See also:     
AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications    

    Hugo Chavez: The Paradoxical Neo-Conservative Defeat
    By Ga l Brustier
    Rue89

    Tuesday 04 December 2007

    Which side is disappointed after the victory of the "no" vote to the constitutional reform Hugo Chavez advocated? With close to 51 percent and 4.5 million votes, the Venezuelan opposition has profited from both the demobilization of Chavists who had been working around the clock for nine years and a legalistic strategy encouraged by Teodoro Pettkoff, former minister in the right-wing government of Rafa l Caldera.

    Outside the country, however, a certain number of President Chavez's detractors must be embarrassed. Their scheme of thinking had spurred them to present the referendum as "determined in advance" and as a stage in the "totalitarian drift" of the "populist dictator." Have we ever seen a dictator lose an election by 300,000 votes? On that score, many countries would like to have a dictator like Hugo Chavez!

    No New Stage in the "Bolivarian" Revolution

    The reasons for the left's defeat in the Venezuelan elections are various. First of all, Venezuelans are very happy with the 1999 Constitution. It's unusual to travel through a country in which the most humble person can quote the articles of their Constitution and invoke them against local authorities to force respect for social and environmental law and for individual liberties.

    The "Bolivarian" Constitution of 1999 had been abrogated by Pedro Carmona during his ephemeral April 2002 coup d' tat. The then-opposition publicly ridiculed that constitutional text, meant to give power to "the monkeys," that is, to the dark and the poor (who, curiously, are often one and the same).

    Besides, the country is rather happy with the way things are: 42 percent of Venezuelans think that the present situation is better than two years ago, 23 percent think it's the same, and 31 percent think it's worse. In this context, it was audacious of Hugo Chavez to want to propose going further....

    All the more so as the primary concern of 51 percent of Venezuelans is insecurity, which truly is endemic. The reform of the police (divided since Carlos Andr s Perez's government into over 110 local police forces) should, theoretically, allow that to be remedied, however, pending potential progress, citizens have applied a precautionary principle: no new stage in the Bolivarian revolution without citizens' concrete problems having been settled....

    Moderates Leave the Reservation

    With close to 58 percent who are nonetheless satisfied with the state of their country, one could consequently wonder why the "no" won the day.... One indicator captures what happened Sunday, December 2, in Venezuela: the proportion of "moderates" in the society jumped six points in a year, while that of "Chavists" and "Anti-Chavists" dropped appreciably.

    The position of General Baduel, a longtime Chavez intimate and defender of the 1999 Constitution hostile to its present revision, encouraged those "moderates" to stay at home. At the same time, the Chavists, permanently mobilized and a little weary, came to the polling places in somewhat lower numbers for an election that seemed to them already won. Meanwhile, the opposition mobilized powerfully.

    One may see the social process in Venezuela as a slow progression of pacification in internal relations after centuries of a colonial economy and of domination by a white caste. Here at the very least is a revolution that does not shed blood.... Something to make more than a few afraid!

    Discomfited Savonarola

    Who, in fact, is the loser? Hugo Chavez lost the referendum, that's undeniable, and, fundamentally, that's not a serious problem for him or for his country. But his detractors in the North are chagrined. A radical left in power is not necessarily a dictatorship! This electoral demonstration embarrasses those who profess an unshakable faith in a neo-conservative vision of the world.

    The "neo-cons" have, in fact, the air of a discomfited Savonarola. According to them, there can be no critical support for Chavez, whom they don't hesitate to compare to and amalgamate with Ahmadinejad (on the basis of the industrial agreements signed between Iran and Venezuela), "explaining" this way that Chavez is anti-Semitic (consequently Nazi). By this means, anyone who supports the Venezuelan Left or criticizes American hyperpower becomes a Nazi who more or less acknowledges the same....

    This Manichean vision of the world professed by former leftists who have turned right (Andr Glucksmann in France, to name one), whose verbal violence leaves one stunned, must replace analysis and criticism. Analysis of the development of Latin America, this "Far West" that is joyously and proudly living out its defiance of the North. Criticism of the unhealthy and unconscious colonial relationship we still harbor here, in Europe, with the South.... The era of colonies is over. In the South, everyone knows it. In the North, people feign not to know....