Two decisive contests are fast approaching in the struggle for ideological supremacy in Latin America: the legislative elections in Venezuela on Sept 26 and the presidential elections in Brazil on Oct 3. If the democratic left doesn’t win in the latter, the political pendulum would begin to swing continent wide towards the right, which is already in power in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru.
But this is unlikely to occur: it is inconceivable that Jose Serra, of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, could defeat Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party, supported by the current president Lula Ignacio de Silva, who could easily win a third term if the constitution didn’t bar it.
Given this situation in Brazil, conservative forces are concentrating their attacks on the other front, Venezuela, trying to weaken President Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian revolution. At stake are the seats of 165 deputies in the National Assembly. Almost all of the outgoing lawmakers are Chavistas because the opposition boycotted the last elections, in 2005. They won’t this time. There is a myriad of parties and disparate organisations, all united by their anti-Chavez zeal in the umbrella group the Table of Democratic Unity against Chavez’ Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela.
New proportion
The Bolivarian government will inevitably have fewer representatives in the new assembly, which raises many questions: What will the new proportion be? Will the body still be able to push through Chavez’ reforms? Will the opposition be able to put the brakes on the revolution?
Sixty per cent of the seats will be assigned by direct election, the rest by proportionality. Of this 40 per cent, the ticket that receives over 50 per cent of the votes will receive 75 per cent of the seats. This is important because the constitution stipulates that organic laws need a two-thirds majority to pass while an enabling act, which would give the president the power to legislate by decree, must pass by a three-fifths majority.
In other words: the opposition would need just 56 of the total 165 votes to block passage of organic laws and 67 votes to block passage of any enabling act. Up until now, it was the latter that made it possible for the government to pass the major reforms.
Thus the battle in Venezuela in mobilising massive energy while the defamation campaigns launched against President Chavez are churning with malignancy. Recent months have seen an alternation of attacks. First came the focus on problems with water supplies and electricity cuts, blaming the government for both without mentioning the central factor: the drought of the century then afflicting Venezuela. Next came endless repetitions of the unsubstantiated charge made by ex-Colombian president Alvaro Uribe regarding a supposed “Venezuelan sanctuary for terrorists”.
This accusation was dropped by the new president of Colombia Juan Miguel Santos after his Aug 10 meeting with Chavez, who said again that the guerrillas should abandon their armed struggle: “Today’s world is not the world of the 1960s. The conditions of the country are not right for the guerrillas to take power. Instead, they have been transformed into the main excuse for the American empire to penetrate deep into Colombia and from there to attack Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Cuba.”
Against all evidence, the hatemonger media continue to assert that in Venezuela political freedoms would be eliminated and censorship would choke off the freedom of expression. They fail to note that 80 per cent of radio and television stations belong to the private sector and only 8 per cent are public. Nor do they mention that since 1989 there have been 15 democratic elections unchallenged by any international oversight organisation. Journalist Jose Vicente Rangel writes, “Every Venezuelan is able to affiliate with any of thousands of political parties, unions, social organisations or associations and then move into the national arena to debate their ideas and points of view without any limitation.”
Since Chavez was elected president, social investment in Venezuela has increased by a factor of five with respect to 1988-1998 levels; this was a crucial move, because of which Venezuela has already achieved almost all of the UN Millennium Development Goals, well before the 2015 target date. The percentage of Venezuelans living in poverty has dropped from 49.4 per cent in 1999 to 30.2 per cent in 2006.
Do such encouraging achievements deserve such hatred?
IPS