Hugo Chavez’s “roller-coaster is going down,” declared Carlos Ocariz, a mayor that is part of the anti-Chavez Coalition for Democratic Unity, this week.
Ocariz and other Venezuelan opposition activists had reason to be hopeful. Hugo Chavez’s transformation of Venezuela into an anti-American harbor for drug traffickers and terrorists ran into resistance on Monday. The Venezuelan opposition took away the two-thirds majority in the National Assembly held by Chavez’s party, winning 52 percent of the vote and at least 61 of the 165 seats. All of Chavez’s dirty tricks to undermine his opponents failed to prevent a majority of voters from acting to arrest their country’s decline into dictatorship.
Predictably, Chavez declared victory because he still holds a majority in the National Assembly. He mocked the celebrations of the opposition, saying it was he who won. “[I]t has been a great election day and we have obtained a solid victory: enough to continue deepening Bolivarian and democratic socialism. We need to continue strengthening the revolution!” he wrote on Twitter. The state media played an obedient tune, describing the election as showing the country as “red, very red.”
Thor Halvorssen, President of the Human Rights Foundation, told FrontPage that although what the democratic opposition “pulled off is extraordinary” and “exceptionally significant,” Chavez still has the power to bring Venezuela down the path to tyranny.
“Already, the government has stated today that they have a three-fifths majority and that this is sufficient to pass an ‘Enabling law’ granting Chavez wide powers. The government of Venezuela manipulates rules, laws, and institutions as it sees fit,” he said.
It remains to be seen how Chavez will react to his loss, but he can be counted on to act in an undemocratic fashion. In 2008, he hamstrung the newly-elected mayor of Caracas because he was an opponent and hit him with steep funding cuts. He punished the city of Petare after they voted for one of his opponents by taking 16 garbage trucks away from them the following day.
He has taken extreme measures to crush dissent, which makes the opposition’s victory all the more impressive. A slight majority voted against Chavez even though his government dominates the media. He issued an arrest warrant for the president of Globovision, Venezuela’s final independent media outlet, forcing him to flee to the U.S. Chavez now controls 72 T.V. stations, 400 radio stations and 18 newspapers.
The wave of support for the opposition was so large that these disadvantages were overcome. The Venezuelan economy is in tatters, with the GDP projected to decrease by 6.2 percent this year and inflation set to become the highest in the world, climbing above 30 percent. Chavez’s approval rating has fallen to 36 percent. Power outages have become common, and the sale of oil has dropped from 3.5 million barrels per day in 1998 to 2.5 million barrels per day. The oil industry is suffering from the nationalizing of foreign companies and cronyism that has led to strikes. The crime rate has soared, with more murders in 2009 than in Iraq or Mexico.
Unfortunately for the Coalition for Democratic Unity, Chavez and his United Socialist Party still control the media and government apparatus. He has implanted Cuban advisors throughout the government and has assembled a 120,000-strong civilian militia, taking a cue from Iran’s Basiji.
The opposition’s gains are also limited by redistricting carried out last year to give more seats to poorer areas where he has more support. “For instance, in Caracas the opponents of Chavez got 484,844 votes versus 484,103 of the Chavista party. And the ten seats get split: 3 for the winners and 7 for Chavez. I hope those who cried foul during Bush v. Gore to come out swinging against this injustice just two hours South of Palm Beach County,” said Halvorssen.
Voter fraud remains an option for Chavez. Exit polls consistently showed Chavez losing a referendum on his rule in 2004, but the official result showed him winning in a landslide. The Carter Center said there was no fraud, but an expert on election forensics named Walter Mebane from the University of Michigan disagrees. He mathematically concluded that the referendum was fraudulent. A peer-reviewed study by Venezuelan academic Gustavo Delfino concluded the same, with him saying “it is by now beyond a reasonable doubt that the vote is rigged.”
The opposition boycotted the 2005 parliamentary elections, saying they did not want to provide legitimacy to a rigged election. This played into Chavez’s hands, giving his party the supermajority in the National Assembly they had until now. Mebane also found evidence of fraud in the 2009 constitutional referendum that got rid of term limits, setting Chavez up to run for a third term.
“It is highly unlikely that he will leave power peacefully which is why he has disqualified the only candidate that has outpolled him (Leopoldo Lopez) and why he will do everything and anything in the next two years to get another term. He has already said it numerous times: he plans to stay until 2030,” Halvorssen told FrontPage.
The fate of Venezuela also has consequences for the security of the West. Colombia has publicly presented proof of Venezuela’s complicity with the FARC, a narco-Marxist terrorist group and the ETA Basque terrorists. The government is directly involved in drug trafficking and undercover investigations show that Chavez’s government is also harboring Hezbollah and Hamas. Roger Noriega, a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, has publicly shown copies of secret Venezuelan government documents revealing that Chavez’s regime is collaborating with Iran on nuclear weapons. He identified three facilities, including one guarded by Iranian personnel, located where Venezuela is believed to have uranium deposits.
If his past is any indication, Chavez is scheming right now how to manipulate and maintain his grip on power. The next presidential election will be held in 2012. Sixty-four percent of the population wants to deny him another term. Chavez’s dictatorial impulses will compel him to override popular will. The clipping of Chavez’s wings in the National Assembly is encouraging, but the democratic opposition’s battle is far from over.
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