Gwynne Dyer: Venezuela after Hugo Chavez
“The graveyards are full of indispensable men,” said Georges Clemenceau, prime minster of France during the First World War, and promptly died to prove his point. He was duly replaced, and France was just fine without him. Same goes for Hugo Chavez and Venezuela.
“Comandante Presidente” Chavez’s death on Tuesday (March 5) came as no surprise. He was clearly coming home to die when he returned from his last bout of surgery in Cuba in December, and since then everybody in politics in Venezuela has been pondering their post-Chavez strategies. But none of them really knows what will happen in the election that will be held by the end of April, let alone what happens afterwards.
Venezuela never stopped being a democracy despite 14 years of Chavez’s rule. He didn’t seize power. He didn’t even rig elections, though he used the government’s money and privileged access to the media to good effect. He was elected president four times, the first three with increasing majorities—but the last time, in 2012, he fell back sharply, only defeating his rival by 54 percent to 44 percent.
That is certainly not a wide enough margin to guarantee that his appointed successor, Nicolas Maduro, will win the next election. Maduro will doubtless benefit from a certain sympathy vote, but that effect may be outweighed by the fact that Chavez is no longer there in person to work his electoral magic. If his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) were to lose that election, it would not be a tragedy.
Chavez was an unnecessarily combative and polarizing politician and a truly awful administrator, but he has actually achieved what he went into politics for. Twenty years ago Venezuelan politics was a corrupt game fought out between two factions of a narrow elite. Now the task of using the country’s oil wealth to improve the lives of the poor majority is central to all political debate in the country.
In last year’s election, the Venezuelan opposition parties managed to unite behind a single presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles, whose political platform was basically “Chavismo” without the demagoguery. In previous elections, the opposition had railed against Chavez’s “socialism” and Marxism, and lost by a wide margin. Capriles, by contrast, promised to retain most of Chavez’s social welfare policies, and lost very narrowly.
Over the past dozen years Chavez’s governments have poured almost $300 billion into improving literacy, extending high school education, creating a modern, universally accessible health-care system, build housing for the homeless, and subsidising household purchases from groceries to appliances. What made that possible was not “socialism”, but Venezuela’s huge oil revenues.
Capriles had to promise to maintain these policies because the poor—and most Venezuelans are still poor—won’t vote for a candidate who would end all that. He just said that he would spend that money more effectively, with less corruption, and a lot of people believed him. It would not be hard to be more efficient than Chavez’s slapdash administration.
Venezuela today has the fairest distribution of wealth in the Americas, with the obvious exception of Canada. Venezuela’s “Gini coefficient”, which measures the wealth gap between the rich and the poor, is 0.39, whereas the United States is 0.45 and Brazil, even after 10 years of reforming left-wing governments, is still 0.52. (A lower score means less inequality of income.)
For all of Chavez’s ranting about class struggle and his admiration for Fidel Castro, this was not achieved in Venezuela by taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. It was accomplished by spending the oil revenue differently. He changed the political psychology of the country, and it now has the potential to be a Saudi Arabia with democracy.
That is not a bad thing to be, and the Venezuelan opposition has finally grasped that fact. It remains for Chavez’s own party to understand that it has actually won the war, and to stop re-fighting the old battles. A spell in opposition might help it to come to terms with its proper role in the new Venezuelan political consensus: no longer an embattled “revolutionary” movement, but the more radical alternative in a more or less egalitarian democracy.
This will be hard for the PSUV to do, because the people around Chavez are still addicted to the rhetoric and the mindset of “struggle”against the forces of evil that they see on every side. Nicolas Maduro, for example, could not resist claiming that Chavez's cancer had been induced by foul play by Venezuela's enemies when he announced the leader’s death.
One day, Maduro promised, a “scientific commission” would investigate whether Chavez's illness was brought about by what he called an enemy attack, presumably by the United States. Ridiculous, paranoid stuff, and it shows just how far the PSUV has to travel to take its proper place in a modern, democratic Venezuela. But the journey has begun, and it will probably get there in the end.
Comments
13 Comments
Uncle Jack
Mar 6, 2013 at 11:46pm
Just read that Forbes estimated the fortune amassed by the Chavez family at over one BILLION!!
With a "B"!!
A picture on CBC with Chavez's daughter at his bed side of a few weeks ago, shows her wearing a square diamond ring about one inch in size, estimated by the Caracas press to be worth over one million.
Fighting for the poor, I say!!
nitroglycol
Mar 7, 2013 at 7:00am
Do you have a link for that number? The only Forbes article I found was critical of him, but made no mention of his personal fortune.
JohnCan
Mar 7, 2013 at 7:55am
The idea that Chavez was anti-American is risible. He spewed all that anti-imperialist rhetoric while filling up their SUVs, and all the right-wing politicos in the states drove those SUVs while denouncing him. The term for that is objective allies.
Spending oil revenue - if your country is lucky enough to have it - on the poor is simply good policy. It's hardly socialism. The Venezuelan elites could have prevented Chavez in the first place if they had done so themselves. That's what the house of Saud does, and nobody calls them the vanguard of the proletariat.
I. Chandler
Mar 7, 2013 at 8:53am
"he called an enemy attack, presumably by the United States. Ridiculous, paranoid stuff"
South American Union countries have rejected US Intelligence efforts to destabilize the region:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-prepares-to-destabilize-bolivia-agai...
Modeled on the European Union, the South American Union Parliament will be located in Bolivia. OAS countries have rejected US efforts to isolate Cuba - accepting Cuba into the OAS.
" though he used the government’s money to good effect."
Facts speak for themselves: poverty and unemployment fell under Chavez. 2009@ 26% and 7.8% falling from 55% and 15% (1995)
http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/05/hugo-chavez-people-ven...
To give the lie to the idea that poor Venezuelans voted for Chávez because the baubles dangled in front of them. During the 2006 presidential campaign, Chávez’s opponent pledge to give 3million poor Venezuelans a black credit card (black as in the color of oil) from which they could withdraw up to $450 in cash a month, draining $16 billion dollars a year from the treasury (call it neoliberal populism: give to the poor just enough to bankrupt the government and force the defunding of services:
http://www.thenation.com/article/173212/legacy-hugo-chavez#
"though he used the government’s access to the media to good effect."
The major Venezuelan newspapers are all private companies.
Venezuela passed a law limiting ownership of radio and television licences to three per private owner. Orwell Rolls in His Grave looks at how media in the US is controlled by a handful of corporations.
I. Chandler
Mar 7, 2013 at 10:55am
I keep reading that
Chavez was lucky that oil prices were high.
Chavez failed to maintain oil production.
Never mentioned is that , after oil prices slumped at $15 , Chávez hosted the first OPEC summit in 25 years. OPEC slowed down of oil production beginning in 1998.
"Ridiculous, paranoid stuff"
A terrorist attack caused the explosion of a natural gas pipeline in Bolivia in 2008. In June 2012, a team of team of specialists numbering 50, came to the country, ostensibly to study the adverse effects of high altitude on humans and their capacity for rapid recovery of their fighting ability:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-prepares-to-destabilize-bolivia-agai...
snowcap
Mar 7, 2013 at 6:29pm
"could not resist claiming that Chavez's cancer had been induced by foul play by Venezuela's enemies when he announced the leader’s death."
Well, we know that's crazy and paranoid. I mean can you imagine the U.S. interfering in the affairs of another country with resource wealth and even going so far as to hasten the departure of its leader because he's a thorn in the American Empire's side? I know, it's crazy.
Riskybizness
Mar 7, 2013 at 7:32pm
Venezuela took in $1 trillion in oil revenue. Where has the other $700B gone? Chavez's family, poor teachers they were, are now the largest land owners in their state. Chavez's nouveau riche friends own much property in Miami and the Caribbean, just as Chinese money buys up Vancouver. They finance FARC in Columbia and oil and drug money puts up much of the new real estate in Caracas.
The poor have seemingly benefited, but not like the Bolibourgeois, Venezuela's term for those benefiting in the transfer of wealth from old regime to Chavez's.
Now, what's to happen when oil goes to $20-30? A few generations of Venezuelans dependent on the government to give them everything from cheap gas to food to housing. They have really not benefited in the long run because it's unsustainable. Better that they encouraged private business, generating well paying jobs, collecting taxes (there is no income tax in Ven), then provide the services.
che
Mar 8, 2013 at 1:43am
I don't take Dyer seriously about anything. He's always wrong about world events. He's just another self-important, low level imperialist. His article sounds a bit like Stephen Harper. Boring.
plg
Mar 8, 2013 at 10:17am
The comments on Chavez family wealth is pure fantasy and I have yet to read any credible source indicating otherwise.
What Dyer did not cover in his limited space commentary was the impact Chavez's Bolivar revolution has had and continues to have on other Latin and South American states. Nor does Dyer talk about the Venezuelan oil provided to these other states at greatly reduced prices to lift their poor out of the quagmire from US government and corporate interference and funding of paramilitary groups meant to destabilize or produce regime change in those states.
In terms of Dyer's statement that the last presidential election in Venezuela where opposition canadidate Caprile "lost very narrowly" I find an 11% gap or 1.6 million votes anything but narrow.
I do appreciate Dyer including the fact that all elections that have elected Chavez president have been democratic despite what Harper would like Canadians to believe. In fact, Chavez's presidency has been supported by a majority of Venezuelans each time unlike our current PM Harper who can't muster more than 40% of the popular vote.
For Harper to preach the principles of a democracy to Venezuelans is like having Enbridge preach the benefits of restoring and protecting fish habitat to British Columbians.
Riskybizness
Mar 8, 2013 at 4:28pm
If you look around, Chavez has a thing for fancy watches. He has been photographed wearing a Frank Muller Aethenitas which ranges from $100k up to $2.7M. The numerous stories in local Venezuelan media about Chavez's brothers wealth as well as his parents.