Venezuelans are preparing to go to the polls on December 4 to
elect their sixth consecutive presi-
dent since overthrowing the dic-
tator Marcos P&rez Jim6nez in
1958. Democracy does not come
cheaply here. The cost of the cam-
paign, in high gear for the last
Gloria Lacava, a Venezuelan journalist,
is a doctoral candidate in Latin Ameri-
can history at New York University.
year and a half, will reach well
over $225 million. With a voting
population of eight million, this
makes the Venezuelan effort to
woo voters by far the most expen-
sive in the world.
The electioneering cost, how-
ever, has not been reflected in the
quality of the debate. In the midst
of the worst economic crisis in 25
years, the traditional party cam-
paign is again a Madison Avenue
style contest which avoids serious
discussion of the issues and gives
preference to vituperation and
personal attacks. As in previous
campaigns, lip service is paid to
the need to revive agriculture and
the ailing construction industry,
and create new jobs.
Charges of corruption and mis-
management are being levelled
AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland greets AD presidential candidate Jaime Lusinchi in Washington in April 1982.
NACLA Report 36update . update . update update
Herrera Campins-“returning the country mortgaged three times over. ”
at both the ruling Christian Demo-
crats (COPEI) and their Social
Democratic challenger, Democrat-
ic Action (AD), the latter for the
excessive spending in its last
presidential period, 1973-78. AD
held office between 1958 and 1968
and since then has alternated
power with COPEI.
Venezuelans’ discontent is man-
ifested in declining enthusiasm
for the two-party dominance of
AD and COPEI. Thus, although
September polls give AD’s Jaime
Lusinchi a commanding 40% of
the vote and COPEI’s Rafael Cal-
dera, 25%, the combined total
Nov/Doc 1983
they are likely to receive falls far
short of the 90% garnered by both
parties in 1978. “1 no longer be-
lieve a switch of government is
going to take the country out of
the crisis,” said a small-business
woman from Puerto Cabello, 250
kilometers west of Caracas, who
in the past voted for AD.
Candidate is Ex-Guerrilla
Over the last five years the Left
has been the clear beneficiary of
voter dissatisfaction with the ma-
jor parties. Banned from partici-
pation in the political process for
most of the 1960s, parties today
claiming a socialist ideology have
emerged as the third force in Vene-
zuelan politics. After taking 7.7%
of the presidential vote and 13.1%
of the congressional vote in 1978,
the Left formed a united front in
the 1979 municipal elections and
captured 18.5% of the vote. They
now control municipal councils in
several important cities, including
the industrial Ciudad Guayana,
and have managed a series of
significant victories in key labor
and professional organizations.
The most potent force among
Left groupings is the Movement to
Socialism (MAS) which is running
ex-guerrilla, Teodoro Petkoff, for
president. The polls give Petkoff
12% of the vote, more than double
his nearest rival on the left, Jos6
Vicente Rangel. Rangel heads
the People’s Unity Alliance (AUP),
a loose coalition including the Com-
munist Party of Venezuela.
But the real battle for Socialists
is the congressional elections, also
scheduled for December 4, when
they hope to increase their total
representation to 25%. MAS alone
is expected to gain 17% of this
total. If this projection proves cor-
rect, the combined Left could very
well outweigh the Christian Demo-
crats in Congress. At any rate,
election results should confirm
Venezuelan socialism as the largest
leftist electoral force in present-
day Latin America.
A major factor in the growing
weight of the Left in Venezuelan
politics has been the economic
stagnation of the last years. After
the oil boom of the mid-1970s,
government revenues have shrunk
by $4 billion since early 1982 be-
cause of declining oil prices. The
nationalized oil industry provides
97% of foreign exchange and 70%
of all fiscal revenues.
Monetarist restraints imposed
37update * update * update* update
by ruling COPEI President Luis
Herrera Campins have brought
inflation down to 6% in 1983 from
the 16% rate registered in 1980.
But as a result, GDP growth has
fallen to a minuscule 0.6%. The
highest social cost of the Christian
Democrat austerity measures has
been a steep rise in unemploy-
ment, which labor experts esti-
mate may reach a 25% rate by the
end of this year.
The rationale given by Herrera
for tight money policies was the
need to end the “gay and irre-
sponsible merry-go-round” which
had flourished during the AD Ad-
ministration of Carlos Andr6s Perez
(1973-78). Despite such righteous
indignation, the Herrera Adminis-
tration was equally inept at man-
aging the economy and control-
ling credit expansion. State enter-
prises and autonomous public
agencies, which are responsible
for the lion’s share of the foreign
debt, contracted unchecked short-
term loans to meet long-term obli-
gations, becoming insolvent by
the end of 1982. In addition, the
government did nothing to prevent
the cash outflow frenzy in the two
months preceding the imposition
of exchange controls on February
18.
Mortgaging the Country
President Herrera will leave be-
hind a foreign debt of $33 billion,
the fourth largest in Latin America.
As candidate Petkoff says, “Her-
rera accused the former adminis-
tration of mortgaging the country,
but he is returning it mortgaged
three times over.”
Now the COPEI Administration
has been pressured by the IMF to
refinance its debt with 400 foreign
banks, but Herrera has managed
to postpone discussions until af-
ter the December elections so as
38
to shift political responsibility for
the coming austerity measures
onto his likely AD successor.
Given the unpopularity of the
ruling Christian Democrats, U.S.
media expert David Garth advised
COPEI presidential candidate and
party founder Rafael Caldera to
divorce his image from the Her-
rera Administration and present
himself as the country’s savior.
Caldera, who was president be-
tween 1968 and 1973, represents
the conservative wing inside CO-
PEI, traditionally an elitist-oriented,
Church-based party. Running for
the fourth time, he is supported by
the laissez-faire entrepreneurs to
whom he has promised to hand
back inefficient state-owned enter-
prises.
“But if any real political differ-
ences existed within COPEI, they
faded away during Herrera’s rule,”
a highranking leftist candidate for
Congress said. Due to his 1978
campaign claims of a government
“for the poor,” Herrera had gained
the reputation of being like a wa-
termelon: green (COPEI’s official
color) outside and red inside, but
eventually his economic policies
proved his conservatism.
Political characterizations aside,
Caldera’s exclusion of Herreristas
from COPEI’s congressional slate
now indicates that a clash, largely
based on personalities, is very
possible. “This could become so
serious as to lead to a formal split
of the party in the medium term
which would certainly benefit the
Left,” the parliamentary candidate
added.
By contrast, front-runner Jaime
Lusinchi, of the AD opposition,
has the benefit of a united party
behind his candidacy. He is strong-
ly supported by ex-President P6rez
who, after parrying judicial charges
of corruption, has made a grand
political comeback and is now
considered to be the most influ-
ential Social Democrat leader.
Lusinchi is also backed by the
party labor bureaucracy which
controls the Venezuelan Labor
Confederation (CTV), the largest
union in the country with over a
million members. Originally a
mass-based populist force, the
Social Democrats now rely on party
bureaucracy, with their National
Executive Committee in charge of
all policy making.
“Congress Is a Remnant”
The leitmotif of Lusinchi’s cam-
paign has been the Pacto Social,
a corporatist style arrangement
which calls for the participation of
CTV-appointed officials in the co-
management of the public sector,
now accounting for 70% of the
economy. The Pacto Social will
undoubtedly favor state and labor
bureaucrats, not workers, over
the entrepreneurial sector. But
even so, “it is a pipe dream,” a
Venezuelan psychologist recently
said, “for when Lusinchi becomes
president, he will have to rule in
the interests of the economic
groups which financed his cam-
paign.”
On the left, MAS’s leader Teo-
doro Petkoff also talks of co-man-
agement, mainly in steel and alu-
minum industries, but advocates
workers’ self-management in sug-
ar mills and public transportation.
Petkoff, who turned away from or-
thodox Marxism and advocates
“socialism with democracy,” had
been battling in the Senate to ex-
tend participatory democracy to
all levels of society. He proposes
a reform of the electoral process
by means of direct elections of
governors and congresspeople,
and shorter terms for congression-
al and municipal representatives.
NACLA Reportupdate update pdate update
Former guerrilla Teodoro Petkoff promotes “socialism with democracy” as MAS’s presidential candidate.
“Congress is a remnant of the
tradition of autocracy in Venezu-
ela,” Petkoff recently told this re-
porter, adding that party interests
prevail over those of the electors,
a criticism unanimously voiced by
the Left. His government program
includes a tax reform, in a country
where taxes are still relatively low
and regressive, and the breaking
up of private monopolies.
A 1970 Communist Party split,
MAS has grown from 40,000 mem-
bers in 1977 to 120,000, constitu-
ting the largest single party on the
left. In order to enlarge its mass
following, the party developed a
strategy aimed at discarding the
image of the Left as bearded ter-
rorists bent on the violent overthrow
of the system. Now MAS is striving
for a kind of middle-class respect-
ability and to be identified.with
popular culture. With two senators,
Nov/Dec 1983
eleven deputies and strong bases
in the young, urban middle class,
Petkoff strives to extend MAS
“even to the last forgotten Indian
in the Venezuelan backlands.”
Since its gradual electoral come-
back beginning in 1968, the Left
has never enjoyed such an ad-
vantageous climate. Besides the
political benefits derived from
Venezuelans’ discontent with tra-
ditional parties, the Left has grown
out of a slow process of internal
reconstruction, following the 1960s
legacy of disunity and isolation.
Unlike AUP, led by Rangel, how-
ever, MAS has projected an image
of greater internal unity, a factor
which seems to favor its future
electoral performance.
Ultimately, the Left’s success at
the polls–especially in the presi-
dential vote-will depend on the
ability of the government to gloss
over serious economic problems,
and allay fears in the financial
community.
An IMF intervention could weigh
heavily on the future of Venezuelan
politics. Social tensions resulting
from IMF-imposed austerity meas-
ures could lead to serious repres-
sion with an increasingly active
role for the armed forces. But if the
incoming government is in a posi-
tion to reschedule the foreign debt
with international banks-as ma-
jgr creditors are now predicting-
then Venezuela’s political system
is not likely to be altered by struc-
tural changes of an anti-democrat-
ic nature. In addition, the crisis of
authoritarian regimes in South
America suggests that the sup-
pression of democracy does not
guarantee social and economic
stability, a lesson surely not lost
on Venezuela.
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