This week I read a very interesting article by former Venezuelan Minister, Moisés Naím, featured in the New York Times. Here´s the complete text, for you to enjoy:
Hugo Chávez and the Limits of Democracy
March 5, 2003
By MOISÉS NAÍM
WASHINGTON - For decades Venezuela was a backwater,
uninteresting to the outside world. It could not compete
for international attention with nearby countries where
superpowers staged proxy wars, or where military juntas
"disappeared" thousands of opponents, or where the economy
regularly crashed. Venezuela was stable. Its oil fueled an
economy that enjoyed the world's highest growth rate from
1950 to 1980 and it boasted a higher per-capita income than
Spain from 1928 to 1984. Venezuela was one of the
longest-lived democracies in Latin America.
Venezuela is no longer boring. It has become a nightmare
for its people and a threat not just to its neighbors but
to the United States and even Europe. A strike in its oil
industry has contributed to a rise in gasoline prices at
the worst possible time. Hasil Muhammad Rahaham-Alan, a
Venezuelan citizen, was detained last month at a London
airport as he arrived from Caracas carrying a hand grenade
in his luggage. A week later, President Hugo Chávez praised
the arrest orders of two opposition leaders who had been
instrumental in organizing the strike, saying they "should
have been jailed a long time ago." Mr. Chávez has helped to
create an environment where stateless international
networks whose business is terror, guns or drugs feel at
home.
Venezuela has also become a laboratory where the accepted
wisdom of the 1990's is being tested - and often
discredited. The first tenet to fall is the belief that the
United States has almost unlimited influence in South
America. As one of its main oil suppliers and a close
neighbor has careened out of control, America has been a
conspicuously inconsequential bystander.
And it is not just the United States. The United Nations,
agencies like the Organization of American States and the
International Monetary Fund, or the international press -
all have stood by and watched. In the 1990's there was a
hope that these institutions could prevent, or at least
contain, some of the ugly malignancies that lead nations to
self-destruct.
Instead, the most influential foreign influence in
Venezuela is from the 1960's: Fidel Castro. The marriage of
convenience between Cuba and Venezuela is rooted in the
close personal relationship between the two leaders, with
Mr. Castro playing the role of mentor to his younger
Venezuelan admirer. Cuba desperately needs Venezuelan oil,
while the Chávez administration depends on Cuba's
experience in staging, managing or repressing political
turmoil.
Another belief of the 1990's was that global economic
forces would force democratically elected leaders to pursue
responsible economic policies. Yet Mr. Chávez, a
democratically elected president, has been willing to
tolerate international economic isolation - with disastrous
results for Venezuela's poor - in exchange for greater
power at home.
The 21st century was not supposed to engender a Latin
American president with a red beret. Instead of obsessing
about luring private capital, he scares it away. Rather
than strengthening ties with the United States, he
befriends Cuba. Such behavior was supposed to have been
made obsolete by the democratization, economic deregulation
and globalization of the 1990's.
Venezuela is an improbable country to have fallen into this
political abyss. It is vast, wealthy, relatively modern and
cosmopolitan, with a strong private sector and a
homogeneous mixed-race population with little history of
conflict. Democracy was supposed to have prevented its
decline into a failed state. Yet once President Chávez
gained control over the government, his rule became
exclusionary and profoundly undemocratic.
Under Mr. Chávez, Venezuela is a powerful reminder that
elections are necessary but not sufficient for democracy,
and that even longstanding democracies can unravel
overnight. A government's legitimacy flows not only from
the ballot box but also from the way it conducts itself.
Accountability and institutional restraints and balances
are needed.
The international community became adept at monitoring
elections and ensuring their legitimacy in the 1990's. The
Venezuelan experience illustrates the urgency of setting up
equally effective mechanisms to validate a government's
practices.
The often stealthy transgressions of Mr. Chávez have
unleashed a powerful expression of what is perhaps the only
trend of the 1990's still visible in Venezuela: civil
society. In today's Venezuela millions of once politically
indifferent citizens stage almost daily marches and rallies
larger than those that forced the early resignations of
other democratically presidents around the world.
This is not a traditional opposition movement. It is an
inchoate network of people from all social classes and
walks of life, who are organized in loosely coordinated
units and who do not have any other ambition than to stop a
president who has made their country unlivable. Two out of
three Venezuelans living under the poverty line oppose
President Chávez, according to a Venezuelan survey released
in January.
This amorphous movement is new to politics and vulnerable
to manipulation by traditional politicians and interest
groups. For example, last year a military faction took
advantage of a huge but civil anti-Chávez march and staged
a coup that ousted the president for almost two days. By
rejecting the antidemocratic measures adopted by the
would-be new president, the leader of a business
association, the movement helped bring about his quick
downfall.
Today the Venezuelan opposition consists of several
factions, some of which have participated in talks with the
government. Yet it is a mistake to equate these formal
bodies with the widespread and largely leaderless,
self-organizing movement that has emerged in Venezuela.
Many foreign observers discount the opposition as mostly
rich or middle class, a coup-prone coalition of
opportunistic politicians.
No doubt some protesters fit this ugly profile. Nor is
there any doubt that the Venezuelan opposition is clumsy
and prone to blunders. Still, it has helped millions of
Venezuelans awaken to the fact that for too many years they
have been mere inhabitants of their own country. Now they
demand to be citizens, and feel they have the right to oust
through democratic means a president who has wrought havoc
on their country.
It is a measure of Venezuela's toxic political climate that
even though the constitution allows for early elections,
and even though President Chávez has promised that he will
abide by this provision, the great majority of Venezuelans
don't believe him. They are convinced that in August, when
the constitution contemplates a referendum on the
president, the government will resort to delaying tactics
and dirty tricks. With international attention elsewhere,
Mr. Chávez will use his power to forestall an election and
ignore the constitution.
Venezuela's citizens have been heroically peaceful and
civil in their quest. All they ask is that they be given a
chance to vote. The world should do its best to ensure that
they have that opportunity.
Moisés Naím, minister of trade and industry of Venezuela
from 1989 to 1990, is editor of Foreign Policy magazine.
