VENEZUELA: Opposition Candidate to Try to Make Up for Lost Time

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Aug 9 2006 (IPS) - Opposition parties in Venezuela agreed Wednesday on a single presidential candidate, Governor Manuel Rosales of the oil-rich northwestern state of Zulia, who will take on the tough challenge of trying to unseat President Hugo Chávez in the Dec. 3 elections.

Rosales has just four months to try to shore up a badly weakened opposition movement against Chávez, who enjoys popularity ratings of 55 to 60 percent.

In a country that has seen long-drawn-out election campaigns, “four months looks like a very short time, but in Venezuela we are living in abnormal conditions, because of the political situation and the verbal violence that we have suffered,” Rosales recently told IPS.

Although Chávez is highly popular, poverty and discontent have not been eradicated in Venezuela, said the governor of Zulia, the country’s richest state, which is home to 3.5 million people out of a total population of 25 million.

Rosales was chosen as candidate when opinion polls showed him as the opposition leader best positioned to challenge Chávez, after nearly a dozen hopefuls presented their names two months ago. Indeed, the governor was the only one to win double-digit support in the polls.

Nine aspirants who were to take part in next Sunday’s primary elections organised by the opposition’s Súmate organisation – which has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), financed by the U.S. Congress – decided to pull out of the race, starting with Julio Borges, a young lawyer who belongs to the centre-right Justice First party.

Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the Venezuelan opposition newspaper Tal Cual – who was not planning on taking part in the primaries – already stepped aside last week.

A young businessman, Roberto Smith, who has hardly any support in the polls, did not join in the opposition accord and is still in the race, as is popular comedian Benjamín Rausseo, known as “El Conde del Guácharo”, who announced his bid for the presidency last week.

Petkoff, Rosales and Borges had agreed among themselves to support whoever had the highest poll ratings.

“This is a rebirth of politics,” said Petkoff, a former socialist. “This is the first time an agreement of this nature has emerged, led by politicians; this is not a candidate of the powers-that-be, nor of the media, but a candidate who has emerged as a result of rational politics.”

He added that Rosales’ candidacy “could allow the country’s political forces to begin to rebuild themselves, giving birth to others, reinvigorating some of the ones that already exist, and enabling politics to recover its rightful place.”

Since Chávez was elected in 1999, the country’s traditional political parties have all but collapsed.

Rosales, a 52-year-old former schoolteacher, city councillor, regional legislator and mayor of Maracaibo, the country’s second-largest city, has headed up a regional party, Un Nuevo Tiempo, since breaking in 1995 with the social democratic Democratic Action (AD) party, previously Venezuela’s leading political force.

Leopoldo Puchi, secretary-general of the small centre-left Movement to Socialism party, remarked to IPS that “in this new climate of unity, people’s lethargy, apathy and tendency towards abstention can be overcome.”

The main opposition parties withdrew as a bloc from last October’s legislative elections – in which they were set to make an extremely poor showing – complaining that the country’s electronic voting machines could record fingerprints allowing the authorities to know how a person voted, and charging that the electoral council was stacked in favour of Chávez.

The opposition candidates went ahead with their decision to pull out even though the fingerprinting feature was switched off.

International observers from the European Union and the Organisation of American States (OAS) declared Venezuela’s elections transparent and fair.

The opposition has frequently noted that voter turn-out in the parliamentary elections stood below 25 percent. But a high abstention rate was predicted even before the opposition decided to boycott the elections.

Puchi said Rosales should now reach out to the entire population, rather than just the traditional opposition supporters. “He should look towards dissatisfied people who have voted for the president in the past, and take them and their demands into account.”

Announcing the agreement that made him the opposition candidate, Rosales concentrated on social questions – which have been the main focus of the Chávez administration – and pledged that one-fifth of the country’s oil revenues would go to poor and middle-income families, thus boosting household income by 280 to 460 dollars a month.

In addition, he said, the jobless – the country’s unemployment rate stands at 13 percent – would receive an income equivalent to the minimum monthly wage of 230 dollars, while he offered funds for each family to build or purchase a home, or upgrade and repair their current dwellings.

“Social concerns will be the spinal column of our administration, because a country that is so rich in oil cannot have such a poor population,” said Rosales.

He announced that he would defend private property, but would also distribute urban and rural land to needy families.

With respect to foreign policy, Rosales said he would “maintain relations with all countries in accordance with our interests, rather than based on ideological reasons.” He added that “we must not bring international conflicts to our country.” Chávez said this week that Venezuela would likely break off ties with Israel, after the government recalled its charge d’affaires to Israel last week to protest that country’s military offensive in Lebanon.

The administration has also announced its plans to develop a “strategic alliance” with Iran, while it has pulled out of the Andean Community trade bloc (made up of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru) and joined Mercosur (Southern Common Market, comprised of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, the first three of which have left-leaning governments).

But Rosales has his job cut out for him. Economic growth stood above nine percent in the first quarter of the year, and Chávez is highly popular, largely because of the broad spectrum of social programmes he has created, ranging from a literacy drive that reportedly eradicated adult illiteracy to job training, microcredit and land redistribution programmes for the poor, and campaigns that have brought health care, including dental coverage, to slum neighbourhoods.

The Venezuelan government has not yet remarked on Rosales’ announcement that he would be the opposition candidate, partly because the president and his closest associates are busy with recent cabinet changes.

Chávez and his followers often point out that Rosales was among those who backed the short-lived April 2002 coup d’etat in which a group of generals currently exiled in Colombia and Pedro Carmona, the head of the main business association, overthrew the president for two days before he was reinstated by loyal troops and throngs of supporters.

Although Rosales faces legal action for supporting the coup, the national electoral council decided to allow him to register as a candidate, while he temporarily steps down from his post as governor.

And while the opposition is once again calling for cleaner elections, international observer missions sent by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, the OAS and the EU have failed to find any evidence of fraud in past elections.