Venezuelan Strike Reflects Growing Rejection of Chávez

  
On December 10, businessmen, workers and ordinary citizens showed their growing dissatisfaction with President Hugo Chávez by participating in a one-day strike. The immediate cause was the expanded powers granted to Chávez by the National Assembly (in blatant disregard of the constitution, critics charged) a few weeks earlier, which culminated in a series of 49 presidential decrees.

Chávez used his new legislative powers to impose a controversial and openly authoritarian reform package. The most objectionable provisions concern hydrocarbons, land rights, fishing, government records and coastal areas. Opponents call the measures "the most extensive confiscation of property in the modern history of Venezuela." They argue that the presidential decrees threaten the basic concept of private property by limiting investment in the strategic hydrocarbon sector and the development of river and coastal areas.

In contrast, Chávez defends the reforms as ensuring greater justice for the poor. "Now more than ever, we are going to accelerate the implementation of the laws we have approved," he announced on the day of the strike. "The oligarchs want us to eliminate the reforms, so they must be applied swiftly."

The strike was called by Fedecámaras, a business organization that represents the companies responsible for 90% of Venezuela's economic output. It was backed by the Venezuelan Workers' Confederation (CTV) and press organizations. Venezuela's largest newspapers, El Nacional and El Universal, did not circulate on the day of the strike, and according to some estimates, labor activity in general ceased by 90% across the country.

Days before the strike, Chávez had announced that "no one can shut down Venezuela." He tried to play down the incident by putting the blame squarely on his favorite target, the so-called oligarchy. "It's easy to hide behind fancy curtains to defend individualism and immorality," he charged, and urged his supporters to "take to the streets." But the day after the work stoppage, the front page of El Nacional declared, "Venezuela Has Spoken." The president of Fedecámaras, Pedro Carmona, claimed that "civil society has reacted and expressed itself; we are witnessing the birth of a new Venezuela that wants a true democracy and a correction of its course. Correct it, Mr. President!"

Assessments of the strike's impact range from predictions that Chávez's confrontational politics are leading him inexorably toward collapse, to assurances that its effects have done nothing to discourage him. Political scientist Angel Ivarez and historian Samuel Moncada are among those who claim that if the administration does not heed the strike's message a tug of war will continue with business and labor interests, making it impossible to govern effectively. And in an interview with the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, the former president of the Acción Democrática Party, Humberto Celli, interpreted the strike as a clear sign that "Chávez is losing the street and has already lost Caracas. People aren't afraid of him anymore, and that's the worst thing that could happen to a president."

El Tiempo itself ran an editorial arguing that "in the space of a few weeks, Hugo Chávez's political situation has shifted 180 degrees. The charismatic caudillo, who swept seven elections in two years, destroyed traditional political parties, changed the constitution and founded a Fifth Republic, is today the subject of bets as to how long he can stay in power." These sentiments were echoed in other influential newspapers; Argentina's Clarín pointed out that "three years after winning elections with 56% of the vote, the president-still the same lieutenant colonel who led the coup attempt of 1992-faces a crisis of governability in which Venezuelans have resorted to open and flagrant civil disobedience."

Chávez complains that conspirators are plotting to topple his government, but for the organizers of the civic action on December 10, the picture is quite different. As an editorial in El Nacional put it, the question is "whether the president himself is guilty of conspiring, not just in past but now, to destroy democracy step by step, trample the rights enshrined in the constitution, persecute the middle class, weaken and discredit the armed forces, increase poverty, sink the economy and leave society defenseless in the face of delinquency. This conspiracy was born from the power and incompetence of he who wields it, turning our hopes into a graveyard."

On December 10, Venezuelan society mobilized peacefully and overwhelmingly in favor of democracy, and Chávez was not pleased.