VENEZUELA-POLITICS: Andres Perez Stages Comeback

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Marquez

CARACAS, Sep 5 1996 (IPS) - Former President Carlos Andres Perez, his long career shaken by scandal, has bounced back off the ropes into the political arena with his sights set on a seat in the Senate in 1998.

The 73-yea-old Perez has been under house arrest since May 1994, but will regain his freedom at midnight on September 18.

Perez has given every indication of taking up a leading opposition role to the government of President Rafael Caldera, an 80-year-old independent Social Democrat, who has been in power since February 1994.

It will be an institutional opposition. Tried for the irregular use of 17 million dollars in 1989 – part of which allegedly went to aid Nicaragua – Perez was removed from office in 1992 after quelling two brutal military uprisings.

The trial concluded in May 1996, when the Supreme Court of Justice sentenced him to two years and four months of house arrest (people aged more than 70 are not required to do jail time) for misuse of the funds, but it did not bar him from politics. He was also acquitted of illegal appropriation charges.

Now Perez is giving interviews to the media. His photo has appeared on the front pages of newspapers, and his opinion is sought by political pundits. The phones at his home have been ringing off the hook and delegations from small towns arrive and declare him their “adoptive son.”

Perez is always in casual clothes, like he wore during his presidential campaigns in 1973 and 1988. His supporters are preparing a campaign trip to the Andes, where he will be a candidate for the Senate in 1998.

Perez “did not run away, he confronted a serious situation in a courageous way, which people do not forget. Many people will accompany him,” predicted Juan Jose Delpino. As a fellow social democrat, Delpino considers himself a colleague of Perez, but as a union leader, they have always been bitter rivals.

“I believe that my presence here is a revindication of politicians,” said Perez, explaining why he stayed in the country instead of fleeing, like in so many other cases of politicians who have been accused of similar deeds. “I am satisfied to have fulfilled my duties as a citizen and as a Latin American.”

The former president has received popular recognition in numeros public opinion polls due to the perceived failure of Caldera’s economic policies.

In April, Caldera adopted a neo-liberal adjustment program even more severe than the one applied by Perez himself in 1989. As a result there has been a decline in the purchasing power of the population, 84 percent of which lives in poverty, according to a privately-funded social study.

Perez’s return to the political scene coincides with a current annual inflation rate of 77 percent, which projected annually would reach 115 percent, according to official statistics. This is considered fertile territory for political opposition.

Perez’s returen to the political scene raises qestions for the is Accion Democratica (AD) party as it begins its own campaign for the 1998 elections. The party expelled Perez him and purged his supporters when he was ousted from office but Perez now says he is s committed to “rescuing the AD from the leadership that has been holding it hostage.”

“That is my first priority,” Perez said recently.

He has made it clear that he woild not seek the presidential candidacy (he could only do so in 2003 whe he would be at 81-years- old), nor the leadership of Accion Democtratica, but rather “rescue it” and renew it. If he fails, he has said he will create a new political movement.

Henry Ramos, head of the AD’s Parliamentary group, has assured that no matter what the former president does, “he will not divide AD.”

Perez, a member of AD since its foundation in 1941, became the president as the party’s leader in 1974. He governed the country in the midst of the oil boom until 1979. In 1980, his political almost came to an end as the result of a scandal involving an alleged irregular purchase of a refrigerator ship. Perez managed to re-emerge from several other setbacks and even advance his career – sch as becoming Vice President of Socialist International.

In 1985, he suffered a reversal of fortunes in the internal elections within the AD, but two years later was chosen as the party’s presidential candidate. That was when the phrase “rain and clearance” became popular.

Elected president for the period between 1989-1994, it was at the beginning of that mandate that a week of disorder and rioting – known as the Caracazo – left hundreds of people dead, but did not change the direction of the neo-liberal program for the economy on which Perez had embarked.

On February 4th 1992, army units attempted a coup, which failed but sparked a crisis within government, stalling the economic program and shaking the country’s political structures.

Another coup occurred on November 27, this time led by the Air Force, after which Perez was brought to trial and he was forced to step down.

The rain became a downpour in 1993 when Caldera – a historical rival who left his party, the COPEI, to become a “supra-party” candidate — won the elections in December of that year.

Perez’s popularity began to decline with the Caracazo. It further deteriorated with his severe adjustment program, and fell drastically during the political-military crisis of 1992-1994. But that tendency was already reverting itself when the Court issued its sentence in May of this year.

Now, with the winds in his favor, Perez is returning to political activity, with no sign of retiring. Indeed, he is following yet another of his phrases: “I will have time to rest in my other life.”