Chavez: Power in the balance

In the face of modest gains by opposition candidates in Venezuela’s national election on Sunday, President Hugo Chavez has claimed victory for his party, and more broadly for Venezuelan democracy, declaring the results “a great revolutionary victory.”

The opposition, however, is claiming victory as well, having won five of the 22 states up for grabs including the two biggest, Miranda and Zulia, as well as mayoral races in the country’s two largest cities. While Chavez’s dominance was clear in poorer, rural areas, Venezuelans in the country’s more affluent cities clearly are no longer convinced by his socialist rhetoric. Mostly notably, in Caracas opposition candidate Antonio Ledezma defeated former education minister Aristóbulo Isturiz by a margin of eight percentage points, and in Miranda, the country’s second most populous state, Henrique Capriles fared nearly as well, justifying the opposition’s optimism.

Indeed, in the run up to Sunday’s elections, and clearly afraid of an increasingly potent opposition, Chavez had stepped up his efforts to silence hostile media outlets, in addition to blocking some 300 candidates from even running. The government’s efforts made the anti-Chavistas’ modest gains all the more remarkable.

As he still reels from a failed constitutional referendum a year ago, and with Venezuelan crude now trading under the $60 a barrel needed to float the country’s roughly US$80 billion budget for 2009, Chavez’s iron grip on power is beginning to falter.

Unsurprisingly, Chavez contends that the country’s tens of billions in reserves will continue to float the social programs that have won him so much support from the nation’s poorest citizens, and he remains as brazen as ever, steadfast in his dedication to holding a referendum that would allow an extension of his rule beyond the end of his term as Venezuela’s president in 2013.

Judging, however, from his previous failure at constitutional reform and coupled with the opposition’s recent gains, his dream of unrestrained power looks increasingly unrealistic.

This is not to say that Chavez will go quietly, and it would be rash to predict an end to his hold on power as early as 2013. He has not spent all of his popularity, and has already shown himself willing to put pressure, legal and extralegal, on his opponents in the media and politics, and he may become more resistant as his situation becomes increasingly tenuous.

David Natera, editor of the daily newspaper El Correo del Caroní, believes journalists already face “unprecedented violence, insecurity, and impunity” under the Chavez government, where attacks on the media and political opponents have grown increasingly violent. Recently, student activist and ardent anti-Chavista Julio Soto was shot and killed, as was Eliecer Calzadilla, columnist and lawyer for El Correo del Caroní. While there is no evidence linking Chavez to these murders, there is little reason to believe things would not get more dangerous with Chavez backed into a corner.

So far, Chavez has been able to hide behind a guise of democracy as he pushes his agenda, and to his credit, he did accept a damning defeat in the 2007 constitutional referendum. Moreover, international observers have called this most recent election legitimate. It is impossible to say what steps he might take as 2013 approaches, but his true commitment to peaceful democratic transfer of power is yet to be tested.