Roberto Jorquera
A new opinion poll, conducted on July 15-22 by the US opinion research firm Evans McDonough Company (EMC), indicates that Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's radical left-wing president, could win the August 15 recall referendum with a comfortable margin.
The survey found that 49% of voters were opposed to recalling Chavez, compared with 41% supporting the capitalist-backed opposition's call for his removal. However, among those who said they would actually cast a ballot in the recall referendum, 51% were opposed to recalling Chavez.
Among Venezuela's poor, who make up almost 80% of the electorate, only 35% support Chavez's recall. Fifty-five per cent of those surveyed said that Chavez cares about the poor, while 49% believe that his opponents "only care about the rich". EMC concluded that unless there is a drastic change in the attitude of Venezuela's poor toward Chavez, he would win the recall referendum.
Perhaps recognising that Chavez will win the referendum, former president and leading opposition figure Carlos Perez stated in an interview printed on July 25 in El Nacional, one of Venezuela's main daily newspapers: "Violence will allow us to remove him. That's the only way we have." Speaking from Miami, Perez said Chavez "must die like a dog, because he deserves it".
Like the rest of the opposition, Perez denounced Chavez as a "dictator" while making it clear he believes democracy must be crushed in Venezuela if Chavez and his supporters are to be defeated. "We can't just get rid of Chavez and immediately have a democracy", Perez said. After Chavez is violently ousted, Perez said a transition period of "two or three years" would be needed in which the country would be ruled by "a collegiate body (junta)" before popular elections could be held.
Support for Chavez within Venezuela's working class and poor farmers is based on the fact that he has not just promised radical improvements in their lives but with their participation, implemented such improvements.
David Raby, a research fellow at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Latin American Studies, reported in a July 28 article for the Venezuelanalysis.com website that over "the past 15 months, the government has begun to redistribute uncultivated land from private estates or public lands to poor peasants and landless labourers... some 2.2 million hectares (5.5 million acres) has already been distributed to 116,000 families organised in cooperatives.
"This alone would be remarkable in today's globalised world, where the very idea of cooperative or collective agriculture has been dismissed as outdated and inefficient, and countries like Mexico have dismantled long-established rural cooperatives and opened their agricultural sectors to the unfettered play of the free market and the consequent domination of private agribusiness."
"But the Venezuelan agrarian reform", Raby added, "goes beyond satisfying peasant land hunger and alleviating poverty. It is based as far as possible on organic practices and is intended as the foundation stone of an entirely new social and economic model, oriented towards self-sufficiency, sustainability and endogenous development ... development from within and from below, with popular participation. The leading role of women, blacks and indigenous people is also explicitly promoted.
"This new model will take years to develop, but it is already under way and being promoted with great enthusiasm. It does not exclude possible nationalisation of some major industries, but it points in a direction which challenges both globalised capitalism and state socialism of the traditional variety. It is also the foundation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA in its Spanish acronym), which Venezuela is proposing as a progressive alternative to the ALCA [the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas]. This is why Washington hates Chavez: not because of his revolutionary rhetoric, not because of any threat to 'democracy', but because the Venezuelan process offers a real alternative to US plans for the hemisphere."
In an interview with Venezuelanalysis.com while visiting Venezuela, well-known British left-wing writer Tariq Ali explained why the US rulers are so hostile to Chavez: "Venezuela is an example which the Americans wish to wipe out. Because if this example exists, and gets stronger and stronger and stronger, then people in Brazil, in Argentina, in Ecuador, in Chile, in Bolivia will say 'if Venezuelans can do it, we can do it'. So Venezuela, from that point of view, is a very important example. That's why they're so worked up. That's why the Americans pour in millions of dollars to help this stupid opposition in this country; an opposition which is incapable of offering any real alternative to the people, except what used to exist before: a corrupt, a servile oligarchy.
"That's what Venezuela means, and I think that one weakness, till recently, of the Bolivarian Revolution has been that it has not done more towards the rest of Latin America, because it's been under siege at home. But I think, once Chavez wins the referendum, and then the local elections I hope, and the mayoralty of Caracas in September, I hope then a big offensive is made for the rest of Latin America too."
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 4, 2004.
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