Venezuela’s choice: Chavez forever or no more

Venezuela’s choice: Chavez forever or no more

By Aleksander Boyd

On Sunday, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez pitches another referendum on removing his term limit so that he can continue his fantasy of 21st Century Socialism. But whatever the result, this decade-long experiment is already a failure.

Chavez put the same vote to Venezuelans in December 2007. It failed. But the final results were never announced and the opposition was said to have won only a “narrow victory”--but Chavez told CNN last week: "there's no limit in the constitution regarding the number of times that an amendment can be attempted," adding it could be every year.

The constitution may not be much help to anyone else. Chavez has banned political opponents from running for office. El Presidente expelled representatives of the campaigning Human Rights Watch (HRW) last September.

Jose Miguel Vivanco of HRW said “in the more than 20 years that Human Rights Watch has worked in Latin America, no government has ever expelled our representatives for our work.”

Last month, Amnesty International said: "By rejecting a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and calling on the government to reject the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights, the Venezuelan Supreme Court is sending a dangerous message that human rights are optional.”

The rights group’s worst offense was to touch Chavez's rawest nerve - his support for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

"Email messages found on laptop computers reportedly recovered from a FARC camp by Colombian security forces in March 2008 describe meetings in which Venezuelan officials also appear to have offered assistance to the Colombian guerrillas, including safe havens, weapons procurement, and possibly even financial support," HRW reported.

The HRW report added that "Interpol announced on May 15 that its forensic experts had verified that the computer files were authentic."

Disregarding public demonstrations and international pressure, Chavez banned Radio Caracas Television from the airwaves in 2007, accusing it of sympathizing with an attempted coup.

Chavez’s domestic and international defenders claim the Socialist Revolution has indeed revolutionized people's lives, with state-spending sprees bringing cheap energy, free healthcare and schooling for everyone in the barrios, the slums.

“A trip to one of many new community facilities showed how millions of people have been given access to a new free healthcare system, including dentistry. Illiteracy has been eliminated to UNESCO standards,” said Chavez fan and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone recently.

Never mind that healthcare has been free in Venezuela for over 40 years and that UNESCO denied Venezuela’s literacy claims.

The numbers we do have paint a very bleak picture of social disintegration and economic chaos. Inflation is the highest in Latin America, at over 30 per cent, with prices for the bare necessities increasing at over 50 per cent.

Crime is rising fast and murders are 2.5 times higher since Chavez took office in 1999, the respected US journal Foreign Policy says. Caracas is now the murder capital of the world, worse even than Johannesburg or Sao Paulo. Poverty is still rampant and official figures are, at best, suspect.

When faced with such problems in the past, the government would simply throw money at them. But now with oil prices down around $40 a barrel, even if briefly, and with more than 90 per cent of export revenues coming from petroleum, the government’s hostility to business has left the country addicted to petrodollars but short of a fix.

Having kicked out most of “Big Oil,” the pressure is on Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA. But a culture of mis-management and political manipulation is making things difficult.

Production has fallen by a quarter of what it was a decade ago. The company’s debts--over $10 billion by one estimate--are mounting. Workers and contractors complain of unpaid salaries and unpaid invoices.

PDVSA said in January that Venezuela produces 3.3 million barrels-per-day. Bloomberg estimates the figure at 2.32 million, while OPEC put it at 2.34 million in its May report.

With nowhere else to turn, Chavez has invited the multinationals back. But, having had their contracts breached in the past, these companies are understandably hesitating.

With the list of demands for state handouts growing ever larger, but without the cash to pay for them, Venezuela’s damaged credit rating is coming back to haunt El Presidente.

Chavez wants Venezuelans to believe they are under attack from external enemies: "I believe Obama comes with the same stench,” he said at a political rally in January, referring to George W. Bush, whom he once accused of smelling of sulphur, like the Devil.

But his real enemies are right there in Venezuela, protesting in the streets: “spray them with gas and dissolve any disturbance,” he said last month.

Venezuela’s enemy is the Chavez policies. Whether he wins or loses the referendum, the credit crunch may put an end to Chavez's oil-fuelled, statist fantasy. And the sooner the better, so Venezuelans can get back to work re-building a real economy.

Aleksander Boyd is a Venezuelan opposition activist living in London who serves as an election observer for the Human Rights Foundation, a U.S.-based philanthropy.