If Chávez loses, will he go?

Posted on Sunday, 10.07.12

If Chávez loses, will he go?

CARACAS, Venezuela — Despite its high crime rate, Venezuela has
historically managed to largely avoid the political bloodshed that
plagued so many of its neighbors during the twentieth century. But is
that about to change? Last Sunday, supporters of President Hugo Chávez
confronted a crowd of activists who had gathered in the state of Barinas
to celebrate the campaign of Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate
in this Sunday's presidential election. By day's end two Capriles
organizers lay dead, gunned down in broad daylight by angry chavistas.
The government says it is investigating, and so far three suspects have
been detained.

The killings make for an ominous portent. The Venezuelan opposition,
long crippled by internal divisions, has combined forces to mount the
first serious challenge to Chávez in recent memory. Capriles has managed
to revitalize previously disenchanted supporters while making inroads
into the poor and rural populations that have traditionally served as
the president's base. The ailing president, meanwhile, has been drawing
comparatively smaller crowds, in fewer places, and has seen his once
insurmountable margins steadily slip away over the past two months.
While the polling data remains contradictory, the fact that one of the
country's most respected pollsters is giving Capriles a four-point lead
suggests that the opposition finally has at least a chance to unseat the
once unassailable president.

All this begs the question: How far might Hugo Chávez be willing to go
to defend his revolution?

If Venezuelans can agree on anything, it is that they find it hard to
imagine a scenario in which a defeated President Chávez peacefully hands
over power. To many, this stems from a sincere belief that the
charismatic populist leader, armed with the full resources of the state
and still beloved by much of the country, would never actually lose a
popular election. Others find it hard to imagine that Chávez, who once
famously vowed to defend his revolution with his life, would ever
willingly step aside.

He would certainly face little pressure to do so from within his own
administration. After so many years in power, the president dominates
every branch of government. Even Luisa Estela Morales, the presiding
magistrate of the Supreme Court, has publicly proclaimed her belief that
the constitutional separation of powers "unacceptably weakens the state."

Venezuelan elections themselves are quite free — the problem is that
they're far from fair. Four of the five magistrates of the Consejo
Nacional Electoral (CNE), the electoral authority, are avowed and loyal
supporters of the president. Under their watch the institution has
habitually turned a blind eye to countless illegalities and abuses on
the part of the government: the decorating of state buildings with
campaign material, the misappropriation of state funds for campaign use,
rampant gerrymandering, misuse of emergency powers to commandeer radio
and television signals for campaign messaging, and the de facto
disenfranchisement of Venezuelan migrs (most of them opponents of the
regime) through the closing of the Miami Consulate. By contrast, the CNE
recently censured Capriles for wearing a hat based on the official flag
of the republic.

Thanks to this high degree of institutional control, government
electoral shenanigans have typically taken place prior to the vote
itself, while the actual voting and tabulation processes have been
allowed to proceed largely free of government intervention. By keeping
elections comparatively free Chávez has been able to maintain a
democratic veneer without much risk to his own power. Still, the
combination of his own poor health, the dire state of the national
economy, rampant crime, and a tough challenger could well complicate the
outcome for the president this time around.

Surprisingly, any attempt at actually faking electoral results is likely
to prove a challenge. According to Federico Ortega, an opposition
adviser and Harvard-educated economist, the high-tech vote tabulation
machines that Venezuela uses in its elections, as well as the
reliability of available quick count methods, would make it technically
unfeasible for the CNE to conceal an opposition victory outside of a
dead-heat differential of maybe 100,000 votes. "Even then," he says,
"they would only be able to maintain the charade for a short time."

While not discounting the possibility of a stolen election, Ortega
believes that the government would be far more likely to do so by
claiming fraud on the part of the opposition and then either disavowing
or suspending the elections prior to any public announcement by the CNE
itself. Indeed, Chávez himself seems to have already begun preparing his
own supporters for just such an eventuality, assuring them that the
opposition intends to physically mobilize regardless of the vote's
outcome, offering cryptic warnings of chaos or civil war, and hammering
home to his supporters all that they might stand to lose without him.

Yon Goicoechea is a prominent opposition leader who rose to national
fame at the head of the movement that handed Chavez his first democratic
defeat during a 2007 referendum on executive term limits. He recalls
that the CNE demurred for eight hours before announcing the results — a
period during which, according to Goicoechea, government officials
convened frantic meetings to work out a coherent response, even
approaching him and other opposition leaders for "negotiations."

While the government eventually conceded defeat, Goicoechea says that
the opposition would not have sat idly by if it hadn't: "We were
prepared to call the Venezuelan people to the streets to defend their
votes and their democracy." In his view, Capriles, whom he describes as
a strong but responsible leader, will almost certainly be willing to do
likewise, though "first he would have to know with certainty that we had
indeed won."

The opposition's ability to counter fraud will depend on their ability
to follow the vote counting process in real time. Once the results have
been officially declared, contesting the results becomes much harder.

Therein lies the challenge. While the opposition has done much to secure
its access to electoral information during the vote itself, only the CNE
itself will be privy to exact vote counts prior to the final
announcement — by which time it may well be too late. This leaves the
opposition dependent on more subjective metrics such as exit polling,
observer testimonials, quick counts, and the vastly disparate
pre-election polling data. International observers have been largely
disallowed for the election, outside of a select few who are unlikely to
be particularly critical of the regime, or cooperate much with the
opposition.

If the opposition does cry foul and Capriles calls his supporters to the
streets, it is by no means certain that the great crowds that rallied to
support him on the campaign trail will continue to do so if the
government suspends constitutional safety guarantees or implements
martial law. Then again, the throngs of enthusiastic supporters that
rallied around the opposition candidate during the closing of his
campaign in Caracas on Sunday served, to some, as evidence that loyalty
runs deep among his followers.

The Barinas shootings, as well as a recent clash in the seaside town of
Puerto Cabello, underline the potential for violence. Any confrontation
between confident chavistas gathering for their traditional
post-election celebration outside of the presidential palace, and
opposition protesters demanding a reversal, could easily lead to chaos.

Particularly worrisome in this regard are the so-called Bolivarian
militias, a heavily armed group of militarized civilians fiercely loyal
to the government. The Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald recently
published a document purporting to inform militia members of a
post-election "external intervention" planned by the United States in
conjunction with "the Venezuelan far right and transnational companies."
The plan goes on to stipulate that two thousand armed militiamen should
take up posts at sites of strategic importance to defend the government
against the opposition.

Given this potential for instability, the powerful Venezuelan military
is sure to play a key role in the likely event that the results are
contested. It is difficult, however, to forecast precisely how the
Venezuelan Armed Forces might behave. Unlike other national institutions
such as the CNE or the courts, the VAF is something of a black box. In
April 2002, when a peaceful opposition protest was met with gunfire,
killing 19 unarmed men and women, the armed forces turned against
Chávez, leading to his brief overthrow until loyalists within the army
reinstated him in a countercoup.

Since then Chávez has been careful to assert his control over the VAF's
top brass, though even they have given conflicting signals. Henry Rangel
Silva, a high-ranking general and defense minister, has stated a number
of times that the army strongly supports President Chávez's
administration and will find it "difficult to accept a change in
government." Yet Willmer Barrientos, head of military operations, has
made remarks suggesting that the army will maintain its neutrality
regardless of the outcome. In any case, it is by no means a given that
the armed forces will move against the president without a clear reason
to do so.

And then there's the international reaction. Venezuela has already
scared off many foreign investors through its controversial
nationalizations and its withdrawal from the ICSID convention on
investment arbitration, and while such moves probably haven't helped its
economy, they have, to a certain degree, cushioned it against potential
economic repercussions. The regime's closest international relationships
right now are either with client states that rely on its largesse, such
as Cuba, Nicaragua, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador, or with
authoritarian countries such as Iran, Russia, and Belarus that are
unlikely to criticize it.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Patrick Duddy recently released a
policy paper through the Council on Foreign Relations outlining possible
contingencies in the case that Venezuelan elections prove destabilizing.
In his view the United State's ability to exert pressure on Venezuela
unilaterally is limited by the already frosty relationship between the
two countries.

A brazen power grab on the part of Chávez, or even a suspected
constitutional violation, could damage Venezuela's relations with Brazil
and Colombia, and perhaps also with international organizations such as
UNASUR, MERCOSUR or the OAS. But the effects are unlikely to be broad or
enduring. Right now, Colombian president Santos is relying on Chávez to
help him broker a peace deal with the FARC rebels; while Brazil, having
put a great deal of effort into forging a strategic alliance with
Chavez, may prove similarly loath to take the lead.

And while the OAS has recently punished Honduras and Paraguay for
presumed violations of democratic norms by suspending them from the
organization, Chávez has shown himself to be highly resistant to
international shaming attempts. The best candidate for exerting pressure
might be MERCOSUR, the South American trading bloc that recently
admitted Venezuela after a protracted diplomatic struggle, and might be
able to threaten it with expulsion.

But even if the opposition fails to dislodge the revolution, there is
little doubt that Chávez will emerge from this contest significantly
weakened. Even if a legitimate vote count leaves him the victor, the
united opposition will have shown itself to be a force to be reckoned with.

Despite the staggering advantages enjoyed by the incumbent, that
Capriles was able to mount a respectable showing will speak volumes. And
Chávez, his health fading, will have to govern with a weakened mandate
and state coffers emptied by his own pre-election binge spending. South
America's democratic despot may find himself vulnerable even in victory.

Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez is a fellow at the Comparative Constitutions
Project and is a regular columnist for the Venezuelan daily newspaper El
Universal.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/07/v-fullstory/3036399/if-chavez-loses-will-he-go.html