Originally published The Economist,Nov 4th 2004
Having consolidated a near-total grip on power, Hugo Chávez is preparing a set of laws to repress many forms of dissent. JUST last August, after months of unrest and an attempted coup, 4m Venezuelans voted against Hugo Chávez in a recall referendum, more than had voted him in as president in 2000. Yet he won the referendum, and has now completed a stunning turnaround. Local elections on October 31st left his allies controlling 20 of the country's 23 states, plus Caracas, the capital, and they looked likely to bag the state of Carabobo too after the completion of a disputed recount.
No elected leader of the country has ever wielded such power. With a majority in parliament, a tightening grip on the judiciary, the unquestioning loyalty of the military high command and a seemingly endless flow of revenues thanks to high oil prices, the “red tide” that the self-styled revolutionary predicted, referring to his own party colours, is now lapping around the necks of his opponents.
After their referendum defeat, the two dozen anti-Chávez parties could not agree on a common electoral strategy. In some regions they competed against each other, virtually guaranteeing a chavista victory. A commission of experts set up to analyse their allegations of fraud called for voter abstention, compounding the damage. Virtually the only survivors of stature are Manuel Rosales, governor of the far-western state of Zulia, and a couple of young mayors from the fledgling Justice First party, whose base is Caracas and the adjoining state of Miranda.
What will Mr Chávez do with all this power? Part of the answer lies in a set of repressive laws, currently in the legislative pipeline, which critics say will outlaw most forms of dissent and severely restrict freedom of expression. First in line is a radio and TV bill ostensibly aimed at protecting children by curbing violent and sexually explicit content. But its vague wording will, for example, allow the government to suspend transmission or, ultimately, withdraw a licence, for content which is “contrary to the security of the nation”. Already, private TV stations which have been fierce critics of Mr Chávez are showing signs of self-censorship.
Then there is the partial reform of the penal code, which would outlaw virtually every form of protest the opposition has attempted over the past three years. “Intimidating” a senior public official (for example, by banging pots and pans outside his or her house, a popular form of protest) would carry a sentence of three to eight years in jail. Causing panic by spreading “false information”: two to five years. Promoting “disobedience”, even in private: up to six years behind bars.
Article 350 of the 1999 constitution, drafted by the chavistas themselves, enshrines the right to disobey a government that undermines human rights. But a proposed terrorism law would turn many forms of civil disobedience, such as blocking streets, into terrorist acts, with correspondingly severe penalties. And a national police bill would put control of all local police forces, in effect, into the hands of the interior ministry.
The government has already begun to harass dissidents. Leading members of Súmate, an NGO which amounts to an opposition elections unit, face jail terms of up to 16 years. Their alleged crime is to have conspired with a foreign power—the United States—to overthrow the government. Súmate accepted a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded by America's Congress and which, prosecutors allege, is a front for the CIA. A neutral judge might well throw the case out. Unfortunately, judges who defy the government tend to lose their jobs; most have only provisional positions. And the supreme court, already largely pro-Chávez, is to be expanded from 20 to 32 justices, who will be appointed by the pro-Chávez majority in parliament.
An even clearer case of distortion of justice is that of General Francisco Usón, a former finance minister in Mr Chávez's government, who was jailed last month for five-and-a-half years by a military tribunal for allegedly slandering the armed forces. The general had offered a technical opinion on television, as a combat engineer, on the workings of a flame-thrower, in the context of press allegations that one had been used on soldiers in a punishment cell. Two of the soldiers died, but seven months later no one has been charged, much less sentenced, for their deaths; the only person in jail is General Usón. The defence minister, General Jorge Luis García Carneiro, minces no words when asked about the case. Anyone, he says, civilian or military, who insults the armed forces can expect similar treatment. Viva la revolución.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Friday, July 09, 2004
Signing On To Challenge Hugo Chavez
Originally published in the Washington Post
By Nora Boustany
Friday, July 9, 2004; Page A15
Hers is a heroic fight. Maria Corina Machado smiles bravely but admits she is terrified. They are after her, she explained; the machinery of the state.
Machado is vice president of Sumate, a Venezuelan civic organization that has helped organize the drive for a recall referendum on President Hugo Chavez. She recently found out that she was under investigation for conspiracy and treason because Sumate accepted $53,400 from the National Endowment for Democracy, which receives funding from the U.S. Congress. Chavez has accused Machado, Alejandro Plaz, the president of Sumate, and two other members of the group of treason.
For the uninitiated, democracy is never simple. But the group's slow, systematic collection of signatures has empowered Venezuelans to hold a referendum next month that could force Chavez to step down.
Chavez, a former army lieutenant colonel who led a coup attempt against the government in 1992, was elected in 1998 on a vow to lift up the country's impoverished majority. Many Venezuelans have rejected his populist programs and rhetoric, and critics say his rule is headed toward authoritarianism.
Machado, 36, was invited to the United States by the Council of the Americas to address members in New York and Washington. She said she also plans to meet with U.S.-based human rights organizations and with officials from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
This week, on a recent bright, sunny day at a coffee shop in Bethesda, she explained how a movement was born.
In 2001, during a hurried conversation in the lobby of a hotel in Caracas, Machado and Plaz fretted about the course that was being shaped for Venezuela as they watched from the sideline.
"Something clicked," Machado said about the encounter with Plaz, a former regional director of an American firm. "I had this unsettling feeling that I could not stay at home and watch the country get polarized and collapse. . . . We had to keep the electoral process but change the course, to give Venezuelans the chance to count ourselves, to dissipate tensions before they built up. It was a choice of ballots over bullets."
Sumate, originally composed of professionals, now has 30,000 volunteers nationwide from all walks of life.
When Chavez came to office, he overhauled the constitution. Machado said: "We realized he established tools giving citizens the power to recall officials in midterm by referendum. If 10 percent of all registered voters signed a petition to have a referendum -- 1.2 million signatures out of 12 million by Aug. 19, 2003 -- it was enough to have a recall of any elected official."
There have been several attempts to collect signatures since 2002. A drive completed last November, with international observers -- the Organization of American States, the Carter Center and the United Nations Development Program -- six months after those organizations brokered an agreement between the government and the opposition that the constitution must be upheld.
"Now we have a referendum," she said. Machado, the eldest of four daughters born to a steel entrepreneur and an accomplished psychologist, had a good education. She graduated as an engineer at the top of her class, later earned a master's degree in finance and worked in the auto-parts industry in Valencia before moving to Caracas in 1993.
Politics had never interested her, and she had been indifferent to the economic and social ills plaguing less fortunate families. But one day, she joined her mother on a tour of a center that housed homeless orphans and abandoned youngsters brought in from the streets. The complex was like a prison, she said, and the children often ran away, scaling walls and leaping into a stream leading out, seeking to return to street life. Machado, who was pregnant with her second child, became physically ill from the stench.
The visit transformed her life.
She quit her job and began lobbying to have the management of the facility privatized, ultimately devoting eight years to its betterment.
She then ran an Internet-based services firm for three years before joining Sumate.
"This is God's work," Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, said of Sumate's drive. He was once Venezuela's minister of finance.
Chavez remains charismatic, in control and calling the shots at each twist and turn of the saga. A week before he finally agreed to the referendum, he signed a law packing the Supreme Court with 12 extra justices and giving his coalition's majority in the legislature authority to nullify the terms of sitting justices.
"Yet another example that democracy is not just about voting -- this is a delusion," Naim said. "It is also about checks and balances, independent arbiters and referees supervising the electoral process. It is not just one man, one vote, one time."
Newspapers have run pictures of Machado with headlines calling her the country's Enemy No. 1. Her children cannot understand her predicament. She has learned to steel herself against Blackberry messages urging her to run away and telephone calls pleading with her to hide.
She is trapped between formidable foes and a sea of sympathizers. "It is scary . . . all public powers of the state are stacked against you, but at the same time, people stop to tell you they are relying on you," she said. "I feel greater responsibility and I'm terrified."
By Nora Boustany
Friday, July 9, 2004; Page A15
Hers is a heroic fight. Maria Corina Machado smiles bravely but admits she is terrified. They are after her, she explained; the machinery of the state.
Machado is vice president of Sumate, a Venezuelan civic organization that has helped organize the drive for a recall referendum on President Hugo Chavez. She recently found out that she was under investigation for conspiracy and treason because Sumate accepted $53,400 from the National Endowment for Democracy, which receives funding from the U.S. Congress. Chavez has accused Machado, Alejandro Plaz, the president of Sumate, and two other members of the group of treason.
For the uninitiated, democracy is never simple. But the group's slow, systematic collection of signatures has empowered Venezuelans to hold a referendum next month that could force Chavez to step down.
Chavez, a former army lieutenant colonel who led a coup attempt against the government in 1992, was elected in 1998 on a vow to lift up the country's impoverished majority. Many Venezuelans have rejected his populist programs and rhetoric, and critics say his rule is headed toward authoritarianism.
Machado, 36, was invited to the United States by the Council of the Americas to address members in New York and Washington. She said she also plans to meet with U.S.-based human rights organizations and with officials from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
This week, on a recent bright, sunny day at a coffee shop in Bethesda, she explained how a movement was born.
In 2001, during a hurried conversation in the lobby of a hotel in Caracas, Machado and Plaz fretted about the course that was being shaped for Venezuela as they watched from the sideline.
"Something clicked," Machado said about the encounter with Plaz, a former regional director of an American firm. "I had this unsettling feeling that I could not stay at home and watch the country get polarized and collapse. . . . We had to keep the electoral process but change the course, to give Venezuelans the chance to count ourselves, to dissipate tensions before they built up. It was a choice of ballots over bullets."
Sumate, originally composed of professionals, now has 30,000 volunteers nationwide from all walks of life.
When Chavez came to office, he overhauled the constitution. Machado said: "We realized he established tools giving citizens the power to recall officials in midterm by referendum. If 10 percent of all registered voters signed a petition to have a referendum -- 1.2 million signatures out of 12 million by Aug. 19, 2003 -- it was enough to have a recall of any elected official."
There have been several attempts to collect signatures since 2002. A drive completed last November, with international observers -- the Organization of American States, the Carter Center and the United Nations Development Program -- six months after those organizations brokered an agreement between the government and the opposition that the constitution must be upheld.
"Now we have a referendum," she said. Machado, the eldest of four daughters born to a steel entrepreneur and an accomplished psychologist, had a good education. She graduated as an engineer at the top of her class, later earned a master's degree in finance and worked in the auto-parts industry in Valencia before moving to Caracas in 1993.
Politics had never interested her, and she had been indifferent to the economic and social ills plaguing less fortunate families. But one day, she joined her mother on a tour of a center that housed homeless orphans and abandoned youngsters brought in from the streets. The complex was like a prison, she said, and the children often ran away, scaling walls and leaping into a stream leading out, seeking to return to street life. Machado, who was pregnant with her second child, became physically ill from the stench.
The visit transformed her life.
She quit her job and began lobbying to have the management of the facility privatized, ultimately devoting eight years to its betterment.
She then ran an Internet-based services firm for three years before joining Sumate.
"This is God's work," Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, said of Sumate's drive. He was once Venezuela's minister of finance.
Chavez remains charismatic, in control and calling the shots at each twist and turn of the saga. A week before he finally agreed to the referendum, he signed a law packing the Supreme Court with 12 extra justices and giving his coalition's majority in the legislature authority to nullify the terms of sitting justices.
"Yet another example that democracy is not just about voting -- this is a delusion," Naim said. "It is also about checks and balances, independent arbiters and referees supervising the electoral process. It is not just one man, one vote, one time."
Newspapers have run pictures of Machado with headlines calling her the country's Enemy No. 1. Her children cannot understand her predicament. She has learned to steel herself against Blackberry messages urging her to run away and telephone calls pleading with her to hide.
She is trapped between formidable foes and a sea of sympathizers. "It is scary . . . all public powers of the state are stacked against you, but at the same time, people stop to tell you they are relying on you," she said. "I feel greater responsibility and I'm terrified."
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