Venezuelan Pulls Off Revolution at the Polls
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
ARACAS, Venezuela -- With his landslide victory Sunday securing his place
as the next
president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias might have been expected to smooth
over the
tracks of his
first attempt to storm the presidential palace here, in 1992, in case other
revolutionaries
got the same
idea.
Instead, he highlighted
the failed coup, along with the day he left prison two years later. "What
we're
living through
in Venezuela is the continuation of February 4, 1992," Chavez told crowds
of euphoric
supporters,
many sporting his trademark military-style red beret, who had turned out
to revel in the
triumph of the
man they call "El Commandante."
There was good
reason for Chavez to celebrate the doomed revolt. For the 44-year-old former
paratrooper,
the coup forged his credentials as the undeniable outsider, whose day would
come as
Venezuela's
economy sank deeper and its people grew more doubtful of the traditional
ruling class.
Chavez's victory
has opened not so much a new page, as a new tome, in Venezuelan politics.
At a
time when the
rest of Latin America has been moving largely toward streamlining the role
of
government and
selling off state assets, Chavez speaks of subordinating the state oil
company,
Petroleos de
Venezuela, to domestic priorities, and asks whether $9 billion earmarked
for
operations and
investment by the oil company should not go to shore up decaying schools
and
hospitals instead.
Chavez soared
to victory on fiery rhetoric that promised fry the heads of traditional
political bosses
but he immediately
soften his message upon victory to persuade investors that Venezuela was
still
safe for them.
On Tuesday, in
the first day of trading after the election, the tiny Caracas stock exchange
jumped a
record 22 percent
and the currency strengthened against the dollar after a long slide.
Though Chavez
failed to overthrow former President Carlos Andres Perez, the coup succeeded
in
other ways:
it took the place of party machinery and war chests, celebrity endorsements
and hours
of campaign
ads.
Even as he languished
in prison, the mystique grew of the restless lieutenant colonel condemned
for
trying to destroy
a system that many Venezuelans recognized as rotted but felt powerless
to remedy.
"He was seen as someone who told the truth about the system," said one diplomatic analyst.
In 1994, after
President Rafael Caldera freed Chavez -- in a bid to deflate the commandante's
swelling popularity
-- Chavez created his Fifth Bolivarian Movement and began taking his war
on
corruption to
the hinterlands.
The son of school
teachers who grew up poor in the state of Barinas, he surrounded himself
with a
contradictory
klatch of right-wing nationalists from the military and other figures hailing
from the left.
With such an
odd mix, some political analysts thought he would go nowhere. Last December,
opinion polls
showed him with less than 12 percent support among likely voters. But slowly,
perhaps
even unconsciously,
his red-bereted image was moving in from the fringes, to dominate the political
scene.
"What people
hadn't counted on was the real depth of disgust Venezuelans had for traditional
politics," said
the diplomat.
The colonel also
benefited from a souring economy and a beauty queen's mistakes. Until last
spring,
Irene Saez,
a former Miss Universe, had been leading in voter surveys, peaking at 35.7
percent to
Chavez's 20.6
percent. Then the price of oil, which underpins Venezuela's entire economy,
fell
steeply.
"We went from
an optimistic country to a pessimistic one, with expectations that things
will get
worse," said
Luis Vicente Leon, director of the Datanalysis polling agency. The following
month,
Miss Saez accepted
a luke warm endorsement from one of the two traditional parties. The backing
compromised
her claims to being an outsider and her popularity ratings slid into the
single digits.
Next, it was
the turn of Henrique Salas Roemer, a former governor of Carabobo State,
educated at
Yale. Salas,
62, climbed aboard a white horse, called Frijolito, or Little Bean, for
campaign rallies.
But his claims
to being a warrior for the people also weakened with a last-minute endorsement
from
the major parties.
Salas rode Frijolito through the streets of Caracas for his final rally.
Indeed, in the
final vote, Chavez, who was frequently criticized for altering his positions
depending
on his audiences,
succeeded in capturing some 40 percent of the upper and middle-class vote,
on
top of his bedrock
support among the poor, said Leon.
Chavez plans
to hold a referendum Feb. 15 to rewrite the Constitution, which some political
opponents fear
could be a mechanism for concentrating power in his office.
While Chavez
gives voice -- and a roaring one at that -- to Venezuela's downtrodden,
some fear
that populist
economic policies will set the clock back here.
Chavez spoke
out against privatizing health care, which he called "the right of all
Venezuelans," and
has raised the
prospect of a debt moratorium or a grace period for foreign debt, which
he said
amounts to 40
percent of the national budget. He has vowed to raise the minimum wage
of just
under $200 a
month, which covers only half the cost of the standard food basket for
a family's
minimal nutritional
needs.
"As president,
he's going to try to deliver on his campaign promises," said Robert Bottome,
a
publisher of
VenEconomy newsletters, "The economy will go into a big tailspin and then
the question
is, what does
he do?"