Caracas is Crackers!!
By Julie Webb-Pullman
Where else could you find workers protesting outside the Presidential Palace, not against the Government but against big
business and its bosses??!! Monday saw Cocacola workers staking out Miraflores Palace in the hope of getting a minute of
President Chavez' time[1], Tuesday it was transport workers' turn to go straight to the top, a strategy symptomatic of
the topsy-turvy world that is revolutionary Venezuela.
When Chavez was elected President in 1998 he was elected completely on his own account, no party behind him, just one
man travelling the country pledging to end the endemic corruption, injustice, and gross inequity that plagued the
nation. His overwhelming success in the polls, then and since, came almost exclusively from grassroots support, and put
the "man without a party" at the top. Although the legislature was reputedly "Chavista" their lengthy deliberations
rarely led to a vote, often forcing Chavez to resort to presidential decrees to push reforms through. The middle and
upper classes, which controlled business and the bureaucracy, were determined to sabotage his programme of equitable
redistribution of the nation's wealth. Chuck in a judiciary protecting the interests of the privileged classes, who had
enjoyed almost total impunity for crimes ranging from fraud to murder, and we have a most curious mix - a President at
the top developing and trying to implement new policies to benefit the majority of the people and allocating
considerable resources to do so, a wildly enthusiastic and committed population base champing at the bit to get their
co-operatives and other initiatives up and running – and the bureaucracy through which policy implementation must pass
doing its best to stymie their every effort (not least by pocketing significant portions of the funds destined for
communities, aided and abetted by widespread incompetence), while big business drove down workers' conditions or just
packed up and left, and courts refused to take appropriate action, such as regarding the four murdered Cocacola workers.
As a result, the "people" have pretty well given up on going through legal or bureaucratic channels to resolve their
problems, instead petitioning the President directly – while the President resorts to decrees to resolve those of the
country. A crude and simplistic analysis, but you get the general idea of where they are coming from.
Only in 2007 did a political party finally form behind Chavez - the PSUV, or United Socialist Party of Venezuela – and
theirs are the candidates standing in the November 23 regional and municipal elections to stave off what is shaping up
to be another attempt by the right to undermine Chavez.
Currently "Chavistas" hold more than 20 of the 23 regional and municipal positions, but the loss of the Referendum vote
in December 2007 sent a stern warning that all is not rosy in the pink part of town.
Belgian political scientist Eric Toussaint commented at the time, "The failure of the Yes campaign can be imputed to the loss of support for Chavez in his own camp, as he himself
acknowledged on the night of 2-3 December 2007. Some 7,300,000 people voted for Chavez in December 2006, giving him a
lead of 3 million votes over his main adversary, Manuel Rosales Total votes in favour of the referendum proposals
amounted to just over 4,300,000 votes, in other words 3 million less than a year previously." And that is despite the socio-economic situation of the majority of Venezuelans improving immensely over the last ten
years courtesy of the raft of new policies and Presidential decrees, improved access to culture and education, and far
greater enjoyment of civil and political rights – and a significant decline in corruption and improved efficiency in the
bureaucracy. As one worker said, "Before, functionaries would pocket 90% of the funds and only 10% would get to the projects they were destined for, but
now they only pocket 10% and 90% gets to the project."
However it would be foolish to write off the PSUV's chances on 23 November - in spite of evident frustration with the
slowness of reforms, all indications are that the large majority of Venezuelans are still very much behind Chavez and
their socialist project. Whilst the right-controlled media are beating up a storm trying to discredit the upcoming
electoral process, the National Electoral Council (CNE) is conducting itself with rigorous openness and transparency. On
Friday all Ambassadors accredited to Venezuela were invited to a seminar where Tibisay Lucena, Director of the CNE,
explained to them the Venezuelan electoral process, and the technology being used for electronic voting, including
security measures and the protection of privacy.
International observers have found the elections since Chavez came to power essentially to be open, fair, and clean. The
problem for the electorate is not likely to be Bush-style shenanigans with the voting machines, but the rate of
abstention – if, as in December 2007 millions of Chavistas stay away from the polls, the result could well be the loss
of several regions to the right.
However there is a big difference between a referendum with 70+ proposed Constitutional changes, and the election of
regional legislators and mayors. The former was always going to be an almost impossible ask – getting people to vote a
blanket YES on so many contentious issues – whereas the latter is a simple matter of who they want to run their local
affairs.
It remains to be seen just how frustrated the people have become with the slowness of reform, and whether this
frustration will translate into a massive show of no-confidence in the PSUV. Stay tuned as I canvas the people over the
next week to get the views from below - next stop, the Caracas barrio of Guaicapuro.
Notes:
[1] See video: Ex-Cocacola workers demonstrate at www.latinamericasolidarity.org
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