Is This the End of Chvezs Venezuela?

BY PETER WILSON-DECEMBER 5, 2015

CARACAS Karin Salanova knows that when Venezuelans head to the polls on
Sunday to elect a new National Assembly, the cards will be stacked against her. But
Salanova, a 40-year-old lawyer running as the oppositions candidate for the third
circuit in the central industrial state of Aragua, is optimistic about her chances in spite
of the overwhelming advantages enjoyed by Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro
and his ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Its not a fair contest,
Salanova said in an interview. The government is pulling out all of the stops to
maintain control of the assembly.
Venezuelans go to the polls against the backdrop of a faltering economy (which
could contract as much as 10 percent this year), soaring crime, a U.S.-led
corruption investigation into the state oil company, and the recent arrestof the first
ladys nephews on drug smuggling charges. The election has also become a
referendum as to whether Venezuela will continue adhering to Chavismo, the political
and economic movement founded by late President Hugo Chvez, who launched the
countrys socialist revolution. It could even be the first step to ousting Maduro.
Facing a political insurgency that threatens to break its hold on power, the PSUV is,
according to Salanova, using every trick in the book: The party is allegedly
using public funds to bankroll its campaign, deploying ambulances and public vehicles

to distribute PSUV literature, handing out food and scarce goods in poor
neighborhoods to curry votes, and broadcasting pro-PSUV cadenas nacionales
programming that all television and radio stations are required by law to run almost
nonstop while the opposition struggles to get any media exposure at all. Governmentrun television stations have ignored opposition candidates, and the government has
cut back paper supplies to newspapers that support those running against the PSUV.
As a result, many opposition candidates have relied almost entirely on social media to
get their message out.
Government institutions that are supposed to be autonomous, such as the National
Electoral Council (CNE), whose task it is to run fair and clean elections, have
repeatedly bent the rules to give the PSUV an unfair advantage, Salanova and her
compatriots charge. The council, which is controlled by members of Maduros party,
has allowed several parties the opposition has decried as fake to run, some
incorporating parts of the name of Salanovas Democratic Unity coalition (known by its
Spanish acronym MUD), in an apparent ploy to confuse voters. On top of which, the
CNE has made several controversial rulings to further the PSUVs advantage.
Several of our leaders have been barred from running, Salanova said. Many polling
precincts are in government housing developments, making it difficult for voters to vote
against the PSUV for fear of losing their homes.
There may be obstacles in front of them, but polls suggest that Salanova and her MUD
coalition might be able to win a majority of the assemblys 167 seats and end 15 years
of rule by the PSUV and its precursors. Some polls show that the MUD holds as much
as a 30-point lead nationwide over the PSUV in the closing days of the campaign.
Maduros approval rating has been hoveringbetween 20 and 30 percent down
some30 points since his 2013 inauguration according to Datanalisis.
Wresting control of the assembly wont be easy, however. Under Venezuelas
complicated voting rules, 113 seats will be allocated on first-past-the-post voting
(whoever has the most votes wins) in 87 electoral districts; 51 seats are allocated by
proportional representation on a state-by-state basis that doesnt take into account
populations; and three seats are reserved for native peoples. Past gerrymandering
means rural states are favored over the most populous urban states, such as Aragua.
Although Venezuelas six largest states have 52 percent of the countrys population,
they only elect 38 percent of the members of the assembly. In 2010, the
opposition won 65 seats compared to the PSUVs 98, even though the two parties
were separated by exactly one percentage point.
This time, the opposition seems to have enough support to pull off a win. If the
elections are fair, I expect the MUD will have between a five- to 10-seat majority in the
assembly, said Caracas-based political consultant Tarek Yorde, who formerly advised
PSUV candidates. Such an outcome would be the first time since 1999, when Chvez
rewrote the constitution and created the National Assembly, that the opposition would
control the legislature.
The overriding issue is the economy, said Margarita Lpez Maya, a Venezuelan

historian at the Central University of Venezuela. People have lost faith in the
government and the presidents ability to offer solutions. Nothing else really matters
when people are facing problems just surviving. People are desperate for a change.
The central bank has stopped publishing relevant data for some time, including GDP
and inflation, but signs of the countrys economic woes are everywhere. The countrys
currency, the strong bolvar, is worthless outside the country. Although the official
exchange rate is 6.3 strong bolivars to the dollar, the government maintains a separate
rate of 12 bolvares to the dollar for select industries and a third rate of 200 to the
dollar for most other transactions. However, dollar shortages mean that many
Venezuelans have had no choice but to buy dollars on the black market, where the
rate is touching 920 to the dollar, up from 200 to the dollar at the start of the year.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Venezuelas GDP will likelycontract 10
percent this year, and inflation is expected to hit 159 percent and rise to 204 percent in
2016. Venezuelans now spend hours, daily, chasing such staples as milk, sugar,
coffee, laundry detergent, shampoo, corn meal, and toilet paper. Lines can string into
the hundreds, as jostling consumers queue for hard-to-find items.
The drop in oil prices, which account for 95 percent of the governments hard currency
receipts, means that the government has far fewer dollars to import goods, especially
in the face of mounting debt payments. Although Maduro has managed to meet all
bond payments to avoid a default, imports have been slashed. And as Venezuela
imports 70 percent of the goods it consumes, the result has hardly been surprising.
I have never voted against the PSUV in my life, said Luisa Rincon, a 45-year-old
single mother of three who lives in a working-class slum of Caracas. But all I do all
day is stand in line. I get up at 4 a.m. each morning to go into the city center to stand
in line, hoping that I can find enough food. And then when I can find something, I have
to take a bus back home, praying that I wont be robbed. This isnt a life. And I am
going to vote against the PSUV this time around.
Like many voters, Rincon will be voting as much against the status quo as for the
murkily defined positions of the opposition, which has sought to capitalize on the
countrys economic problems focusing on chronic shortages while giving few details
as to how they would solve them.
The opposition has suffered by not having a clear leader Leopoldo Lpez, who tops
many preference polls, is in jail for his role in last years protests and pushing a
sometimes-erratic message. The opposition is benefiting in the polls because people
are unhappy with the government, not because the opposition is providing concrete
proposals to draw voters in, said David Smilde, a senior fellow at the Washington
Office on Latin America. Once they start to talk about issues of economic equality,
poverty, health and education, very serious differences emerge within the opposition
coalition, which contains politicians and voters from the center-left to the far-right.
MUD leaders say they will pass an amnesty law that would free Lpez, the jailed
opposition leader, and other political prisoners. They have alsopromised to revise
agreements entered into by Maduro and Chvez over the past years, while

others have called for the return of expropriated businesses to their original owners.
Finally, MUD leaders have campaigned on pushing for a recall referendum against
Maduro as early as next year. Maduro and the PSUV, in turn, have campaigned to
voters that any opposition victory would end government social programs and have
countered by promisingto increase the number of pensions, academic scholarships,
and public housing being granted to PSUV supporters.
Whether any of that comes to pass depends in large part on how free and fair the vote
will be and theres good reason to believe it will be neither. International observers
monitoring the vote have been marred by controversy, and the head of the CNE,
Tibisay Lucena, is a known Chvez supporter who has consistently ignored MUD
protests about past government campaigns. The CNE has repeatedly issued rulings
against the MUD, including ones that dictated that 40 percent of all candidates had to
be women just days after the opposition group selected its candidates in a primary.
The agency has also designed what is believed to be a purposefully confusing ballot
by placing two pro-government parties that incorporate the MUDs Spanish name into
their own.
Its a ploy to confuse voters, said Salanova, the MUD candidate in Aragua. Those
parties are paid for and supported by the government with the idea they could siphon
off votes.
The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), a grouping of South American
countries, is committed to sending some 50 observers, but few believe that will
guarantee a fair vote. Brazil leftthe delegation after Maduro vetoed its candidate. Chile
and Uruguay are both boycotting the vote monitoring, which is headed by Leonel
Fernndez, the former president of the Dominican Republic and Chvezs friend,
because of doubts about a fair vote.
If the opposition does manage to win control of the assembly despite all these
hindrances, it would be a body blow to Chavismo, the anti-imperialistic and anticapitalistic movement founded by Chvez and carried on by Maduro. Assuming, that
is, the PSUV chooses to accept a defeat. If past elections provide any clue, it wont
quietly cede power: When the government lost key governorships and city halls,
Chvez and Maduro created parallel governments that usurped the functions and
funds of the legitimately elected leaders. Miranda State Governor Henrique Capriles
Radonski, for example, who narrowly lost the presidency to Maduro in a special
election in 2013, now vies for funding with CorpoMiranda, a government entity that is
overseen by the man he beat for the governorship.
This time, an opposition win at the polls could lead to the outgoing assembly passing a
new law, allowing Maduro to rule by decree for the life of the new assembly. Maduro
and his supporters could also attempt to strip away powers from the assembly, such
as control of the budget, while trying to stave off a recall referendum or lose control of
the judiciary, Electoral Council, and other theoretically autonomous state agencies.
But this will be uncharted waters for Chavismo, and it is hard to know what will
happen, warned Smilde.

Some hint of what might come if the opposition wins came this past week, when
Caracas residents were treated to a display of the governments power in the form of a
long convoy of National Guard vehicles, which wound through the citys main arteries
before heading out on the sole highway to the west. All of the vehicles were newly
imported from China, with the trucks carrying freshly painted Internal Order signs.
Among them were at least 40 anti-riot vehicles, including those equipped with water
cannons.
The message was not lost on those watching. They dont have dollars to import food
or medicine, but they have the lettuce [slang for dollars] to buy equipment to suppress
us, said David Lpez, a 62-year-old taxi driver in the central city of Maracay who
witnessed the parade. They will do anything to maintain power.
The threat is not an abstract one: On Nov. 26, a prominent opposition leader, Luis
Manuel Daz, was assassinated while addressing a crowd in the central agrarian state
of Gurico. The government subsequently claimed that he had been caught in a gun
battle between two rival criminal groups, but PSUV activists subsequently suggested
on talk radio that the MUD might have paid to have him killed to gain sympathy votes.
And there are fears that supporters of either side could take to the streets if their party
loses, especially following last years violent protests that claimed more than 40 lives.
Salanova scoffs at such claims. Eschewing security personnel, she has walked
through many Chavista neighborhoods, talking to voters and trying to win their
support. Im not afraid, and I dont need bodyguards, she said. I want to spread my
message that we can resolve our problems by working together. And I really think I
can win even though its not a fair fight.
Photo credit: JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images
Posted by Thavam