VENEZUELA: Opposition Hopes to Make a Comeback

  • by Humberto Márquez (caracas)
  • Inter Press Service

In 2005, the 165 seats in the single-chamber parliament were all won by Chávez allies, after the opposition withdrew from the election alleging lack of transparency (although international observers found no evidence of fraud). Later on, a dozen lawmakers distanced themselves from the leftwing president.

Chávez urged his supporters to 'demolish' the opposition in the September elections, because 'they will not enter Congress to work for the country, but to sabotage it.' 'Afterwards, they will come for me,' he added.

'An opposition victory would be a tragedy worse than the April 2002 coup or the sabotage of the oil industry in 2003,' he added, referring to two failed attempts to oust him from the presidency.

'Our plan is to win a majority in Congress, not to overthrow Chávez but to control his excessive spending, to legislate for all Venezuelans and not just one sector, and to show the strength of the alternative we represent,' Ramón Aveledo, coordinator of the opposition coalition for Democratic Unity (Mesa de Unidad Democrática, MUD), told IPS.

Administering the oath to 'patrulleros', as activists of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) involved in the campaign have been dubbed, Chávez said 'the September operation will be called 'demolition.''

'Demolish them, that's the order,' he said, insisting that 'there is no way the rotten bourgeoisie is going to return to the government in Venezuela. We have not arrived here just to be defeated again.'

Aveledo said pro-Chávez parties 'have set themselves the goal of winning two-thirds of the seats in parliament,' but the opposition wants, at the very least, 'to prevent this, and optimistically is aiming for a majority: between 85 and 90 lawmakers.'

An opposition victory -- unlikely according to the polls -- would undermine Chávez, who has been in office since 1999 with the support of an absolute majority of voters. It would also heighten political conflict en route to the next presidential elections, to be held in December 2012.

'It is possible for the opposition to receive more votes, and yet remain a minority in Congress,' owing to the complicated way in which seats are distributed and lawmakers are elected, and to the over-representation of rural states with small populations, analyst Luis León, head of the Datanalisis polling firm, told IPS.

The 165 seats are distributed as follows: 110 for the country's 23 states and the capital district; 52 for party lists of candidates in each of the states, which are allocated one, two or three seats according to the size of their population; and three for indigenous communities in border zones.

Analyst Carlos Genatios of the independent observer group Ojo Electoral is critical of the non-proportional representation resulting from the electoral system. He points out that while a lawmaker from some states may represent 30,000 or 40,000 people, another for a city like Caracas will represent 200,000 or 300,000.

Julio Toro, another academic, has applied computer models to the voting map of the last elections and claims that if those results are repeated, the governing party and its allies would gain 78 percent of parliamentary seats with only 56 percent of the vote.

'If the government gets a majority of lawmakers in spite of garnering less votes than the opposition, it would be a very bad sign for Chávez ahead of the 2012 presidential elections,' according to Alfredo Keller, head of a polling firm that bears his name.

Leading pollsters have reported a decline in the president's popularity and other opinion variables in the course of 2010, interpreted as indicating that close to 50 percent intend to vote for the governing party and its allies, while about 40 percent plan to vote for the opposition, with little support for groups in between.

'In the past 11 years, the opposition has never been better placed electorally, nor the government worse off,' editor Teodor Petkoff told foreign correspondents. 'But we are not seeing the collapse of the regime. Unlike a typewriter falling out of a fourth floor window, there is just a slow fading away of Chávez's charismatic leadership.'

Polls are registering the impact on people's assessment of the government of five consecutive quarters of recession, problems with the electricity supply and health services, a scandal over finding thousands of tons of rotting food in government warehouses, and the continued soaring crime rate.

But as León recalled, 'historically Chávez, who is unrivalled so far, has managed to increase his electoral support as campaigns advance.'

Apart from the PSUV, its small ally the Communist Party, and the opposition coalition, other parties are participating, like Patria Para Todos (Fatherland for All), which broke away from Chávez earlier this year and may win some seats in the centre-west of the country. Independent candidates are also running, making a total of 1,548 hopefuls.

Officially the campaign began Wednesday, but for months candidates of all parties have been out on the streets, in neighbourhoods and markets and on the airwaves, canvassing and making speeches. Government officials have also been active on behalf of the candidates they back, even though the law forbids them to campaign.

The first untoward incident took place in Caracas Wednesday, when the National Guard used tear gas to prevent a group of opposition candidates from approaching Congress, where they intended to kick off their campaign.

The PSUV, with Chávez's image dominating its publicity, mobilised its supporters in six regions. In Maracaibo, the oil capital of the west that has been an opposition bastion, energy minister and local campaign chief Rafael Ramírez announced: 'the demolition has begun, and the people will be victorious again on Sept. 26.'

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service