12-27-06, 11:00 a.m.

(The following article is from the January 1-15, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 173 West Ave. North, Hamilton, ON, L8L 5C7.)

By the Vancouver Bureau of People's Voice:

With most of the votes counted, Hugo Chavez has won Venezuela's Dec. 3 presidential elections with 7,161,637 votes (62.89% of the total), against 4,196,329 votes (36.85%) for his right-wing rival, Manuel Rosales. A total of 14 candidates competed, supported by 79 parties, 24 of which supported Chavez, and 43 of which backed Rosales. No other candidate received over 1% of the vote. Chavez begins his second six-year term in February.

Over 11.3 million people went to the polls, or 74.87% of registered voters, compared to the 69.92% turnout in the recall referendum of August 2004. The results confirm the defeat of the 'abstention' strategy promoted by opposition groups such as the near-defunct Accion Democratica (AD), which dominated Venezuelan political life for nearly 40 years. Instead, the tendency towards growing political apathy among Venezuelans has been reversed.

Although the campaign fell short of its initial goals, the votes for Chavez were up more than a million over the 2004 recall referendum. In percentage terms, support for Chavez rose by 3.8% over 2004, when 58.09% of voters cast ballots against recall of the president. Pro-Chavez forces even made inroads into the country's 'middle class' voters, and the president won a majority in all of the country's 24 states, including oil-rich Zulia, where Rosales is governor.

The U.S.-based polling company Penn, Schoen & Berland, which had been involved in elections in Ukraine, Serbia, and Belarus, was one of three opposition-linked firms that predicted a 'dead heat' between Chavez and Rosales, even though all other polls gave Chavez a wide lead. But for the first time in a number of years, the opposition candidate accepted defeat. Although Rosales disputed the vote margin, the outcome silenced calls by the privately-owned channel Globovision and other corporate media for voters to take the streets to overturn a so-called 'rigged' election.

In 2005, even though their conditions for participation were met, opposition candidates withdrew from parliamentary elections, allowing the coalition of governing parties - the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR, founded by Chavez), For Social Democracy (PODEMOS), Homeland for All (PPT), and the Communist Party of Venezuela - to win every seat in the National Assembly.

Such a boycott had been considered this time, but the war in Iraq and other events have left the US administration, the major backer of the opposition, in a much weaker position. Barring a new shift in the balance of forces, Venezuela's far right may grow more isolated, replaced by an 'institutional' opposition which accepts that the chances to directly overthrow Chavez are slim.

Now the question arises: What does the future hold for the Bolivarian Revolution?

In his victory speech, Chavez declared a 'battle against the bureaucratic counter-revolution and corruption' - the purging of corrupt officials, and the deepening of participatory democracy through the transfer of powers to the newly-created Communal Councils and popular organizations, as well as increased worker co-management, and the development of co-ops and other 'social production enterprises.' This battle will undoubtedly sharpen confrontations with bureaucrats who have found many ways to slow down the pace of radical change.

Such resistance has led the Chavista forces to create parallel bodies, including the social 'missions' which are now the main instrument for carrying out progressive social policies at the grassroots level. The radical view of the missions as tools for a fundamental transformation of society and the state in the direction of 'twenty-first century socialism' is gaining ground.

Already, wealth redistribution is underway. The minimum wage has risen 327% under Chavez, to about $250 a month. When he came to power in 1999, 55.4% of Venezuelans were considered poor; now they are 39.7%. More people are working in the formal economy than in the informal. According to the United Nations Development Program, Venezuela has climbed to 72nd place in global human development levels.

But an even more basic problem remains - private ownership of most of the wealth-producing sectors, with the key exception of the petrochemical industry. As Marxist observers have pointed out, until this contradiction is resolved, Venezuela will remain a capitalist society in terms of ownership and social structure.

Other topics are now also coming to the fore: the proposal by Chavez to create a unified 'party of the revolution,' and possible revisions of the constitution, such as removing term limits for the office of President.

The first proposal would unite the MVR, PODEMOS, PPT, and the Venezuelan Communist Party, with the goal of creating a stronger revolutionary leadership. Such a process following the Cuban Revolution brought together Fidel Castro's July 26th Movement, the radical Student Directorate organization and the Popular Socialist Party (Cuba's historic communists) in 1965 to form the Communist Party of Cuba, a strongly-united vanguard party which has led Cuba for over forty years.

However, there have less successful unifications in other countries, including cases where the reformist views of some participating forces became the basis of unity, weakening the drive for fundamental change. There has been no indication of the possible terms of unity, but clearly, the aim of President Chavez is to strengthen the struggle for genuine socialist transformation.

Cuba faced the imminent prospect of a Yankee invasion during the early 1960s, and repeated attempts by U.S. administrations to destabilize the Revolution ever since, making one-party unity imperative. But in Venezuela, despite the alarmed cries of the private media, a unity process would not affect the opposition or pro-Chavez parties which prefer to remain independent. The Trotskyist Party of the Revolution and Socialism (PRS) for example, which leads one current within the National Workers' Union (UNT), has declared its desire to remain autonomous. Unlike other pro-Chavez parties, the PRS abstained in the Dec. 3 elections.

The unity process, some have argued, would strengthen the formation of a mid-level revolutionary political leadership, reducing dependence on the charisma of Chavez himself, and forcing bureaucrats and careerists to choose between the revolution and the opposition.

The term-limit debate would be part of a process of wide constitutional review throughout the country, with the results filtered through a two-thirds vote in the National Assembly and a simple majority in a popular referendum.

(Some background for this analysis is from an article by José Laguarta Ramirez, which appeared on the website http://www.venezuelanalysis.com)

From People's Voice