VENEZUELA ELECTION
Political setback for IMF austerity
By Andy McInerney
Venezuela's working class was celebrating in the streets on
Dec. 7. In the elections the day before, voters had decisively
turned their backs on the traditional ruling parties and
elected Hugo Chávez president.
Chávez is a former lieutenant colonel who spent two
years in prison for leading a junior officers' coup against
President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992. That coup
backed widespread protests against the privatization and
austerity measures Pérez had implemented on behalf of
the International Monetary Fund.
Now Chávez is back--with a massive popular mandate.
His election, and the defeat of the traditional bourgeois
parties, marks a clear political setback for the IMF's
neo-
liberal policies of privatization and cutbacks in social
spending in Latin America.
The Chávez campaign quickly took shape as a class
battle in the electoral arena. His Patriotic Pole coalition was
based on the working class and nationalist elements of the
Venezuelan bourgeoisie.
Four parties forming the Pole put Chávez on the
ballot slot: his own Fifth Republic Movement, which received 41
percent of the vote; the Movement to Socialism with 8 percent;
the Homeland for All Party with 2 percent; and the Communist
Party with 1.2 percent. That gave Chávez about 57
percent of the total vote.
The traditional parties of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie--the
social democratic Democratic Action (AD) and the Christian
democratic Copei--did not run candidates of their own when it
became clear they would be trounced. Instead, they backed
Yale-educated Henrique Salas on their ballot slot.
Salas was the darling of the ruling class. But he received
only 39 percent of the vote. Copei and AD together polled only
9 of that 39 percent.
The battle could be seen in the streets. "Down with the
oligarchy!" was a frequent cry of Chávez supporters.
Over 1 million people poured into the streets of the capital,
Caracas, for his final campaign speech on Dec. 3.
Venezuela's rich showed their worry by sending their cash,
jewelry, art and other valuables to secure bank accounts in
Miami.
Early in his campaign, Chávez made a point of
praising the "Cuban model." His opponents accused him of
siphoning arms to the revolutionary movement in neighboring
Colombia.
Cuban President Fidel Castro was among the first heads of
state to congratulate Chávez. "Although they incessantly
harassed you and slandered you for your heroic visit [in 1994]
to Cuba, thinking that by doing so they could diminish forces
and votes from your campaign, your smashing victory proves that
the people have learned a lot," Castro wrote, according to the
Dec. 7 El Universal.
Elections as a barometer
Chávez's electoral win does not in itself loosen the
Venezuelan ruling class's grip on state power. But it does
provide a significant barometer of the mood and degree of
organization of the South American country's working class.
Venezuela has one of the richest economies in Latin America,
because of its massive oil industry. This has made Venezuela
one of Latin America's most proletarian countries. Seven of
every eight workers are employed in the industrial or service
sector.
But the oil riches have not reached the working class.
Workers' living standards have dropped dramatically in the past
10 years because of the government's neoliberal economic
policies.
Eighty percent of Venezuela's 24 million people live below
the poverty level. Inflation has been running at 28 percent in
1998.
In 600,000 homes, families do not eat a whole meal every
day. Conditions continue to deteriorate due to the current glut
in the world oil market and the corresponding drop in oil
prices.
The Chávez victory caps 10 years of mass protest
against pro-IMF economic policies.
In 1989, government troops massacred over 1,000 people
demonstrating against rising food prices. While the 1992 coup
attempt failed, continued protests forced Pérez to
resign.
More recently, in August 1997, unions staged a mass general
strike against low wages and price hikes.
Can electoral success
mean social gains?
The question for the Venezuelan working class is: Can the
electoral successes translate into concrete social gains?
Immediately after his victory, Chávez began to
moderate his political message.
He described his goal as a government based on a union of
"rich and poor, workers and the business sector, civilians and
the military." He called his government "neither leftist nor
rightist, but rather humanist."
"We don't want the communist model--it is not viable," he
said on Dec. 4, two days before his election. "But it is just
as certain that we don't want the savage neoliberal model
either."
Whatever the president-elect's initial statements and steps,
opposing class forces are in motion now in Venezuela.
Since the 1980s the imperialist bankers, acting through the
U.S. State Department and the IMF, have imposed neoliberal
economic policies on all the governments of Latin America.
With every other Latin American country squeezed in the IMF
vise, resistance from Venezuela could prove to be an example
for the continent's working classes and nationalistic
bourgeoisies alike. It is likely the imperialist bankers and
Washington will work actively to undermine any renegade state
that refuses to accept the dictates of finance capital.
On the other side of the class barricades, millions of
workers who voted for Chávez have concrete expectations.
They are now beginning to feel their political power. The Dec.
6 election could become a factor in emboldening the mass
struggle against privatization and austerity.
Chávez is calling for a constituent assembly after
his Feb. 4 inauguration in order to rewrite the Venezuelan
constitution. This is a direct challenge to the Venezuelan
ruling oligarchy's legal monopoly over the governmental
apparatus, including the management of the state-owned oil
industry.
It will open a new arena for the working class to assert its
rights, provided that working-class parties are able to operate
independently with their own class demands.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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