of confrontation is the forthcoming referendum on
constitutional reforms initiated by President Chavez, debated, amended
and democratically voted on by the Venezuelan Congress over the past 6
months. There was widespread and open debate and criticism of specific
sectors of the Constitution. The private mass media, overwhelmingly
viscerally anti-Chavez and pro-White House, unanimously condemned any
and all the constitutional amendments. A sector of the leadership of
one of the components of the pro-Chavez coalition (PODEMOS) joined the
Catholic Church hierarchy, the leading business and cattleman’s
association, bankers and sectors of the university and student elite to
attack the proposed constitutional reforms. Exploiting to the hilt all
of Venezuela’s democratic freedoms (speech, assembly and press) the
opposition has denigrated the referendum as ‘authoritarian’ even as
most sectors of the opposition coalition attempted to arouse the
military to intervene.

The opposition coalition of the rich and privileged fear the
constitutional reforms because they will have to grant a greater share
of their profits to the working class, lose their monopoly over market
transactions to publicly owned firms, and see political power evolve
toward local community councils and the executive branch. While the
rightist and liberal media in Venezuela, Europe and the US have
fabricated lurid charges about the ‘authoritarian’ reforms, in fact the
amendments propose to deepen and extend social democracy.

A brief survey of the key constitutional amendments openly debated and
approved by a majority of freely elected Venezuelan congress members
gives the lie to charges of ‘authoritarianism’ by its critics. The
amendments can be grouped according to political, economic and social
changes.

The most important political change is the creation of new locally
based democratic forms of political representation in which elected
community and communal institutions will be allocated state revenues
rather than the corrupt, patronage-infested municipal and state
governments. This change toward decentralization will encourage a
greater practice of direct democracy in contrast to the oligarchic
tendencies embedded in the current centralized representative system.

Secondly, contrary to the fabrications of ex-General Baduel, the
amendments do not ‘destroy the existing constitution’, since the
amendments modify in greater or lesser degree only 20% of the articles
of the constitution (69 out of 350).

The amendments providing for unlimited term elections is in line with
the practices of many parliamentary systems, as witnessed by the five
terms in office of Australian Prime Minister Howard, the half century
rule of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, the four terms of US
President Franklin Roosevelt, the multi-term election of Margaret
Thatcher and Tony Blair in the UK among others. No one ever questions
their democratic credentials for multi-term executive office holding,
nor should current critics selectively label Chavez as an
‘authoritarian’ for doing the same.

Political change increasing the presidential term of office from 6 to 7
years will neither increase or decrease presidential powers, as the
opposition claims, because the separation of legislative, judicial and
executive powers will continue and free elections will subject the
President to periodic citizen review.

The key point of indefinite elections is that they are free elections,
subject to voter preference, in which, in the case of Venezuela, the
vast majority of the mass media, Catholic hierarchy, US-funded NGO’s,
big business associations will still wield enormous financial resources
to finance opposition activity — hardly an ‘authoritarian’ context.

The amendment allowing the executive to declare a state of emergency
and intervene in the media in the face of violent activity to overthrow
the constitution is essential for safeguarding democratic institutions.
In light of several authoritarian violent attempts to seize power
recently by the current opposition, the amendment allows dissent but
also allows democracy to defend itself against the enemies of freedom.
In the lead up to the US-backed military coup of April 11, 2002, and
the petroleum lockout by its senior executives which devastated the
economy (a decline of 30% of GNP in 2002/2003), if the Government had
possessed and utilized emergency powers, Congress and the Judiciary,
the electoral process and the living standards of the Venezuelan people
would have been better protected. Most notably, the Government could
have intervened against the mass media aiding and abetting the violent
overthrow of the democratic process, like any other democratic
government. It should be clear that the amendment allowing for
‘emergency powers’ has a specific context and reflects concrete
experiences: the current opposition parties, business federations and
church hierarchies have a violent, anti-democratic history. The
destabilization campaign against the current referendum and the appeals
for military intervention most prominently and explicitly stated by
retired General Baduel (defended by his notorious adviser-apologist,
the academic-adventurer Heinz Dietrich), are a clear indication that
emergency powers are absolutely necessary to send a clear message that
reactionary violence will be met by the full force of the law.

The reduction of voting age from 18 to 16 will broaden the electorate,
increase the number of participants in the electoral process and give
young people a greater say in national politics through institutional
channels. Since many workers enter the labor market at a young age and
in some cases start families earlier, this amendment allows young
workers to press their specific demands on employment and contingent
labor contracts.

The amendment reducing the workday to six hours is vehemently opposed
by the opposition led by the big business federation, FEDECAMARAS, but
has the overwhelming support of the trade unions and workers from all
sectors. It will allow for greater family time, sports, education,
skill training, political education and social participation, as well
as membership in the newly formed community councils. Related labor
legislation and changes in property rights including a greater role for
collective ownership will strengthen labor’s bargaining power with
capital, extending democracy to the workplace.

Finally the amendment eliminating so-called ‘Central Bank autonomy’
means that elected officials responsive to the voters will replace
Central Bankers (frequently responsive to private bankers, overseas
investors and international financial officials) in deciding public
spending and monetary policy. One major consequence will be the
reduction of excess reserves in devalued dollar denominated funds and
an increase in financing for social and productive activity, a
diversity of currency holdings and a reduction in irrational foreign
borrowing and indebtedness. The fact of the matter is that the Central
Bank was not ‘autonomous’, it was dependent on what the financial
markets demanded, independent of the priorities of elected officials
responding to popular needs.

As the Chavez Government Turns to Democratic Socialism: Centrists
Defect and Seek Military Solutions

As Venezuela’s moves from political to social transformation, from a
capitalist welfare state toward democratic socialism, predictable
defections and additions occur. As in most other historical experiences
of social transformation, sectors of the original government coalition
committed to formal institutional political changes defect when the
political process moves toward greater egalitarianism and property and
a power shift to the populace. Ideologues of the ‘Center’ regret the
‘breaking’ of the status quo ‘consensus’ between oligarchs and people
(labeling the new social alignments as ‘authoritarian’) even as the
‘Center’ embraces the profoundly anti-democratic Right and appeals for
military intervention.

A similar process of elite defections and increased mass support is
occurring in Venezuela as the referendum, with its clear class choices,
comes to the fore. Lacking confidence in their ability to defeat the
constitutional amendments through the ballot, fearful of the democratic
majority, resentful of the immense popular appeal of the democratically
elected President Chavez, the ‘Center’ has joined the Right in a last
ditch effort to unify extra-parliamentary forces to defeat the will of
the electorate.

Emblematic of the New Right and the ‘Centrist’ defections is the
ex-Minister of Defense, Raul Baduel, whose virulent attack on the
President, the Congress, the electoral procedures and the referendum
mark him as an aspirant to head up a US-backed right-wing seizure of
power.

The liberal and right wing mass media and unscrupulous ‘centrist’
propagandists have falsely portrayed Raul Baduel as the ‘savior’ of
Chavez following the military coup of April 2002. The fact of the
matter is that Baduel intervened only after hundreds of thousands of
poor Venezuelans poured down from the ‘ranchos’, surrounded the
Presidential Palace, leading to division in the armed forces. Baduel
rejected the minority of rightist military officers favoring a massive
bloodbath and aligned with other military officials who opposed extreme
measures against the people and the destruction of the established
political order. The latter group included officials who supported
Chavez’ nationalist-populist policies and others, like Baduel, who
opposed the coup-makers because it radicalized and polarized society —
leading to a possible class-based civil war with uncertain outcome.
Baduel was for the restoration of a ‘chastised’ Chavez who would
maintain the existing socio-economic status quo.

Within the Chavez government, Baduel represented the anti-communist
tendency, which pressed the President to ‘reconcile’ with the ‘moderate
democratic’ right and big business. Domestically, Baduel opposed the
extension of public ownership and internationally favored close
collaboration with the far-right Colombian Defense Ministry.

Baduel’s term of office as Defense Minister reflected his conservative
propensities and his lack of competence in matters of security,
especially with regard to internal security. He failed to protect
Venezuela’s frontiers from military incursions by Colombia’s armed
forces. Worse he failed to challenge Colombia’s flagrant violation of
international norms with regard to political exiles. While Baduel was
Minister of Defense, Venezuelan landlords’ armed paramilitary groups
assassinated over 150 peasants active in land reform while the National
Guard looked the other way. Under Baduel’s watch over 120 Colombian
paramilitary forces infiltrated the country. The Colombian military
frequently crossed the Venezuelan border to attack Colombian refugees.
Under Baduel, Venezuelan military officials collaborated in the
kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda (a foreign affairs emissary of the FARC)
in broad daylight in the center of Caracas. Baduel made no effort to
investigate or protest this gross violation of Venezuelan sovereignty,
until President Chavez was informed and intervened. Throughout Baduel’s
term as Minister of Defense he developed strong ties to Colombia’s
military intelligence (closely monitored by US Defense Intelligence
Agency and the CIA) and extradited several guerrillas from both the ELN
and the FARC to the hands of Colombian torturers.

At the time of his retirement as Minister of Defense, Baduel made a
July 2007 speech in which he clearly targeted the leftist and Marxist
currents in the trade union (UNT) and Chavez newly announced PSUV (The
Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela). His speech, in the name of
‘Christian socialist’, was in reality a vituperative and ill-tempered
anti-communist diatribe, which pleased Pope Benedict (Ratzinger).

Baduel’s November 5 speech however marks his public adherence to the
hard-line opposition, its rhetoric, fabrications and visions of an
authoritarian reversal of Chavez program of democratic socialism. First
and foremost, Baduel, following the lead of the White House and the
Venezuelan ‘hard right’, denounced the entire process of Congressional
debate on the Constitutional amendments, and open electoral campaigning
leading up to the referendum as ‘in effect a coup d’etat’. Every expert
and outside observer disagreed — even those opposed to the referendum.
Baduel’s purpose however was to question the legitimacy of the entire
political process in order to justify his call for military
intervention. His rhetoric calling the congressional debate and vote a
‘fraud’ and ‘fraudulent procedures’ point to Baduel’s effort to
denigrate existing representative institutions in order to justify a
military coup, which would dismantle them.

Baduel’s denial of political intent is laughable — since he only
invited opposition media and politicians to his ‘press conference’ and
was accompanied by several military officials. Baduel resembles the
dictator who accuses the victim of the crimes he is about to commit. In
calling the referendum on constitutional reform a ‘coup’, he incites
the military to launch a coup. In an open appeal for military action he
directs the military to ‘reflect of the context of constitutional
reform.’ He repeatedly calls on military officials to ‘assess
carefully’ the changes the elected government has proposed ‘in a hasty
manner and through fraudulent procedures’. While denigrating
democratically elected institutions, Baduel resorts to vulgar flattery
and false modesty to induce the military to revolt. While immodestly
denying that he could act as spokesperson for the Armed Forces, he
advised the rightist reporters present and potential military cohort
that ‘you cannot underrate the capacity of analysis and reasoning of
the military.’

Cant, hypocrisy and disinterested posturing run through Baduel’s
pronouncements. His claim of being an ‘apolitical’ critic is belied by
his intention to go on a nationwide speaking tour attacking the
constitutional reforms, in meetings organized by the rightwing
opposition. There is absolutely no doubt that he will not only be
addressing civilian audiences but will make every effort to meet with
active military officers who he might convince to ‘reflect’…and plot
the overthrow of the government and reverse the results of the
referendum. President Chavez has every right to condemn Baduel as a
traitor, though given his long-term hostility to egalitarian social
transformation it may be more to the point to say that Baduel is now
revealing his true colors.

The danger to Venezuelan democracy is not in Baduel as an individual —
he is out of the government and retired from active military command.
The real danger is his effort to arouse the active military officers
with command of troops, to answer his call to action or as he cleverly
puts it ‘for the military to reflect on the context of the
constitutional reforms.’ Baduel’s analysis and action program places
the military as the centerpiece of politics, supreme over the 16
million voters.

His vehement defense of ‘private property’ in line with his call for
military action is a clever tactic to unite the Generals, Bankers and
the middle class in the infamous footsteps of Augusto Pinochet, the
bloody Chilean tyrant.

The class polarization in the run-up to the referendum has reached its
most acute expression: the remains of the multi-class coalition
embracing a minority of the middle class and the great majority of the
working power is disintegrating. Millions of previously apathetic or
apolitical young workers, unemployed poor and low-income women
(domestic workers, laundresses, single parents) are joining the huge
popular demonstrations overflowing the main avenues and plazas in favor
of the constitutional amendments. At the same time political defections
have increased among the centrist-liberal minority in the Chavez
coalition. Fourteen deputies in the National Assembly, less than 10%,
mostly from PODEMOS, have joined the opposition. Reliable sources in
Venezuela (Axis of Logic/Les Blough Nov. 11, 2007) report that Attorney
General Beneral Isaias Rodriguez, a particularly incompetent crime
fighter, and the Comptroller General Cloudosbaldo Russian are
purportedly resigning and joining the opposition. More seriously, these
same reports claim that the 4th Armed Division in Marcay is loyal to
‘Golpista’ Raul Baduel. Some suspect Baduel is using his long-term
personal ties with the current Minister of Defense, Gustavo Briceno
Rangel to convince him to defect and join in the pre-coup preparations.
Large sums of US funding is flowing in to pay off state and local
officials in cash and in promises to share in the oil booty if Chavez
is ousted. The latest US political buy-out includes Governor Luis
Felipe Acosta Carliz from the state of Carabobo. The mass media have
repeatedly featured these new defectors to the right in their hourly
‘news reports’ highlighting their break with Chavez ‘coup d’etat’.

The referendum is turning into an unusually virulent case of a ‘class
against class’ war, in which the entire future of the Latin American
left is at stake as well as Washington’s hold on its biggest oil
supplier.

Conclusion

Venezuelan democracy, the Presidency of Hugo Chavez and the great
majority of the popular classes face a mortal threat. The US is facing
repeated electoral defeats and is incapable of large-scale external
intervention because of over-extension of its military forces in the
Middle East; it is committed once more to a violent overthrow of
Chavez. Venezuela through the constitutional reforms, will broaden and
deepen popular democratic control over socio-economic policy. New
economic sectors will be nationalized. Greater public investments and
social programs will take off. Venezuela is moving inexorably toward
diversifying its petrol markets, currency reserves and its political
alliances. Time is running out for the White House: Washington’s
political levers of influence are weakening. Baduel is seen as the one
best hope of igniting a military seizure, restoring the oligarchs to
power and decimating the mass popular movements.

President Chavez is correctly ‘evaluating the high command’ and states
that he ‘has full confidence in the national armed forces and their
components.’ Yet the best guarantee is to strike hard and fast,
precisely against Baduel’s followers and cohorts. Rounding up a few
dozen or hundred military plotters is a cheap price to pay for saving
the lives of thousands of workers and activists who would be massacred
in any bloody seizure of power.

History has repeatedly taught that when you put social democracy,
egalitarianism and popular power at the top of the political agenda, as
Chavez has done, and as the vast majority of the populace
enthusiastically responds, the Right, the reactionary military, the
‘Centrist’ political defectors and ideologues, the White House, the
hysterical middle classes and the Church cardinals will sacrifice any
and all democratic freedoms to defend their property, privileges and
power by whatever means and at whatever cost necessary. In the current
all-pervasive confrontation between the popular classes of Venezuela
and their oligarchic and military enemies, only by morally, politically
and organizationally arming the people can the continuity of the
democratic process of social transformation be guaranteed.

Change will come, the question is whether it will be through the ballot
or the bullet.

[James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University,
New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an
adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is
co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest book is The
Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006). His
forthcoming book is Rulers and Ruled (Bankers, Zionists and Militants
(Clarity Press, Atlanta). He can be reached at: jpetras at binghamton.edu.
His website: http://petras.lahaine.org/ ]