After just over a week getting reacquainted with Caracas, here are some thoughts.
1. Campaigning in the street: the PSUV and other pro-revolution groups are all over the goddam place. The opposition are nowhere. Despite that campaigning can be as cheap as you choose, the oppos either don’t have the manpower, or the willingness to invite ridicule (or confrontation) in the “popular” areas of the city. Those manning the Chavista campaign points are mostly middle-aged, but not retirement age. It isn’t unthinkable that the “NO” campaign might at least try to compete — they’ve got plenty of students, right? This is, after all, Venezuela’s last chance to avoid a generation of dictatorship!
2. With that last point in mind, you’d at least assume the gran finale march for the “NO” would be a show-stopper. It wasn’t anything of the sort. Watching the images on TV, you almost feel sorry for the sunglasses & cap brigade. They’ve never had to agigate, let alone march, for anything in their lifetimes. Now they’ve got to turn out at least once every election to convince themselves Chavismo isn’t taking over the country. Since this election will be the second in nearly three months, you better believe many of the marchers on Saturday were grudgingly going through the motions. Didn’t the sudden and welcome arrival of “the student movement” mean they could stay home and watch the groundswell on Globovision? Nope.
3. No way are all these random attacks (on opposition interests, and a synagogue) the work of Chavismo. This referendum is going to be won by a clear margin — 60% to 40% is a pretty good bet, if you know the numbers from previous elections. Simply put, Chavismo isn’t desperate. It’s winning. We don’t hate Jews or any other religious group. I’d say 95% of revolutionaries here will tell you straight up that Jews living in Venezuela have nothing to do with the policies of Israel, and 5% might give an unambiguous answer (owing to ignorance, not bigotry). So who is behind the majority of these small-scale attacks? Who benefits? Who is shaping up to lose an important vote? Whose campaign leaders went to Puerto Rico for a shush-shush meeting in early January?
4. Next Sunday’s victory for the “SI” will be the biggest setback for the opposition in the revolution’s history. They will be heartbroken to realise that despite defeating a set of reforms in 2007, and gaining important regional posts in 2008, the electoral map of red vs. blue (Chavez vs. the opposition) has barely changed since 2006. I expect a slightly smaller majority than the 63% of 2006, but that isn’t surprising: the early years of serious revolutionary change (in particular nationalizations and the increasing tempo of class conflict) will gradually turn away a small section of earlier support. However, we can expect developments in the next decade to convince an ever-greater majority of a fast-growing population. In effect, Sunday’s result may be the last downward trend, in terms of approval for Chavez, that we’ll see this century. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be close.
5. Of course, despite being a massive setback for the opposition, it’ll be far from the end of the battle. One-way flights to Miami will increase notably, but there will never be a dramatic exodus. Pace of revolutionary change in Venezuela, it seems, will always be steady (though not necessarily slow). And of course Venezuela is not an island in which dissidents can feel trapped. What might be the opposition’s broader plans, after losing this referendum? A recall referendum to put Chavez at the mercy of a popular vote at the mid-point of his term would be so unlikely to succeed (requiring 3m more votes than the opposition has ever turned out) that one can rule it out. A period of calm until Chavez’s possible reelection in 2012, however, is out of the question. There will be National Assembly elections and quite probably a small set of constitution reforms to vote on. In short, voting will have to be recognised as as annual event, whether some believe it to be a hindrance to revolutionary change or not!
Leave a comment