President Hugo Chávez claimed this week that it would not be “the end of the world” if he lost power in elections on 7 October, and that he would order his supporters, moderate and radical alike, to accept the result. A lot could still happen between now and then but the opposition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) is looking like a more formidable rival day by day. Henrique Capriles Radonski is a strong bet to face Chávez after one of his two main contenders, Leopoldo López, withdrew from the MUD party primaries on 12 February and threw his weight behind Capriles. The MUD pre-candidates also signed up to a common plan of governance. This is carefully pitched – it promises substantial economic reforms, and some political, but reserves praise for the social policies of the Chávez administration and promises to preserve the existing constitution.
The decision by López to pull out of the MUD primary and back Capriles, the frontrunner, should prove decisive in the primary elections as he was running third in the polls. Young and charismatic, together they would add dynamism to the MUD ticket, holding more widespread appeal than the more polarising options Pablo Pérez or María Corina Machado, although the former retains the support of the traditional party machinery.
López said the legal uncertainty surrounding whether he would be able to stand against Chávez influenced his decision, but he seems to have calculated that he was unlikely to win the primary and that by backing Capriles he could be offered a key role in his government should Capriles win power in October. Capriles duly obliged, saying López could fill any position he chose in his government but would run his campaign for him for now.
A day earlier the main MUD pre-candidates signed up to a joint plan of governance, following a governability accord last September. The timing of the launch was deliberate, marking the 54th anniversary of the fall of the military dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez on 23 January. The implication was that this plan could spell the end of the authoritarian government of Chávez.
The 175-page document was careful, however, to pay respect to the social achievements of Chávez, his strongest card going into the elections. Its criticism was that the social advances were accompanied by “clientelism” and “ideological exclusion”. The document promises to consolidate these social advances to combat poverty, without politicisation, and presumably not in the form of the myriad “missions”. It plans to finance this through more conventional means, releasing the state oil company Pdvsa from the fetters of sustaining government social programmes.
The plan of governance, which had been produced over the course of the last year with the input of politicians, technocrats, social organisations and the public, was designed to send out the message that opposition unity, conspicuous by its absence in the past, would go beyond winning the elections to governing, although different candidates would place an emphasis on the areas they have defined as priorities in internal debates. It addresses five main areas: democratic institutions; good governance; productive society; quality of life; and foreign policy. It calls for a return to a conventional market economy: development based on the creation of wealth; attracting investment; restoring the autonomy of the central bank; fixing a competitive exchange rate; revising the public finances; reasserting private property rights; and converting the State from expropriator to regulator. How far the MUD would go with re-privatising nationalised assets is unclear though.
Elsewhere it promises to reinsert Venezuela into the international community with a foreign policy based on “true trade interests and a historic commitment to democracy”. It promises more police officers to combat organised crime and violence and to reduce public insecurity, as well as prison reform, and the “depoliticising” of state institutions, such as the judiciary and the armed forces (see sidebar). Diego Arria, a rank outsider and the only pre-candidate to refuse to sign up to the plan of governance, insisted that repairing “institutional devastation” would require convening a constituent assembly, but the main candidates, keen not to give the impression that they intend to dismantle everything Chávez has put in place, maintained that reform could be accomplished through the existing (1999) constitution.
- Rangel Silva
The government decorated the defence minister, Chief General Henry Rangel Silva, this week for his efforts in fighting drug-trafficking. The interior minister, Tareck el Aissami, said Rangel had made an exceptional contribution to Venezuela’s efforts in this “battle” and deserved the “maximum distinction”. This is deliberately provocative. The US has publicly accused Rangel of complicity with the drug-trafficking activities of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc). The Colombian government has stayed coy on the matter but the Colombian current affairs magazine Semana accused Rangel of consorting with the Farc and establishing a personal rapport with 'Timochenko', the Farc leader [WR-12-03].
- Human Rights Watch
The US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) released an annual report this week arguing that the judiciary was completely under the yoke in Venezuela. The director of HRW’s Americas arm, José Miguel Vivanco, expressed concern about the electoral process because of the politicisation of the judiciary, as well as the armed forces. HRW has a very poor relationship with the Chávez administration. Vivanco was expelled from Venezuela in 2008 after releasing a report in the country which claimed that not only had Chávez’s time in office constituted a “lost decade” but that he had also used the short-lived coup of 2002 as a pretext to consolidate his grip on power to the detriment of state institutions and human rights guarantees.
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