Hugo Chavez and the Limits of Democracy

By Moisés Naím

Originally published in The New York Times, on March 5, 2003

For decades Venezuela was a backwater, uninteresting to the outside world. It could not compete for international attention with nearby countries where superpowers staged proxy wars, or where military juntas "disappeared" thousands of opponents, or where the economy regularly crashed. Venezuela was stable. Its oil fueled an economy that enjoyed the world's highest growth rate from 1950 to 1980 and it boasted a higher per-capita income than Spain from 1928 to 1984. Venezuela was one of the longest-lived democracies in Latin America.

Venezuela is no longer boring. It has become a nightmare for its people and a threat not just to its neighbors but to the United States and even Europe. A strike in its oil industry has contributed to a rise in gasoline prices at the worst possible time. Hasil Muhammad Rahaham-Alan, a Venezuelan citizen, was detained last month at a London airport as he arrived from Caracas carrying a hand grenade in his luggage. A week later, President Hugo Chávez praised the arrest orders of two opposition leaders who had been instrumental in organizing the strike, saying they "should have been jailed a long time ago." Mr. Chávez has helped to create an environment where stateless international networks whose business is terror, guns or drugs feel at home.

Venezuela has also become a laboratory where the accepted wisdom of the 1990's is being tested - and often discredited. The first tenet to fall is the belief that the United States has almost unlimited influence in South America. As one of its main oil suppliers and a close neighbor has careened out of control, America has been a conspicuously inconsequential bystander.

And it is not just the United States. The United Nations, agencies like the Organization of American States and the International Monetary Fund, or the international press - all have stood by and watched. In the 1990's there was a hope that these institutions could prevent, or at least contain, some of the ugly malignancies that lead nations to self-destruct.

Instead, the most influential foreign influence in Venezuela is from the 1960's: Fidel Castro. The marriage of convenience between Cuba and Venezuela is rooted in the close personal relationship between the two leaders, with Mr. Castro playing the role of mentor to his younger Venezuelan admirer. Cuba desperately needs Venezuelan oil, while the Chávez administration depends on Cuba's experience in staging, managing or repressing political turmoil.

Another belief of the 1990's was that global economic forces would force democratically elected leaders to pursue responsible economic policies. Yet Mr. Chávez, a democratically elected president, has been willing to tolerate international economic isolation - with disastrous results for Venezuela's poor - in exchange for greater power at home.

The 21st century was not supposed to engender a Latin American president with a red beret. Instead of obsessing about luring private capital, he scares it away. Rather than strengthening ties with the United States, he befriends Cuba. Such behavior was supposed to have been made obsolete by the democratization, economic deregulation and globalization of the 1990's.

Venezuela is an improbable country to have fallen into this political abyss. It is vast, wealthy, relatively modern and cosmopolitan, with a strong private sector and a homogeneous mixed-race population with little history of conflict. Democracy was supposed to have prevented its decline into a failed state. Yet once President Chávez gained control over the government, his rule became exclusionary and profoundly undemocratic.

Under Mr. Chávez, Venezuela is a powerful reminder that elections are necessary but not sufficient for democracy, and that even longstanding democracies can unravel overnight. A government's legitimacy flows not only from the ballot box but also from the way it conducts itself. Accountability and institutional restraints and balances are needed.

The international community became adept at monitoring elections and ensuring their legitimacy in the 1990's. The Venezuelan experience illustrates the urgency of setting up equally effective mechanisms to validate a government's practices.

The often stealthy transgressions of Mr. Chávez have unleashed a powerful expression of what is perhaps the only trend of the 1990's still visible in Venezuela: civil society. In today's Venezuela millions of once politically indifferent citizens stage almost daily marches and rallies larger than those that forced the early resignations of other democratically presidents around the world.

This is not a traditional opposition movement. It is an inchoate network of people from all social classes and walks of life, who are organized in loosely coordinated units and who do not have any other ambition than to stop a president who has made their country unlivable. Two out of three Venezuelans living under the poverty line oppose President Chávez, according to a Venezuelan survey released in January.

This amorphous movement is new to politics and vulnerable to manipulation by traditional politicians and interest groups. For example, last year a military faction took advantage of a huge but civil anti-Chávez march and staged a coup that ousted the president for almost two days. By rejecting the antidemocratic measures adopted by the would-be new president, the leader of a business association, the movement helped bring about his quick downfall.

Today the Venezuelan opposition consists of several factions, some of which have participated in talks with the government. Yet it is a mistake to equate these formal bodies with the widespread and largely leaderless, self-organizing movement that has emerged in Venezuela. Many foreign observers discount the opposition as mostly rich or middle class, a coup-prone coalition of opportunistic politicians.

No doubt some protesters fit this ugly profile. Nor is there any doubt that the Venezuelan opposition is clumsy and prone to blunders. Still, it has helped millions of Venezuelans awaken to the fact that for too many years they have been mere inhabitants of their own country. Now they demand to be citizens, and feel they have the right to oust through democratic means a president who has wrought havoc on their country.

It is a measure of Venezuela's toxic political climate that even though the constitution allows for early elections, and even though President Chávez has promised that he will abide by this provision, the great majority of Venezuelans don't believe him. They are convinced that in August, when the constitution contemplates a referendum on the president, the government will resort to delaying tactics and dirty tricks. With international attention elsewhere, Mr. Chávez will use his power to forestall an election and ignore the constitution.

Venezuela's citizens have been heroically peaceful and civil in their quest. All they ask is that they be given a chance to vote. The world should do its best to ensure that they have that opportunity.

Moisés Naím, minister of trade and industry of Venezuela from 1989 to 1990, is editor of Foreign Policy magazine.