Roberto Jorquera
On August 15, the people of Venezuela begin to vote on whether to recall their president, Hugo Chavez. The overwhelming majority of polls show that Chavez will defeat the recall bid. The opposition has in fact refused to publish some of its polls, suggesting that they too, indicate a Chavez victory.
The online news service Venezuelanalysis.com reported: "Supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Ch vez filled Caracas' largest public venue [on August 8], packing the Avenida Bol¡var for well over a mile and overflowing onto side streets all over the downtown. Clad in red — the colour that has come to represent chavismo in Venezuela — supporters bore t-shirts, hats, berets, placards, puppets, and inventive home-made signs all uniformly declaring 'No!' to the recall on Ch vez' mandate".
The referendum is just the latest attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela, and stop the process of the Bolivarian revolution. Previous attempts have been more violent: an unsuccessful coup in April 2002 and a lockout of the oil industry by bosses in December 2003 the most notable.
The political developments unfolding in Venezuela have many similarities to the those in Chile in 1970-1973, after the election of progressive president Salvador Allende. Then, the US state helped organise a coup led by its Chilean military allies. The resulting regime, led by General Augusto Pinochet, killed millions of people and remained in power for more than a decade.
Chavez has huge support among the poor, not surprising given the extensive education, health and land reform that his government has undertaken, and its uncompromising determination to redistribute the country's oil profit in order to improve the general quality of life. Equally unsurprisingly, his enemies lie within the country's business elite and wealthy — who have the full, formidable, backing of the US government. Fifty per cent of Venezuela's 24 million people lived in poverty when Chavez took power in 1998.
Since then, however, Venezuela has begun a process of revolutionary transformation. There are now 111 articles spelling out civic rights. They address topics such as culture and education, Indigenous rights, adequate housing, land distribution, worker safety and environmental protection.
Ironically, it is the new Â鶹´«Ã½ encouraging political participation that enable the recall campaign to take place. If Chavez is recalled, and the opposition wins the resulting general election, it intends to abolish these Â鶹´«Ã½.
The opposition also intends to restart the neoliberal policies that Chavez moved away from. It intends to overturn all the social, political and economic changes that have been implemented by the Chavez government, including the land reforms and the national free health and education programs that have been conducted with help from the Cuban government. It would retake the oil profits, and put them back in the hands of a few.
At the end of his three hour speech at the rally on August 8, Chavez said, "The [vote 'no'] slogan is not only a national slogan, but one that transcends Venezuela s borders, a slogan of struggle that says no to imperialism, no to exploitation of humans, no to injustice, no to war". And it is for these reasons that the US and its allies in Venezuela want the Bolivarian revolution defeated.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 18, 2004.
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