DATE=9/11/1999
TYPE=ON THE LINE
TITLE=ON THE LINE: VENEZUELA AT THE CROSSROADS
NUMBER=1-00776
EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY - 619-0037
CONTENT=
ACTUALITIES AVAILABLE IN POLICY OFFICE
THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE
Anncr: On the Line - a discussion of United
States policy and contemporary issues. This week,
"Venezuela at the Crossroads." Here is your host,
Robert Reilly.
Host: Hello and welcome to On the Line.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez came to power
last December in a landslide election. He promised
a "peaceful social revolution" to a country tired
of corruption and widespread poverty. A
constituent assembly was elected in July with the
task of drafting a new constitution. The assembly,
controlled by a large majority of Chavez
supporters, has stripped the judicial and
legislative branches of the Venezuelan government
of much of their power. The opposition-controlled
congress is calling the action an unconstitutional
power grab. And observers are wondering just how
far President Chavez will go in remaking
Venezuela's political institutions.
Joining me to discuss the crisis in Venezuela are
three experts. Constantine Menges is director of
the program on transitions to democracy at the
George Washington University. Gerardo Le
Chevallier is director for Latin America at the
national Democratic Institute for International
Affairs, a congressionally supported Democratic
Party foundation whose aim is the spread of
democratic institutions. And Jack Sweeney is a
Latin American policy expert who has worked in
Venezuela for seventeen years.
Welcome to the program. Constantine Menges, are we
seeing reform or revolution in Venezuela?
Menges: In my view, we are seeing the
establishment of a dictatorship, a radical left
dictatorship by Mr. Chavez under the guise of
constitutional methods. He said when he took the
oath of office that he was taking the oath on a
moribund, meaning dead, constitution. He said, in
fact, before his inauguration in February of 1999
that he would do what he is doing, which is that
he would essentially remake the institutions of
Venezuela. The problem is that he is doing it
using anti-constitutional means, including the
functions he has given to the military, which are
prohibited by the constitution.
Host: Such as?
Menges: Appointing officers to powerful positions
in the government contrary to permission from the
congress, establishing military committees all
over the country to which elected governors and
mayors are supposed to report for their clearance
as to whether they are or are not corrupt, a whole
series of things. You mentioned that he was
elected in a landslide. I think it is worth
recalling that in the November 1998 congressional
elections, Chavez and his group only received
about thirty-five percent of the seats. And in
the presidential election his vote was fifty-six
to fifty-seven percent, and the opposing unity
candidate of the democratic groups, Governor Salas
Romer, received forty percent. So in fact, the
reason the constituent assembly is so
overwhelmingly filled with supporters of Chavez is
because the democratic political groups in
Venezuela made a significant tactical mistake.
They did not contest those elections in a coherent
and effective way in order to get their own groups
in.
Host: Let me ask if Mr. Le Chevallier agrees
with that analysis, since this constituent
assembly of one hundred and thirty-one delegates
is overwhelmingly pro-Chavez.
Le Chevallier: Certainly so. More than ninety-
seven percent of the candidates elected were pro-
Chavez. But I think the important part here is to
evaluate their behavior, rather than where they
come from, and what they are doing rather than
what they are saying. We are concerned about what
is happening in Venezuela, but we also have to
understand that this country needs radical change
and some of the excesses that are being committed
now can be justified by the excesses committed in
the past in the wrong direction.
Host: Such as?
Le Chevallier: For example, corruption, the
refusal of the parties to adapt themselves, to
listen to their constituencies. Accountability did
not exist. Unions were also in the hands of the
political parties. Civil society was not
organized. So many of those who are now being
charged with what happened are certainly guilty of
what happened. Of course, the reaction of Chavez
is not necessarily to be justified by that past,
but we also understand that some of the action
that has to be taken has to be a little bit
radical too. And that is what the Venezuelans
voted for.
Host: Jack Sweeney, first of all, the election
of this constituent assembly was constitutional,
was it not?
Sweeney: Yes, it was constitutional.
Host: It was empowered for a period of six
months to rewrite the constitution?
Sweeney: It was empowered for a period of one
hundred and eighty days to draft a new
constitution, which would than be presented to the
people of Venezuela for a vote on whether it is
approved or disapproved. Since it convened on the
third of August, however, the national constituent
assembly, with the tacit encouragement of
President Chavez, has assumed supranational powers
over the other institutions of government,
creating the constitutional crisis that
Constantine was talking about. In terms of how
this was all put together and structured legally
and constitutionally, the 1961 constitution
remains in effect, which means that the separation
of powers under the 1961 constitution -- the
judicial, legislative and executive branches --
should remain intact. We can argue about whether
semantically there has been or not a
constitutional coup, but the fact is that, since
August third, all power has become concentrated in
the hands of the constituent assembly and
President Chavez. And they are increasingly going
in directions that are quite frightening to people
who know Venezuela's tradition for democracy.
Host: A leader of the eight members of this
constituent assembly who are not pro-Chavez made
the statement the other day, and I quote him --
this from Jorge Olavarria: "Now there is no
constitution, there is no Supreme Court and there
is no Congress." Is that an accurate view of what
has happened, that the tripartite government has
been now collapsed into the executive?
Sweeney: Let me add something here. And it is in
effect that the traditional system as it existed
has collapsed. The two traditional parties that
dominated politics there for forty years are no
longer viable parties. There is a huge power
vacuum into which Chavez has moved. He has been
elected with a messianic kind of fervor by the
people who are, in fact, pushing for change while
voting for a past that has failed them again and
again.
Menges: The answer to your question is yes, that
is true. It is true that these institutions exist,
but the constituent assembly illegally and anti-
constitutionally, with the full support of
President Chavez, is acting as if they don't
exist. And that is why the members of Congress,
very bravely in recent days, insisted that they
are still the Congress of Venezuela, they have the
authority under the constitution, and they will
take their seats. Chavez is using many of the
techniques that Hitler used in the Gleichschaltung
period of establishing his dictatorship in Germany
after winning a small plurality in 1932, of mob
action, of mob coercion. And Chavez has used
coercion against Supreme Court justices to get the
Supreme Court to agree that somehow this
constituent assembly suddenly could review
judicial performance. That was not at all part of
the vote, and so forth. So in fact, the
institutions of the Venezuelan constitution still
exist, as Jack said. The Venezuelan constitution
exits; the Congress exists; the Supreme Court
exists; the presidency exists. But it is President
Chavez who is trying to use the constituent
assembly illegally, anti-constitutionally, anti-
democratically, to bring all power to himself and
to his mobs.
Le Chevallier: At some point the Supreme Court said
that that was correct.
Menges: No, no, it only said that about one thing. It
only, by a small vote, said that judicial
review was allowed. It did not say that about
the Congress.
Sweeney: Both the Supreme Court and Congress basically
surrendered to Chavez and now are trying to
recoup from that surrender, particularly the
Congress. I don't see that what they did was
brave. I think it was very late because, when
they walked away from their role and
responsibility, when a constituent assembly
was elected, they even vacated the premises of
the Congress and let the constituent assembly
occupy it.
Menges: But that wasn't, however, with the intention
that the constituent assembly would take their
powers. And when they saw that that was what
the constituent assembly illegally and anti-
constitutionally was trying to do, they then
had the courage to go back and try to occupy
the building, and then ran into Chavez's mobs
and his military police apparatus, which he
has established with his old associates who
staged the violent coup against the elected
government of Venezuela in 1992. Let's
remember his past.
Le Chevallier: The important thing is to keep this
process on track. I want to refer to what
happened in Paraguay just in March with the
same kind of show of violence, with the same
kind of projections, with the same kind of
intentions. The government was thrown out and
now it has been replaced by a constitutional
kind of parliamentary regime, a transition to
a democratic system. I think, in Venezuela, we
have seen the pendulum moving from one side to
another, but so far it stays in the middle as
an average. And what is going on in Venezuela,
at some point, is a lesson for the rest of
Latin America, as well as a lesson for
Venezuelans themselves, who have to learn,
especially in that Chavez sector, to play the
game of democracy. And that I don't think is
necessarily bad.
Host: But what track is it on? What do you think is
going to happen next, once this power has been
consolidated in the executive?
Le Chevallier: Apparently the strategy that seems in
place is the Chavez threatens to do much more
than what he does, and what he does is like
ten percent of what he says he will do.
Sweeney: I would disagree. I would say that Mr. Chavez
is on the verge of eclipsing even Fidel Castro
in terms of imposing an authoritarian regime.
He has done it democratically, or he is doing
it democratically. I think that what is
happening in Venezuela is highly dangerous. I
do not think Mr. Chavez will succeed once his
constitution comes out, and the people see
that it is not going to solve their hunger.
Eighty percent of the population is poor. They
are going to turn against him. And that means
that there will be more violence and conflict
in Venezuela, because who might succeed Chavez
is anybody's guess. But the people will turn
against him like they turned against the ones
who came before, because he is going to repeat
the same mistakes. That is what has to be
understood. He is going to repeat the same
mistakes as past governments, but from a more
extremist, left-wing position.
Host: Why couldn't he wait. Constantine Menges
mentioned that in the congressional elections
Chavez only won about a third of the seats,
but congressional elections are coming up
early next year. Why was it necessary for
this constituent assembly to make this grab
for legislative power when, if he is as
popular as everyone says Chavez is, even in
these recent actions, he could have gotten
control of Congress through more normal means?
Menges: I believe it's because he has intended from
the time of running for the presidency of
Venezuela to establish a dictatorship with
himself as the dictator and the sole
authority. I think he has made it rather clear
that he would do this in the words that he has
said, and he has made it clear in his action.
I totally disagree with Mr. Le Chevallier,
whom I respect very much, that Chavez is in
the middle. Chavez has actually moved in an
anti-constitutional way, step by step, to take
over the organizations that have coercive
power: the military, the intelligence service
and so forth. He put his own military, co-coup
plotters from 1992 in command positions to
assure that he has the monopoly of force in
the state. And then he has moved anti-
constitutionally against the long-established,
hopeful and inspiring democracy of Venezuela
that has had its problems, where reform was
needed, indeed, but he has moved against the
institutions, not for reform but to establish
a dictatorship.
Sweeney: Venezuela has historically been a socialist
regime with a capitalist umbrella over it.
And Chavez is getting away with what he is
doing because the system has collapsed. He is
riding on a wave of popular support that is
going to carry him for a while longer and
which gives him the power to intimidate and
coerce, as you were mentioning. But I think
one of the things you have to look at in these
national constituent assemblies is what I am
seeing as the beginning of factionalism
emerging inside the bloc of parties that
backed Chavez. The glue that held this bloc
together was the common desire to get rid of
Action Democratica and COPEI [Social Christian
Party]. That has been largely accomplished.
Those parities are de facto dead. And the glue
now is dissolving, and we are seeing the
emergence of factionalism, both on the right
of Chavez and the left of Chavez. And much of
the recent turmoil we have seen out of the
national constituent assembly has come at the
leadership and promotion of people who are
identified for the past twenty-five years with
Communist revolution, Marxism, socialism. And
these are some of the people who are seizing
attribution for the constituent assembly that
were not contemplated. And it is causing
divisions internally. As you know, Jorge
Olavarria, a member of the constituent
assembly and a former big supporter of Chavez,
is now one of his most bitter foes.
Host: And why did he turn against him?
Sweeney: Because he realized that a Pandora's box was
opened. And instead of a savior who could
resolve Venezuela and fix Venezuela's
problems, what they elected was a tin pot
dictator who is going to use the military in a
left-wing, Marxist kind of regime to put
himself in power and stay there. And the only
result of his program, of his Bolivarian
revolution, is going to be the globalization
of poverty in Venezuela, as has occurred in
other countries where this sort of regime has
been imposed.
Host: Do we know what President Chavez's ideological
groundings are? He is associated, whether
fairly or unfairly, with the thought and
writings of this Argentine, Norberto Ceresole,
who has some rather extraordinary and unsavory
ideas. Constantine Menges, have you studied
that?
Menges: One of Chavez's former military commanders for
twenty years said this is a man of the radical
left. He is close to Castro, to Castro's
ideology, Marxist-Leninist, as Jack just said.
This man, Norberto Ceresole from Argentina,
has long been an ideologue for the Marxist-
Leninist guerillas there. His view, by the
way, of the world, which is something I think
we may see Chavez trying to do, is that the
United States, Europe and Israel are the
dominant powers in the world that must be
opposed by radical military, one-person
regimes in Latin America, combining with
Islamic fundamentalists and the People's
Republic of China in a broad coalition. And I
think we will be seeing very, very negative
international consequences, first in Colombia,
of the Chavez dictatorship. He has already
opened the borders. Colombian Communist
guerrillas supported by the narco-traffickers
there are able to resupply through Venezuela.
We will see the Orinoco River basin more and
more used to bring more weapons and supplies
into them. Chavez has clearly showed his
partiality toward the Communist guerillas in
Colombia and I think he is going to be
involved in trying to bring about a false
political settlement there, a power-sharing
kind of arrangement, as Castro tried to
achieve in El Salvador some years ago, which
fortunately did not work. But I think they
will try that for Colombia. And I think Chavez
will stir up revolution and violence
throughout Latin America. The longer he is in
power, the more he can use the oil wells of
Venezuela to do so.
Host: Let me get Mr. Le Chevallier's reaction.
Le Chevallier: I am surprised how Jack and Constantine
are negative about what is going on in
Venezuela. Henrique Salas Romer was with us at
the National Democratic Institute a week ago
and he was not as radical as you are now in
denouncing what is happening in Venezuela.
Sweeney: I thought he was when I met with him in a
group.
Le Chevallier: Well, in his public presentation -- he
is not a Chavista, obviously -- but he was
presenting himself in a way as a constructive
opposition.
Host: Let me ask, Mr. Le Chevallier, President
Chavez is saying to everyone to be patient.
Let the constituent assembly do its work,
write the constitution, finish it by December,
have a vote on the constitution, and then
elect the new Congress early in the new year,
and we will then have accomplished our
political reform, and we can proceed. Will
that happen?
Le Chevallier: That is the idea, I understand.
Host: But is it his idea? Do you believe him?
Le Chevallier: Well, I cannot speak for Chavez, but I
understand that Venezuela is going though
structural change, change that was demanded by
the people. It is essential to Venezuela. Even
Salas Romer supports that kind of structural
reform. So it is taking place. I understand
that we do not necessarily agree with the way
Chavez is presenting himself and obviously we
have to take, and the Venezuelans certainly
have to take the lead in that, to take some
kind of precautions. And we have to be
watching what is going on and be supportive of
what has to be supported, and critical of what
needs to be criticized.
Sweeney: I think you are making a point, but people who
are watching Venezuela from outside have got
to take care to not confuse the form with the
substance. The form from outside looks like it
is democratic. The people do want a change.
The institutions are discredited. The parties
and old interests have ruined the country and
have ruined the democracy. But the substance
of what is taking shape in Venezuela slowly,
this is not a movement toward a new democratic
republic. It is, in many respects, an
historical throwback to the kind of
caudillismo that prevailed in Venezuela in the
nineteenth century and the early part of the
twentieth century. It is not something new. It
is more of the same, but worse. And
regrettably, at this moment, the Venezuelan
people think he is their messiah and they are
going to continue to support him. But
somewhere down the road we, who out here say,
give the guy a chance, he was democratically
elected -- and I'm one of those -- but we are
going to see that he is going in the wrong
direction.
Host: What should the United States be saying to
Venezuela now?
Menges: I think the United States should be telling
the truth as it is, and saying what Chavez is
doing is anti-democratic and unconstitutional.
And it should, I think, be working with other
democratic leaders from the Organization of
American States and invoking the Defense of
Democracy resolution of the Organization of
American States from the early 1990s, which
said that, if any leader in any place seeks to
establish a dictatorship, all the members of
the O-A-S will isolate that country
politically and will seek to use their good
offices to help the people in that country
defend their democracy and reestablish the
democratic institutions.
Le Chevallier: I think we have to be supportive of the
process as such. And I am not sure that so
far, even those Venezuelans who are
criticizing Chavez will be supportive of
something that radical. Maybe that's going to
change in the next two or three days or the
next two or three weeks. That's why I think we
have to be watching carefully what goes on
there.
Sweeney: Venezuela is going to work out for itself
what's going to happen. There is very little,
in a practical sense, that we can do to
reverse trends or change the situation in
Venezuela. Venezuela is going to fail or
succeed with Mr. Chavez based on its own
merits or lack thereof. And we are just going
to be standby observers, but I do not think
that the outcome will be positive.
Host: I'm afraid that's all time we have this week.
I'd like to thank our guests - Constantine
Menges from the George Washington University;
Gerardo Le Chevallier from the National
Democratic institute for International
Affairs; and Latin American policy expert Jack
Sweeney - for joining me to discuss the crisis
in Venezuela. This is Robert Reilly for On the
Line.
10-Sep-1999 10:22 AM EDT (10-Sep-1999 1422 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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