By Renato Redentor Constantino
Third World Network Features
The 15 August referendum in Venezuela has fortified the standing of President Chavez and the possibilities of sweeping social change that his government signifies. For the first time in the country’s history, government authority has been established decisively over how the Venezuelan oil industry is to be run and for whose benefit. Oil money is now re-channelled towards financing immeasurable employment, health, education and literacy missions throughout the country for the destitute of Venezuela, specifically for women.
The result of the 15 August referendum, said Jose Clavijo, the affable and articulate Charge de Affaires of the Venezuelan Embassy in the Philippines, ‘was not totally unexpected, even though the margin of victory was larger than what many predicted’.
The question posed by the Venezuelan referendum was simple enough and answerable by either a 'yes' or a 'no': should the mandate of the Chavez administration be revoked? Of the 14 million registered voters, 8.6 million turned out to cast their vote. The final tally: a 59% embrace of the Chavez government and its radical social programme.
There can be no doubt, asserted Clavijo, a furtive smile forming on his face. ‘The mandate of President Hugo Chavez has been unequivocally affirmed.’ Likewise, the Venezuelan brand of participatory democracy, where the ballot seems to be only a first step.
Elected in 1998 and re-elected under the new constitution in 2000 to serve till 2007, Chavez knew that the referendum was but the latest in a long list of schemes hatched by the alliance between the Venezuelan oligarchy and the US government to overthrow him. According to the new Venezuelan Constitution that was re-written in 1999 at the behest of Chavez, and which created the possibility of activating a recall referendum for elected officials, if 'yes' had prevailed elections would have been held 30 days after the referendum.
But Chavez had abundant confidence in direct democracy: he put his trust in the people by empowering them. ‘And they responded generously.’
‘I am pleased to be the first president to submit himself to the people's judgment halfway through his term and to be ratified in office,’ said a triumphant President Chavez after the result was announced. Taunting the Bush administration, which had openly backed a failed coup against him in 2002, and using terminology from baseball, his country's national sport, Chavez likened his win to a homerun. ‘[T]he ball must have fallen right in the middle of the White House,’ said Chavez. ‘It's a present for Bush.’
Rather than unseat or weaken Chavez, which was the intention of the opposition parties driven by the Venezuelan elite – which enjoys a near-monopoly ownership of the country's media, the referendum fortified the standing of Chavez and the possibilities of sweeping social change that his government signifies within and far beyond the Bolivarian Republic.
For many, the nature of the change that Chavez is driving has become the central reason behind the sustained attempts to undermine the Chavez government. The disparity of agendas is glaring. The opposition continues to promise, for instance, a return to free market economic policies, a platform welcomed by international financial leaders and institutions like the International Monetary Fund; Chavez is opposed to it.
‘We are building an economy at the service of human beings,’ said Nora Castaneda, the president of Banca Mujer (Women's Development Bank), of the Chavez administration's goals, ‘not human beings at the service of the economy.’
For the first time in Venezuela's history, government authority has been established decisively over how the Venezuelan oil industry – the fifth largest exporter in the world – is to be run and for whose benefit. Oil money is now re-channelled towards financing immeasurable employment, health, education and literacy missions throughout the country for the destitute of Venezuela, specifically for women.
At least 65% of Venezuelan households are headed by women and the Chavez government during the drafting of the 2000 constitution ensured that this fact was reflected in Venezuela's framing document. Among its progressive provisions, the constitution recognises women's unwaged caring work as economically productive, entitling housewives to social security.
It was no surprise, Selma James noted, that in 2002 women of African and indigenous descent led the masses who descended from the hills to reverse the elite-sponsored and US-backed putsch which briefly ousted Chavez, ‘thereby saving their constitution, their president, their democracy, their revolution’.
Over 250,000 children now have access to secondary education – children ‘whose social status excluded them from this privilege during the ancient regime’. In poor districts, 11,000 neighbourhood clinics have been established, the health budget has tripled and 10,000 Cuban doctors have been fielded to boost healthcare services in impoverished areas. There is also an ongoing campaign to provide citizenship to thousands of long-term immigrants.
‘Chavez has based himself on the pueblo protagonico – the grassroots as protagonists,’ James adds. The iconoclastic Chavez ‘knows that the changes he was elected to make can only be achieved with, and protected by, popular participation’.
And yet, despite his belligerent attitude towards the Bush administration, despite his glaring differences with the US government concerning Latin American hemispheric economic integration, despite his government's openly expressed dissenting position on geopolitical issues such as the war on Iraq, the US government continues to do business with the Chavez government and import 14% of its oil – equivalent to 1.5 million barrels per day, which was the average even before the election of Chavez – from Venezuela.
Once perceived by his neighbours as ‘a bit of an oddball’, Chavez ‘now appears more like a Latin American statesman. Up and down the continent he has become the man to watch.’
‘I don't believe in the dogmatic postulates of Marxist revolution. I don't accept that we are living in a period of proletarian revolutions. All that must be revised. Reality is telling us that every day,’ said President Chavez in an interview with the eminent intellectual Tariq Ali.
‘Are we aiming in Venezuela today for the abolition of private property or a classless society?’ Chavez continued. ‘I don't think so. But if I'm told that because of that reality you can't do anything to help the poor … then I say, “We part company.” I will never accept that there can be no redistribution of wealth in society. Our upper classes don't even like paying taxes. That's one reason why they hate me. We said, “You must pay your taxes.”
‘I believe it's better to die in battle, rather than hold aloft a very revolutionary and very pure banner, and do nothing … That position often strikes me as very convenient, a good excuse … Try and make your revolution, go into combat, advance a little, even if it's only a millimetre, in the right direction, instead of dreaming about utopias."’
That is why he won, Tariq Ali concludes. Obviously so.
Third World Network Features
About the writer: Renato Redentor Constantino is a writer and painter based in Quezon City, the Philippines. He writes a weekly column for the Philippine national newspaper TODAY, whose online partner is abs-cbnnews.com. He is also currently the climate and energy campaign adviser of Greenpeace China. His recent works can be accessed at www.redconstantino.blogspot.com Comments welcome at xioi@excite.com
When reproducing this feature, please credit Third World Network Features and (if applicable) the cooperating magazine or agency involved in the article, and give the byline. Please send us cuttings. Third World Network is also accessible on the World Wide Web. Please visit our website at http://www.twnside.org.sg
