The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy (15 page)

Chávez and Baduel had made their 1982 pact at the beginning of what became two “lost decades” for Venezuela.
By 1998, Venezuela’s per capita GDP had spiraled down by an incredible 21 percent.
Two-thirds of the country’s banks had collapsed. Unemployment had more than doubled since 1980.
More than 50 percent of the population was poverty-stricken, and nearly 30 percent were living in extreme poverty. No one could argue with the fact that Venezuela’s political parties had failed the country. So, not surprisingly, the people gave up on the parties and the politicians who led them.
In one survey, on the eve of the 1998 presidential elections, 70 percent of the poor and 84 percent of the wealthy believed political parties created more problems than solutions. Sixty-three percent of the poor and 58 percent of the wealthy said they served no purpose at all. Such a climate was tailored perfectly for a candidate who could credibly claim to be a political outsider. That man was Hugo Chávez.

Chávez should be understood, first and foremost, as a consequence. Venezuela’s democracy failed its people over two decades, opening the door for the candidate who could most convincingly promise to kill the old political order. That is how Chávez got his
chance. But if you want to understand how he chose to capitalize on it, explains the Venezuelan businessman Alfredo Croes, then
you need to understand A, B, C, D, and E. These five letters signify the five socioeconomic classes, as measured by the government, of the people of Venezuela. If you live in Chacao, have a nice three- or four-bedroom apartment, and send one of your kids to the United States for school, then you probably belong to A. Altogether, only 3 percent of the population—the country’s elites—belong to A and B combined. The dwindling number of people who fall into C—Venezuela’s middle class—make up 18 percent of the population. The rest are either D or E. The poor and the extremely poor make up 37 percent and 42 percent of the population, respectively. “
For the first twenty years of Venezuelan democracy,” says Croes, “people had a chance to advance themselves. In the second twenty years, all that was forgotten. D and E were left behind.”

I met Croes in the offices of his business supply company, on the east side of Caracas. Ten years earlier, he and five other Venezuelan businessmen decided to establish a small strategic cooperative called the Grupo La Colina. All run their own businesses or have retired from successful companies, but they donate their time to the effort to bolster opposition to Chávez’s government. The afternoon I walked into his office, Croes was analyzing spreadsheets and projections for the upcoming legislative elections, pinpointing the best places for the opposition parties to field candidates.

Political objectivity is in short supply in Venezuela, and many of Chávez’s critics find it impossible to say anything positive about the man. Not Croes. He has a grudging respect for Chávez the political strategist. The failings of Chávez’s predecessors may have created the opening, but Chávez proved himself capable of seizing the populist opportunity they handed him. And he is much more than a populist, says Croes. “In the case of Chávez, he did something brilliant. He understood better than anyone that the segment of the country known as D and E were nearly 80 percent of the country,” says Croes. “For the first five years, he spoke only
to
the D and E. Then, for the next five years, he spoke
for
D and E.”

It’s an enormously important point. For the first half of Chávez’s rule, he gained the support, trust, and fealty of the country’s desperate majority. After so many years of neglect, his attention was understandably
intoxicating for them. But the genius is in what Chávez did with his newfound following. With the bond forged, Chávez could then turn that support into a weapon to bludgeon those who stood in his way. At first, D and E were his audience; then they became his recruits. “They feel themselves represented in Chávez,” says Croes. “Some Chavistas are now more Chavista than Chávez.”

Chávez’s primary political strategy is, in essence, leading Venezuela against itself. Having won the support of a segment of the population, he actively champions them against the rest. Although he came to power through democratic means, his main idea is not democratic; instead, he proposes revolution. In a democracy, differences are expected. Chávez begins with a single answer, and those who question, criticize, or oppose him are “traitors,” “criminals,” “oligarchs,” “mafia,” and “lackeys of the United States.” Although he originally promised to break the political parties in order to return power to the people, Chávez has centralized nearly all power in his own hands. Today, he controls every branch of government, the armed forces, the central bank, the state-owned oil company, most radio and television channels, and any segment of the private sector he chooses to expropriate. Authoritarian leaders typically rationalize their rule by pointing to foreign enemies and threats; Chávez gives equal time to looking for enemies within Venezuela. In many ways,
his approach is the inverse of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Where Putin manages a carefully choreographed process intended to maintain order and stability, Chávez courts chaos and promotes division. His rhetoric, policies, and actions have made Venezuela more polarized than at any time in its history, injecting an almost Manichaean political struggle into all aspects of everyday life. “
This is not Cuba. This is not the Soviet Union … for now,” says Teodoro Petkoff, a prominent Chávez critic and the editor of the opposition paper
Tal Cual
. “This is a much more sophisticated regime than the past regimes of repression. But why can it be sophisticated? Because he has had deep and vast popular support. And that is a very important difference with some other regimes of this kind.”

Venezuela is not the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union. It is not nearly as repressive as Fidel Castro’s Cuba. There have been no massive human rights abuses. Dissidents do not face the firing squad, and enemies of the state are not “disappeared” in the night. Despite his brash and outlandish speeches, Chávez’s rule is far subtler than
such heavy-handed regimes. Instead, he effectively took the remnants of the imperfect democracy that elected him and twisted them into tools to perpetuate his power. If Chávez were just a populist, he would be reminiscent of many other Latin American leaders before him. But he married his populist origins to an autocratic scheme that concentrates power and reduces democracy to nothing more than the ballots people cast on Election Day. It is the use of a system to destroy a system, a democracy to destroy democracy. As Virginia Rivero, a political organizer, asked me plaintively, “
What happens to a society when a democratically elected president rules in an antidemocratic way?” Venezuelans have been living the answer to that question for more than a decade.

In 1998, ahead of the upcoming presidential election, Maruja Tarre invited Hugo Chávez and the other presidential candidates to Simón Bolívar University to speak to the students on oil policy. Tarre, a former diplomat and longtime professor at the university, had invited Chávez to come speak to her classes several times since he had been released from prison for leading the failed military coup. The Simón Bolívar event was the only time that all the candidates spoke at a single venue during the 1998 presidential campaign. The university’s auditorium holds eleven hundred people; it was full, standing room only, with more people lined up outside. Tarre remembers it as an awkward, somewhat unpleasant occasion. “
I was very embarrassed because people booed him in an awful, awful way,” recalled Tarre. “I tried to calm the students, but it was impossible.”

Standing at the podium, in front of the students and university community, candidate Chávez was clearly incensed at how the students had received him. It was then that Tarre heard something that took her aback. Speaking away from the microphone, Chávez muttered, “You are booing me, but I will be in power and you will accommodate me.” Tarre was stunned. As uncomfortable as the event had become, she expected Chávez to just brush it off, to make some joke to minimize the impact of the students’ rudeness. After all, they were just university students. Instead, Chávez’s words gave her a chill. “I
was the only one who heard him. It was not on the microphone,” she remembers. “That for me was a shock.”

Few people knew precisely what to expect from Chávez after he won the December presidential elections. For all of the criticism he heaped on the political order as it existed, his campaign had been short on specifics of what he would do once in power. He did not begin by introducing new economic policies to shore up the faltering economy. He did not start by addressing poverty, crime, or education. Instead, he began by calling for a new constitution. (During his swearing in, Chávez had unexpectedly inserted the words “on this dying constitution” as he recited the oath of office.) Buoyed by his high approval ratings at the beginning of his term, Chávez succeeded in forming a new assembly to rewrite the constitution within the space of a few months. In a tactic that would soon become familiar,
his supporters carefully drew up electoral rules that allowed Chávez to control 93 percent of the seats in this new body with only 53 percent of the votes. His solid command of the assembly delivered Chávez what he sought: a vast expansion of presidential powers.

Under the new constitution, the presidential term of office grew from five to six years, with the possibility of a second term. Chávez took full control of all promotions within the armed forces. The Senate was dissolved, leaving the legislature with a single chamber. Public financing for political parties was outlawed. Chávez also took advantage of this moment to stack the leadership of the National Electoral Council with loyalists. He apparently understood early that controlling the institution that organizes elections, administers voter registration, draws up the electoral maps, decides on the electoral rules, distributes the voting machines, and sets the date for elections would be crucial to consolidating power behind a democratic facade. Other offices—for example, the courts, attorney general, and the comptroller general—were soon under his sway as well. In less than two years, Chávez had full command over the government and unprecedented power for a Venezuelan president. This early period was emblematic of what was to come: the skilled manipulation of democratic processes to amass unchecked executive power. Far from expanding public participation in democracy, Chávez was proving how malleable a concept democracy could be.

The linchpin of Chávez’s authoritarianism has, somewhat paradoxically, always been elections. For most people, elections are the very essence of democracy. People are less likely to privilege constitutional protections, separation of powers, or other less tangible democratic rights over the ballot box. “
If the majority of people think democracy is voting,” says Luis Vicente León, one of Venezuela’s leading pollsters, “then they must think we are living in the best democracy in the world because we have never voted so much.” Indeed, many Venezuelans I spoke with could not tell me how many elections there have been since Chávez came to power. (Incredibly, if you include elections and national referendums, Venezuelans were called to the polls thirteen times in Chávez’s first eleven years.)

Elections are an important weapon in Chávez’s autocratic arsenal because, if properly conducted, they satisfy many of the prerequisites for furthering his rule. For starters, it is through elections and referendums that Chávez eliminated almost all checks and balances, creating an unaccountable government with extraordinary executive control. Further, no matter when you visit Venezuela, it is almost always election season. For a president looking to polarize the country into competing camps, it behooves him to create a permanent campaign environment. Such moments are an opportunity to transfer windfalls of cash and benefits to supporters, both inside and outside the government. Loyalists are rewarded, and enemies are punished in a feverish, ideologically driven movement that distracts people from many of the basic problems that plague them. And, of course, elections allow Chávez to renew his legitimacy, even as he radicalizes his agenda. “
Elections are not a threat for Chávez, they are a necessity,” says Eugenio Martínez, a reporter who covers the election beat for
El Universal
. “It is hard to accuse someone of being a dictator after so many elections.”

Many people would assume that any authoritarian ruler who held so many elections must simply be holding one sham contest after another. But that is not the case. Most people, including members of the opposition, believe that the election results reflect the will of the people. Of course, there are irregularities. But they are not the type of massive voter fraud or ballot stuffing you might expect. Chávez’s management of elections is far more nuanced than outright rigging, and
indeed it doesn’t even occur on the day when people turn up to vote. “
Election Day is not a problem,” a former member of the National Electoral Council told me. “All the damage—the use of money, goods, excess power, communications—happens beforehand.”

Elections in Venezuela are free, but they are far from fair, she explained. She was one of the many technocrats at the electoral council fired by Chávez. She claims she saw the institution quickly become subservient to the office of the president. While many highly competent professionals continue to work there—some of whom are sympathetic to the opposition—they report to department heads who are all loyal to Chávez. They, in turn, report to the institution’s five directors, four of whom are avowed Chavistas, even though they are supposed to be without party affiliations. “The National Electoral Council has no independence left,” she explained. “Before it was very transparent. It was very open.” Now it is the technical brain of a well-oiled machine designed to tilt the playing field in Chávez’s favor long before Election Day.

Once the country’s electoral monitoring body became politicized, there was no independent arbiter to prevent electoral abuses committed by a government that was already under the control of one man. While the new constitution had banned public financing for political parties, the prohibition was only applied against the opposition. Government ministries openly flouted the ban, pouring millions of dollars into pro-Chávez banners, leaflets, and billboards, as well as sending state employees to canvass for the president. Although the evidence is on every street corner, the National Electoral Council doesn’t say a word. According to Electoral Eye, an election watchdog group,
as much as 30 percent of Chávez’s February 2009 campaign to eliminate all term limits—opening the way for him to be president for life—was paid for by government ministries and public institutions.