Venezuela’s Chávez stokes civil-war fears

Posted on Sunday, 09.09.12

Venezuela's Chávez stokes civil-war fears
BY DIEGO ARRIA
Freevenezuela.org

As the Venezuelan presidential election on Oct. 7 draws closer, the
anti-opposition rhetoric of Hugo Chávez is becoming more hysterical by
the day.

Indeed, to listen to Chávez, you would never know that the man is
suffering from cancer at an advanced stage. Even his closest supporters
are deliberating on their next moves should the Comandante pass from
this world. Yet none of this seeps through to the Venezuelan population
for a simple reason: Chávez wants them to believe that he is like one of
the gods of myth, an eternal survivor, to whom pesky human concerns like
a debilitating disease do not apply.

Chávez's latest rhetorical flourish has stoked the fear that an
opposition victory will lead to civil war. It's a step beyond the
demonization of the popular opposition candidate, Henrique Capriles
Radonski, whom Chávez always refers to with the most foul language, and
whose Jewish origins have been the subject of viciously anti-Semitic
attacks.

In a radio appearance on Sept. 4, Chávez accused Capriles, a moderate,
of concealing a "neoliberal packet of measures" in his election
platform. Capriles, Chávez added," seeks to drag us back to a Venezuela
we wouldn't put up with, and which would lead to a grim scenario of
profound destabilization, and which might even bring us to a civil war."

There is a method behind this fear-mongering. According to Luis Vicente
León, the president of Datanálisis, a leading Venezuelan pollster,
around 30 percent of voters — about 6 million in all — haven't decided
how to cast their ballots. And in the wake of the explosion in August at
the Amuy oil refinery, in which more than 40 people lost their lives,
the probing questions being asked about the regime's chronic
mismanagement is hardly doing Chávez any favors.

The head of the oil workers union, Jose Bodas, who two years ago warned
that the regime's practices were "putting at risk the lives and health
of the workers," has now called for an independent inquiry into the Amuy
explosion, the biggest industrial disaster in Venezuela's history, and
demanded the resignation of Chávez's energy minister, Rafael Ramirez.

Rather than answering Bodas directly, Chávez did what he has always
done: he delivered a bombastic speech charging that an opposition
victory, which the Amuay explosion has made a much more realistic
prospect, is the equivalent of an apocalypse.

As another political analyst, Carmen Beatriz Fernandez, told a
Venezuelan newspaper, "It's something Chávez has done before, for
example in the legislative elections of 2010. But now he's doing it with
greater force because he has realized that he is not as comfortably
ahead in the opinion polls as before." And that is certainly correct:
one recent poll showed Capriles ahead of Chávez by a few points, while
another poll revealed that Capriles enjoys a lead in seven out of the
eight most populous states in Venezuela.

Will this Machiavellian strategy work in October? After 14 years of his
rule, Venezuelans have wised up to Chávez's mind-games. However, that
arguably makes them more, not less, sensitive to the fear that anyone
who votes for Capriles will be marked out as an enemy in the future.
Moreover, given that Venezuela is already the murder capital of the
world, with 50 homicides per 100,000 members of the population, the
notion of a civil war conjures up all too realistic images of further
bloodshed carried out by the armed gangs already terrorizing us, many of
whom are closely allied with and supported by the regime.

Most important of all, Venezuelans know that Chávez can always take a
leaf out of the book of his close friend, the Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, and steal the election if the final result is not to his
liking. The possibility of such an outcome has even been acknowledged by
leaders elsewhere in Latin America who have traditionally been warm to
the Chávez regime. Both the Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner and
the Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff have counseled Chávez not to
resist an opposition victory through undemocratic means.

I am skeptical that Chávez will heed this advice. He is a revolutionary
of the old school, uncompromisingly ideological, and therefore
contemptuous of any suggestions that might derail his "Bolivarian
revolution." Should Chávez succumb to his cancer, a number of his
confidantes will seek to perpetuate what Venezuelans call "Chavismo
after Chávez."

The opposition has run an energetic, positive campaign, which has seen
the youthful Capriles dashing from state to state on foot, talking to
the voters directly. Still, the opposition knows too well that Chávez's
best, and deadliest, card is still up his sleeve; if manufacturing a
bloody civil conflict is what it takes to keep him in power, he will try
to do so. But in that situation, the armed forces will have the last word.

Diego Arria is a former Ambassador of Venezuela to the United Nations,
and chief spokesman of freevenezuela.org, an international campaign to
support the Venezuelan opposition.

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