Venezuela: divisions harden after Chavez victory

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 3, 2004 by Bart Jones

Yet Petkoff contends Chavez has made a major strategic blunder by flaunting his friendship with Castro, inciting mass panic in the moneyed classes that he plans to install a communist dictatorship even though he has no plans--or capacity--to do so, since the country would never accept it. The dictatorship allegation is a prominent theme in both Venezuelan and international news accounts of Chavez. "It's an irony that he has created all these fears with threats he hasn't carried out," Petkoff said.

He added that Chavez also has frightened and alienated the wealthy with his constant attacks, calling them "squalid ones" and a "rancid oligarchy."

Petkoff doesn't know if Chavez can reverse his sour relations with the elites and achieve a peaceful coexistence. He and other analysts believe Chavez should reach out to them after his victory and seek some form of dialogue and reconciliation, including with sectors such as the business community that are showing signs of accepting his triumph as valid. They say Chavez must realize that 40 percent of the population opposes him and his project, take them into account, tone down the anti-oligarch rhetoric, drop his autocratic tendencies and do a better job of listening to people who disagree with him.

Need to admit they lost

For its part, the opposition needs to recognize the reality that they lost overwhelmingly in the referendum, and that they are not the majority in the country. Many analysts believe the opposition also must renounce unconstitutional actions, commit itself to playing by democratic rules of the game, drop its wild accusations of a communist dictatorship, find new leadership and realize the poor majority can no longer be ignored.

National healing in Venezuela must include a commitment by the fiercely anti-Chavez and elite-controlled media--which many say have turned into political parties--to return to ethical journalism and present both sides of the Chavez story, analysts contend. "The media has created an irrational hatred" of Chavez with its 24-hours-a-day bombardment of harsh, mocking and often false attacks, said Matos.

Critics such as Lander and Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington believe the international media has followed suit, sending around the world a distorted image of Chavez as a dictator and a monster and ignoring or downplaying the story of why he enjoys widespread support. Before the referendum most of the media reported that the vote was too close to call, even though many independent observers, pollsters and even Wall Street analysts were predicting a Chavez win.

The international media "is presenting day after day grotesque distortions of what is happening in Venezuela," Lander said.

What seems clear in the wake of Chavez's stunning victory is that there will be no fundamental retreat in his "Bolivarian Revolution." As he stood on the second-floor balcony of Miraflores Palace as dawn neared Aug. 16, he addressed a throng of cheering supporters after his triumph--his eighth at the polls since 1998 and one of his most important. "Venezuela has changed forever. There is no turning back," Chavez said. "The country will never return to that false democracy of the past where elites ruled."