[NYTr] Venezuela's Constitutional Reform Fails (for Now)

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl - Dec 5, 2007


[I very much agree with the analysis and politics in this essay, but
differ in that the one figure socialist revolution isn't determined by
history, and merits lots of discussion. If that occurs in Venezuela
and doesn't result in a U.S. sponsored fascism, it should open the
subject here and elsewhere.  A painful lesson, either way. -Ed]

ZNet - Dec 4, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-12/04podur.cfm

Venezuela's Constitutional Reform Fails (for Now)

By Justin Podur

The Constitutional Reform referendum in Venezuela has failed, and
Chavez, unlike the Venezuelan opposition, gracefully accepted the
defeat. The best outcome would have been a slim victory for the "Si"
side, and the loss will have negative regional and global consequences.
Colombia's President Uribe, backed by the US, had days before destroyed
a humanitarian accord that Chavez had been trying to broker between
Colombia's government and the FARC guerrillas. The US is in the process
of negotiating a free trade deal with Peru. Canada, serving US foreign
policy as it often does, is trying to get the US a free trade deal with
Colombia through the back door, by negotiating one for itself. In all
this, progressive forces and politicians in place in countries like
Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil, have looked to Venezuela for political
direction and support. The referendum outcome will help the US to
isolate these forces.

But, as Chavez himself said, the battle is not over and there are some
good things that can come out of this.

The referendum results: "No" got 50.7% (4 504 351), "Yes" got 49.2% (4
159 392) votes. Abstention was very high, at 44.11%. These are from El
Tiempo, the Colombian newspaper, and they come from when there were 97%
of the votes counted.

Note how very close things were. The normal split in previous years,
including the 2004 referendum, has been about 5 million voting with
Chavez and about 3.5 million voting against. In this referendum, about
500 000 voters switched and voted against Chavez. Last year's
presidential election, which Chavez won with 63% of voters, had only
30% abstention. Many who had voted with Chavez voted abstained, and
some voted against.

The usual fear tactics and dirty tactics were used by the opposition
and the Americans. The spread of disinformation, from the notion that
Chavez was going to ban miniskirts to Chavez was going to take your
firstborn, was pervasive. There were small-scale capital strikes,
threats of a new coup, and other abuses. But the Bolivarians had
defeated those tactics in the past and many of them had already been
exposed by a much stronger Bolivarian media strategy than ever before.

What good can come of it? One of the best things that could happen in
Venezuela, as unlikely as it is, is that it could make socialism,
popular participation, and democracy seem like normal things, normal
options for a society to choose - if not for elites or for the US, for
Venezuelan and Latin American peoples. Instead, every time there is an
electoral process, there is polarization, a sense that the whole
revolutionary project is in the balance, the whole future is in the
balance and imperialist violence is hanging overhead, and that voting
against Chavez is to side with these reactionary imperialist forces.
If, instead, this vote could be seen the way Chavez is presenting it,
as a defeat of a specific proposal "for now" (one of his famous
phrases), in the context of an ongoing process, that would be a very
good thing.

There are two related weaknesses in Venezuela's revolution. The first
is the absence of highly visible leaders with a national television
profile and ideas of their own, that are in Chavez's league, that are a
part of the revolutionary process, but that might have slightly
different proposals or strategic ideas. This is something that
revolutions have always had a hard time producing - it always seems to
focus on a single person.

The second problem is the difficulty, again largely created by the US
and imperialism, in having a space for dissent within the revolutionary
process. Oh, it is true that the Bolivarians are incredibly tolerant of
the opposition, allowing speech and acts against the government that
would not be tolerated in the US or Canada. Much harder though, and
unclear how to accomplish, is for there to be debate within the
movement about specific proposals without one side or the other having
to go over to the opposition. In a context where the opposition has
some 3.5 million voters, plus tremendous media power, foreign
financing, and ultimately military backing, that is very hard to do.
But this referendum outcome could help. It could actually split the
opposition voters, by showing that Chavez isn't a dictator and is
willing to accept a democratic result, something the opposition has
been unwilling to do.

The other reason not to despair over this defeat is because of the
weaknesses of the referendum itself. The most important flaw was that
it was an "omnibus" referendum, in which voters had to accept or reject
the whole package. Some parts of this package were exciting - other
parts were less so.

There were three issues in the referendum that concerned me, and if
they had been presented by themselves I would have voted against them.
These were the removal of term limits, (which are a relatively minor
issue, given the many jurisdictions in the world that don't have them),
the increased presidential powers to appoint and remove officials, and
the 7-year terms (both which I would vote against as much because they
could be used against the Bolivarians in future - who wants to be stuck
with an empowered reactionary regime for 7 years?). From increased
social welfare to the creation of popular power, there was much that
was very good and exciting in the constitutional reforms, but how can
we know that the 500,000 or so that switched didn't switch on these
three issues? Support for the Bolivarian process could well be deeper
than support for this referendum, and potential support for it is even
greater (given the high abstention rates and the outcome of the last
presidential election). We've always known that the Bolivarians were
the more democratic of Venezuela's two sides. Accepting this defeat and
carrying on with the process is bound to demonstrate this to many.


[Justin Podur covered the 2004 recall referendum for ZNet from Venezuela
and writes on Colombia-Venezuela issues. He is based in Toronto and can
be reached at justin at killingtrain.com.]