Party Paramountcy and the Venezuelan Opposition
Editorial
Stabroek News
March 29, 2007
A recent Financial Times brief on the political situation in Venezuela reported that "the final vestiges of resistance to Hugo Chávez's total domination of Venezuelan politics are crumbling". This statement was made with reference not to the state of the opposition parties, but rather to the position in which the parties backing Mr Chávez find themselves.
Mr Chávez is of course seeking to entrench himself further in power through the creation of a single Unified Socialist Party that would bring the existing coalition of pro-Chávez parties under one communist-style super party. And since all these parties control the Congress, thanks to the disastrous decision of the opposition to boycott the legislative elections in 2005, that would effectively turn the country into a one-party state.
There had been hopes that Podemos, a small pro-Chávez but slightly more social-democratic party, would resist Mr Chávez, for fear of losing its ideological and political independence. But this was not to be, as the party has succumbed to factional infighting and defections, which have placed it in a weakened position vis-à -vis the Chavistas.
It now appears that nothing stands in the path of party paramountcy, Chávez style, as the "Comandante" continues his merry way to a new constitution and his seemingly inexorable march towards the removal of term limits on the presidency.
The only opposition within the political system is limited to local government, where non-Chavistas still hold on to a small number of mayorships and two state governorships. However, Mr Chávez has already embarked on a programme to bypass this opposition, by centralising power through thousands of community councils to be funded - and therefore controlled - directly by the presidency.
It is generally considered that the Venezuelan opposition, after a period of optimism following a decent showing in the last general election by the "unity" candidate, Manuel Rosales, is proving to be ineffective in the face of Mr Chávez's accelerated moves to consolidate his power. Indeed, many fear that the opposition is systemically unable to get its act together to present a meaningful challenge to Mr Chávez, ever.
Nevertheless, in an article dated March 21, 2007, published in the Venezuelan, online political journal AnalÃtica.com, the noted political scientist, Dr Sadio Garavini - himself a Venezuelan ambassador to Guyana in the early 1980s and someone who was able to observe at close range our own disastrous experiment with party paramountcy and life presidency - makes a strong case for following the Chilean example of Concertación.
In order to confront Mr Chávez's authoritarianism, Dr Garavini posits that Concertación is a model worthy of emulation by the Venezuelan opposition, since the concentration of power in Mr Chávez's hands cannot be countered by a divided and dispersed opposition.
To illustrate this, Dr Garavini points out that it took the Chilean opposition parties thirteen years from the coup that deposed Salvador Allende to come together as Concertación to fight the common enemy, the dictator Augusto Pinochet. But once united in 1986, it was just another two years before they were able to defeat General Pinochet's overconfident attempt to remain in power via a national referendum, thereby paving the way for the return to constitutional democracy in 1990. And Concertación has governed ever since.
According to Dr Garavini, since the Venezuelan elections last December, important steps have been taken in the right direction by the opposition. The democratic left is coming together under the banner of a coalition called A New Time. And with regard to the democratic centre, there are the beginnings of coordination of efforts in the so-called Platform, with the participation of one of the traditional parties, the Christian Democrat COPEI, Justice First and others. He therefore argues that the ideal outcome would be for these parties to join forces with other opposition groups such as Project Venezuela, Convergence and Venezuela First, to form a big, united Popular Party, similar to the successful Spanish model. This Popular Party and A New Time could then come together to form the Venezuelan Concertación.
Notwithstanding the apparent optimism of Dr Garavini's thesis, there is a strong undercurrent in the article that the opposition had better be prepared for a long haul in its efforts to present a united front to Mr Chávez. Indeed, Dr Garavini's argument, coupled with the news reports coming out of Venezuela, would suggest that the successful pursuit of multi-party democracy in Venezuela demands levels of unity, patience and strategic thinking hitherto unseen amongst the opposition.