Dec 03 2007
GUEST: Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade
Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today commentary is on Venezuela’s Referendum Defeat.
Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.
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Venezuela recently finished a process that the US and many developed countries can only dream of, which is a referendum where the people get to decided weather they approve or not of constitutional reforms and new laws. The constitutional reform was narrowly defeated (4.5 vs 4.3 million votes) in a referendum that counted with 64% of the electorate. Let’s put this within context. Last year Chavez was reelected to office with 7.3 million votes against 4.1 of the opposition. Notice that the opposition did not increase their representation nearly at all. It is clear that the opposition did not defeat the referendum, the abstentionism did. This is not surprising with the heavy campaign of fear mongering extremely well sponsored by US tax payers along with a very complex proposal that confused a lot of Chvez’a base constituency.
Unfortunately most information we get in the US about Venezuela comes right out of the corporate media, not only with the right wing spin but also fabrications. Then it may be taken by right wing media for further spinning or it may be taken by soft center outlets or “independent media” that take the corporate news by face value and try to spin it to the center or somewhat make sense of it. This is the main reason of the poor understanding that we see in this country about the reform, even among leftish and liberal groups. For instance, the reform included 69 articles out of which one talked about presidential term and term limits. The other 68 were about deep social and economic reform and even about national security. Unfortunately when coffee shop intellectuals try to understand them with poor base line information and their own bourgeoisie bias, the result is always misunderstanding. Very few of them have understood that the constitutional reforms hands the people far greater power to make their own decision and rule their own lives than we have seen in any democracy any where any time. Instead, when Starbucks-analyst comment it, they always say that it is about term limits and handing Chavez “over reaching greater power”. This happens to be exactly what the corporate media says in Venezuela.
Perhaps a very dramatic example of these mistaken analysis we can find in a recent editorial piece by Rahul Mahajan, Empire Notes. Judging by its content I could easily rename his piece as Imperial notes, since he repeated verbatim the line of the imperial media wants people to believe. In his piece we can see a lot of miss information that would not surprise me to see in an editorial of, say, NPR or CNN but I really expected the pundits from Pacifica to know better or at least to check their sources somehow.
Mr. Rahul shows the personal contempt against Chavez personality that we always find on the right wing media of Venezuela and the US. No harm there, emotions are free. However then Mr Rahul goes on discussing “anti democratic trends in Venezuela for several years” he cites examples of a “black list” of the people who signed asking for a referendum in 2004. Repeating word-by-word the propaganda of the right, Mr. Rahul says that this list was used to retaliate against the people who signed. Mr. Mahajan does not seem to know that such retaliations never existed and that the list of signatures is public under Venezuelan law. Everybody is free to check the people who is in that list. This is also a good thing because many people who did not sign appeared in the list (Venezuela right is well known for cheating in elections). Thanks to the public nature of this list, people that have not signed could see that their name were removed. This is something that is explicit in Venezuelan law. Unfortunately Mr. Mahajan did not bother confirming his sources and took the right wing spin as the truth. This is not the only time when Mr. Mahajan has bought with his soul the right wing propaganda, the reference to the discussion with the king Juan Carlos, as well as other references show that he has taken every bit the right wing says without questioning it and without wondering whether it is true.
Mr. Mahajan reading of the facts in Venezuela goes as far as saying that Chavez was being conciliatory after his defeat. I certainly do not know what gave him that idea. Chavez did accept the defeat in the referendum as was his duty as contender in a race, but he went as far as reminding them that they won very narrowly, and that their victory did not mean much. He continued saying that he had failed to pass the reform into law but it was still his presidential proposal, the one towards which he still wanted to direct the country. Last but not least, he used his famous “por ahora” (for now) recalling the last time he was defeated, in his unsuccessful coup de tat in 1992. After being imprisoned by the government he admits defeat and proffers a defiant “for now” vowing to return to try to change the government again. The “por ahora” phrase was used as a battle cry for his follower and lead eventually to the Bolivarian hurricane that has taken Venezuela in the last 9 years. What did Mr. Mahajan see conciliatory of this position? Again, it seems like he is not looking at the same Venezuela or Chavez that the Venezuelans are looking at, he seems to be looking at the imperial miss construction of the person.
I will not revise all the aspects that Mr Mahajan got wrong because they are too many but I need to revise another one in which shows how his position clearly serves the imperial line, although he might be an unwitting tool at this. He refers to an aspect of the reform that gives the president power to militarize regions of the country in case of need. He says that it is hard to imagine why would Chavez need such authority. It really reminisces of Donald Rumsfeld saying that he could not think of why Chavez needed to to buy Russian rifles and that Chavez was starting an arm race. In the case of Rumsfeld we could see the cynicism of the statement since he was part of Plan Balboa (a plan to invade Venezuela that some NATO countries were working on). In case of Mr. Muhajan it is probably sheer naiveté. Venezuela shares a very long border with Colombia that has been under a de facto civil war for almost 50 years. This civil war is largely sponsored by drug money and by tax payers dollars. Any one who is familiar with Latin American recent history and knows about the atrocities the paramilitaries have done in Colombia and all the brutality that the Contras unleashed in Central America during the 70s and 80s., it is painfully obvious that Venezuela may need to militarize some regions. There have been plenty of evidence of paramilitaries coming across the border tying to unleash violence and chaos in the country (part of the plan of ingovernability that the US has implemented to topple other presidents). This is clear and present danger that the Venezuelan people suffer may not be obvious to somebody discussion politics while he zips on a venti late but it does not make it not a necessity of the country. In fact if the US citizens did a better job in keeping their government under a shorter leash, and demanded that it abided by international laws, and respect human rights many countries would not need as much arms, weaponries or militarization.
The problems with the piece of Mr Muhajan goes far beyond being misinformed about Venezuela. In fact his naiveté reaches staggering levels when he says that “Venezuela needs a lot more democracy than the US”. This is an amazing statement not only because Venezuela has not only more democracy than the US but it also has a lot more democracy than many (most?) other countries in the world. He does not seem to know what the patriot act is, or how it was approved, and what it means for democracy and civil liberties. We just saw how a change for the constitution in Venezuela went through referendum of the whole country. How does it compare with a change in the law in the US such as the Patriot Act. that give the president “over reaching powers” above and beyond anybody’s peace of mind that was approved by a handful of people without reading it? One of the ways to measure democracy are by their freedom of their dissenters, not by the apathy of their conformers (this is somebody’s paraphrased quote). By looking at how wild and out of control the Venezuelan opposition is, it is hard to make the case that there is more democracy anywhere than in Venezuela. Furthermore, we just saw in the 2006 elections in the US that the people mandated the end of the war in Iraq. Neither the congress or the executive have paid any attention to this demand. How is that democratic? Who needs more democracy a country that goes in election all the time about all the issues and where elections are clear and transparent or a country that never have elections, where the result of the election are not respected and where the mandate of the electorate is ignored?
Mr. Mahajan says that after the attacks of democracy that Bush have done it does not affect the life of the American people. It is apparent that Mr. Mahajan believes that the assaults on democracy in the US are limited to the Bush administration (this is what any soft centrist, say Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would say). He does not seem to realize that the people of the US have been hoodwinked for more than 200 hundred years to the soft tyranny of representative democracy. Reading this may be a surprise to him who perhaps does not know about any other kind of democracy, perhaps he should learn one thing or two about the Bolivarian Revolution. However, the biggest evidence that he is following by the letter the imperial line is ignoring the suffering of all those millions of US citizens that have lost their houses for not having health insurance, or their jobs for the free trade deals. All this is consequence of the fact that the corporations have high jacked democracy in the country for many decades now. But Mr. Mahajan does not seem to think that democracy in the US needs to be improved, just what the empire wants him to believe. A passion tsao chai tea late please!
I normally don’t respond to things like this, which involve canned commentary adapted marginally so that it appears to be about what I have written, but really is not, done by people who impute all kinds of motives, ideological positions, lack of knowledge, etc., to me without being remotely familiar with my work. But, at Sonali’s request, a few comments.
First, the reflexive ad hominem attacks — “coffee shop intellectuals,” “Starbucks analyst,” etc., plus claims that I haven’t heard of the Patriot Act (does he suppose that I’ve written a weekly column for the past several years without ever opening a newspaper?) — should be ignored, except as evidence of a discursive style that is not only ineffective but characteristic of dogmatic sectarians. It is possible that, even though he throws in all this silly stuff, that his factual claims are correct.
Unfortunately, where his claims are correct they are mostly irrelevant, or do not support his analysis. And they are often wrong.
Had Mr. Rivas paid attention to my commentary, he would know that I objected to more than the one article regarding presidential term limits. Chavez also wanted to impose term limits on lesser officials, be able to declare and emergency and suspend certain civil rights, appoint officials who would normally be elected, have direct control over promotion of military officers; in other words, a whole raft of reforms designed to increase his personal political power and control over the structures of the state. This for a man who already has the power to rule by decree for 10 more months and a National Assembly that will pass anything he wants. This is anti-democratic, any way you look at it. Numerous left intellectuals who support Chavez much more than I do currently have also criticized him for “including” these measures along with various progressive social and economic reforms. I suspect, however, that these measures were the point of the constitutional reform, since some at least of the social and economic reforms could have been addressed by use of his decree power.
The black-list is well documented. It’s not simply that it has been a staple of mainstream news coverage; it is even admitted by the more honest and honorable Chavez supporters, like Greg Wilpert (see, for example, his article, “Chavez´s Venezuela and 21st Century Socialism”)
Rivas does seem to be correct that Chavez is not inclined to be conciliatory. Given his fairly graceful concession speech, I thought I would end on a hopeful note. Since then, he has returned to the kind of ugly, polarizing rhetoric that has become the norm for him lately. Telling those who voted against the referendum that they have won a “shit victory” is, how can I say this, not very statesmanlike. It is particularly incumbent on a head of state, especially one with so much power concentrated in his hands, to reach out to everyone and not to demonize people for exercising their democratic rights. Frankly, Chavez is more to blame for failure of the referendum than the oligarchy or the minuscule efforts of the United States (allegations in articles by James Petras and others refer to $8 million spent by the United States, not much compared to the resources the government poured in on the side of the referendum).
When I said Chavez was being conciliatory, by the way, I certainly didn’t mean that I thought he would give up his efforts to get term limits repealed.
As for US plans to invade Venezuela, while Chavez is understandably paranoid about it, a rational analysis suggests that it’s not going to happen, “Plan Balboa” notwithstanding. I don’t think we’ll be seeing the United States take on any more occupations in the near future; two is quite enough. This judgment is not a matter of naivete; anyone who has read my analysis of U.S. imperialism is well aware of that.
With regard to our being “hoodwinked” by the “soft tyranny of representative democracy,” it is clear that Mr. Rivas is not exactly experienced in op-ed writing (or in writing political commentaries for radio broadcast). You get about 700 words (or four minutes) and in general one theme. As it is, I push the envelope in terms of the number of themes that can be addressed. But I think it’s just a tad unreasonable for me to delve into the entire, history, politics, and sociology of the United States every time I want to write a commentary on something else entirely.
Last, a comment on sources. Chavez has been seen as an ideological threat for at least six years now, and as a result, especially in the first couple years of the century, mainstream newspapers reported as fact numerous canards. They also, without quite saying, it, tried to make him look like a dictator rather than an elected head of state with circumscribed powers. Later, as Chavez survived numerous attempts to overthrow him, for a time at least journalists made their peace with him and, embarrassed by, for example the New York Times’s support for the coup in 2002, began to do a fair amount of honest reporting. If Mr. Rivas read the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, he would have found numerous (often grudging) articles about use of oil wealth to increase services for the poor, about grassroots democracy, and about much more. Reporting from these sources is still not fully trustworthy as to facts, but commentary about Venezuela from various left sources is generally heavily spun as well. Reading both, checking to see whether a claim is (independently) repeated, seeing what good things critics say or what bad things supporters say, is necessary in order to evaluate things reasonably. I don’t pretend to be an expert on what’s going on in Venezuela, but before I write a commentary like this, I read what lots of experts are saying and weigh it according to what I read in the papers, what I know about these experts, how they have held up in the past when I subjected their analysis to independent scrutiny, and so on. I recommend the same to everyone who wants to understand what’s going on.
I do not respond to any attacks on Venezuela or on the revolutionary processes going on in South America when they come from the regular outlets of right wing propaganda but when the same unfiltered set of lies comes through Pacifica I feel I need to correct the mistakes since there are a lot of people who trust in Pacifica for their better news. Rahul is correct that I do not read the New York Times, the Washington Post any more than I pay attention to Fox News or write letters to Santa. All of them belong to the realm of fantasy and I stopped paying attention to them many years ago, except for casual amusement. On his own admissions, he bases his information on these sources that have been proven imperial tools not only about Chavez, recall that they are just as guilty as the Republican (and the Democratic) party in rallying support to the war in Iraq and they also have been just as bad to rally support against Iran. This is just to mention just two of the many evidence that these sources are full of imperial propaganda and are not to be trusted. Most of the problems from the piece of Mr. Mahajan come from his failure to notice all the deceptions from these media outlet.
First let me explain a common problem that the liberals of the country are having that perhaps helps understand some of the later trends
DISPLACEMENT BEHAVIOR
Displacement behavior is what happens to a person who is mad at his boss at work but does not feel he has the capacity to talk back to his boss and instead puts up with the boss’s abuses and unjust treatment. This man may come home and yell at his wife for no reason or kicks the dog that was not doing any thing wrong. He goes on and vents his frustration with his boss on his family and people that are actually on his side. That is what we see among liberal thinkers in the US that see the set of atrocities that is happening on their country but instead of taking action against their own government that is too powerful to take on, shy away from their real problem and instead keep pointing on other governments the problem that they have here in the US. The Bolivarian Revolution is such a fascinating process for any liberal thinker that it is often targeted by these frustrated intellectuals. That seems to be at work among the liberals of the US that feeling incapable of doing anything in their country decide to attack the Bolivarian revolution saying that Chavez is doing in Venezuela the things that are actually happening in the US.
MISCONSTRUIING THE REFORM
I did pay close attention to the commentary from Rahul and also read the text in his blog. Some of his mistakes may be a consequence of him now knowing the language and being incapable of reading the reform himself. Eva Gollinger, (who is an attorney and is also fluent in both languages) was already with Sonali and corrected much of the errors that Rahul aired. In his rebuttal to my comment he goes on repeating that the reform would give power to appoint officials that are currently elected, suspending civil liberties and all the other lies of the right wing says. He could repeat them until he is blue on the face and it will not make it true. The reform is in black and white and those powers that he argues are simply not there, or are not new. A responsible rebuttal to my comment would have included a quote of the article that says so, or the article number. If he had done so I could explain where the misunderstanding is, and perhaps clarify the problem. Many leftish intellectuals have missed the deeper meaning of the reform and have been scared to the special power that it may give to the people (I will go back into it later). I have not read Greg Wilpert’s opinion about the “black list” but the Venezuelan law is also in black and white and the signatures are public. Any opinion that says otherwise, is demonstrably not well informed. Other intellectual, such as Greg Palast, take a very different position about the reform and what it means.
One of the tools that the corporate media has used very successful to confuse people, certainly overseas, is the use of half truth or taking truth out of context. We can see this very clearly in Rahul’s rebuttal. He says: “This for a man who already has the power to rule by decree for 10 more months” When saying this, he does not say (or does not know) that government by decree is nothing new in Venezuela and that all the presidents of the last 50 years have done so at some time or the other. The congress regularly grants this power in order to lighten up bureaucracy and expedite needed changes. He does not say (or does not know) that the decrees ought to be ratified by the National Assembly (Venezuelan congress). He does not say (or does not know) that under Venezuelan law any group of citizens can ask for any law to be abrogated and have it done in a public referendum. By removing these important pieces of information from the context in which the information is given to the US people, presents the system as a dictatorial situation since for the US “the law is the law” and there is nothing you can do about it. This is not the case in Venezuela and ignoring that fact misconstrues the information.
Further evidence of Mr. Mahajan lack of information and taking the facts out of context comes when he says that Chavez for included measures that give him power “along with various progressive social and economic reforms. I suspect, however, that these measures were the point of the constitutional reform, since some at least of the social and economic reforms could have been addressed by use of his decree power” This completely ignore a very undeniable fact: Social and progressive reforms are front and center of everything that the revolution does. By presenting it as if Chavez is giving the poor of Venezuelan a bone to distract them while he takes power, takes the Bolivarian Revolution out of context which is a big, progressive transformation that most US liberals cannot really grasp fully.
ACCUMULATION OF POWER
Among the propaganda we heard against Chavez starting from Collin Powell, but spread by analysts from independent outlets, was that Chavez was consolidating power. Even though Mr. Mahajan seems to condone it, he does not seem to realize that such consolidation of power never existed and he is again being victim of (and echoing) the imperial propaganda. Interestingly consolidation of power has been happening in the US where the theory of the Unitary executive has gained considerable power, and going mostly unchallenged. People wanted his proposal and voted for it over and over. It resulted in a congress that was greatly pro-Chavez. In the US media, this was spun as Chavez accumulating power because there was no dissent or opposition. There was plenty of dissent, just not in elected offices because they did not have popular support to win elected posts. In 2005 congressional elections the opposition expected a huge defeat so, instead of validating Chavez’s complete democratic superiority they boycotted the election. In the international media, it is seen as a mistake of the opposition that gave him more power. The truth is that the Revolution would have gotten enough representation to still outvote the opposition in every decision, instead them not participating in the election allows for international media to claim that there is no dissent and that the decisions of the National Assembly (the Venezuela’s congress).
As far as accumulation of power goes, it is a lot more difficult to accomplish in Venezuela than in any other country that I know. It so happens that the three branches of government in Venezuela are more independent than the ones in the US since the president does not name or appoint any one, not in the supreme court, Attorney General or anybody else; it is all the National Assembly’s doing without any input of the president (not even approval or veto power). On top of this, we have that the Venezuelan government has two other branches (totaling 5 branches). The Ethical Branch of the Republic and the Electoral Branch. The Ethical Branch of the Republic is a complex branch that unites the function of the Attorney General and the Ombudsman. It is independent from the executive more than the supreme court in the US is, because the President has no role in their appointments. The Electoral Branch is another division of the government that we can only dream of in the US. It is an independent branch of the federal government that organizes elections (and referendums) all across the country with a pristine, fool prove system that offers complete privacy for the votes, paper trails, and guarantee for international observers oversight in every step of the way. Accumulating power is simply not possible within Venezuelan law. Once again we see displacement behavior by the pundits of the left that instead of complaining about the accumulation of power by the executive in the US, divert their attention and displace their worries towards Venezuela. I realize that most people, even the ones that write about Venezuela, do not realize that the government has these five branches, and that the branches are more independent from the executive than they are in the US. The expression “accumulation of power is used to describe governments that, like the US’s violate, the laws in order to accumulate power. That is not happening in Venezuela, extreme popular support at every level is not “accumulation of power”.
“THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS”
This title is borrow from Mr. Mahajan original piece when he talks about comparing Chavez with Bush is to have very low expectations. Let’s revise who has low expectations. Mr. Mahajan talks about a “minuscule effort” of the US to influence the elections. I will not dwell on the size of the effort that by all accounts was not minuscule (Eva Gollinger has documented abundantly the size of these efforts). In the US law ANY effort on the politics of other countries is illegal. If there was any effort of Venezuela trying to sponsor a candidate on the opposition or somehow influence the elections in the US, the people involved will be thrown in jail with charges of terrorism and what-have-you. The fact that Mr. Mahajan believes that it is OK if the effort of the US to influence elections in Venezuela is small, is amazing coming from some one that supposedly opposes the empire. This is a blatant prove of how the left in the US has been so beaten up into submission. This is equivalent to a statement: “a little torture is OK” only because the US has done so much torture elsewhere.
AN US INVASION
As for the danger of the US not invading other countries, I have not read Mr. Mahajan other pieces but I do comment elsewhere about the lack of touch with reality of the US intellectuals that believe that Bush is too beaten up to do anything else in this link http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=63506. Look, the odds of AlQaeda flying another plane into a high rise in the US is scores of times lower than the odds that the US will attack Venezuela (and the attacks of AlQaeda against US citizens is a fraction of the attacks of the US against Venezuelan revolution), yet nobody criticizes all the increase security in the US. In fact, there has been confiscations of arms, explosives, and enough weapons to provide a small army among the cargo going to the US embassy. They also caught the small army in the form of 200 paramilitary that had come into Venezuela to produce chaos and attempt to assassinate Chavez. All these have been public and undeniable. If the attacks against Venezuela will be a full blown invasion like in Panamá or Grenada or a sting operation as it was in Haiti is irrelevant. The aggression is imminent and has been attempted several times.
In fact, the reason that most Venezuelans would like to remove limits for the presidents to run continuously (and make no mistake, if this referendum had been about removal of term limits it would have passed with a landslide) is because of the imminent threat of the US invasion. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves of the world (about 6 times more than Saudi Arabia) and we know that the empire is intent on taking it. We know we are going to be under constant attacks from the CIA and their minions to take it one way or the other. While there are about two dozen politicians that could be as good a president (or perhaps better) than Chavez, Chavez is the only one that has the charisma to unite the country monolithically against an imperial aggression. In 2002 there was a coup in the country and it was reverted due to a popular uprising. The people came out by the millions, against brutal repression, and demanded Chavez to be brought back. People did not challenge the bullets and the repression just because they thought that Chavez was a good president. They did not come out just to defend a sound government of social possibilities and good progressive philosophy. They came out risking it all because they love Chavez. If the president had been some one as good on the issues as Chavez, but with less charisma than him, there is a good chance that the coup would have stuck. Simply put, there are between 5 to 7 million Venezuelans that are willing to die in the trenches if they thought they were the last line of defense between the Marines and Chavez. Chavez provides the country with the only vaccine that has proved to endure imperial attacks. Why would we risk our precious revolution to appease the criticism of some US liberals that (thinking UScentrically) expect that every country should limit the number of terms for a president; while many developed countries like UK, France, Germany, Italy just to mention some, do not have them? To have a Venezuela without Chavez is what the empire wants, and what the “leftish” pundits, unwittingly, are calling for. Furthermore, if these US liberals did a better job at restraining their own government it would not be so important for the Venezuelans to have Chavez in office all the time. In fact, if we did a better job in the US, there are many other problems in international politics that simply would not exit.
WHY REFORM
Part of the reason some people did not understand the need for a reform is the fact that the constitution it is so new. The problem that we had is that when the constitution was being drafted some right winger managed to sneak in a few glitches and manipulated the language of some articles in a manner to create ambiguities, loopholes, and catch-22s that make many aspects difficult to enforce. So, many of the things of the reform are already in the constitution, the reform just makes the intention of the law more explicit. As time has shown, despite the right wing media may tries to represent, Chavez is a big time constitutionalist and he wants everything by the book. Thus, things like militarizing regions, or declaring state of emergencies are things that most governments do, and that are included in the current constitution, but with an ambiguous language that the reform attempts to fix. That is why some people have misunderstood the reform as not being needed. I can only imagine that when the constitution crosses language barriers, the difference may be even more difficult to pick up (thus listening to a lawyer like Eva Gollinger that knows both languages is important). It is not surprising that people in other countries may not understand the need of a reform, that is not so different than what it is already in place.
THE US’S DEMOCRACY vs VENEZUELA’S DEMOCRACY
Mr. Mahajan implies that it is unreasonable for him to discuss the problems with representative in a short editorial piece. I would think that not having too much space to express his thoughts, would be a good incentive not to include completely indefensible statements such as “Venezuela needs more democracy than the US” or “Even the almost unprecedented assault of Mr. Bush on the Constitution and democracy has hardly affected the lives of the vast majority of Americans”. Mr. Mahajan seems to know about the Patriot Act, judging by his replay, yet he does not seem to notice how it weakens democracy in the US. If he did, how can we explain the outrageous statement that Venezuela needs more democracy than the US? Or is he simply repeating, without analyzing it, an old imperial line that the US democracy is perfect? Who needs more democracy – a country that goes to elections all the time about all the issues and where elections are clear and transparent, or a country where the elections are few and far in between, where the result of the elections are not respected and where the mandate of the electorate is ignored? May be he needs to explain what he understand by democracy.
It is true that Bush has really lowered the bar regarding law and democracy but the Venezuelan democracy compares favorably with the US democracy simply by looking at the law itself, not only at how it is applied. Lets consider a person that wants to pass a law (say, a moratorium on purchases of guns). This person has to get the ear of a congressman, the congressman would bring it to the floor if he likes it. On a good day, the House could appoint a committee to discuss it, they would discuss it for any amount of time, if they like it they will bring it to a vote in the house. If it passes, it goes to the senate for a similar process, if it passes goes to the president who has the right to veto it. Then it would go back to the congress for another vote. If it gets 66% of the votes in both houses, it becomes law but even then, the president has the right to attach a signing statement saying what he thinks of it and pretty much has the right to bypass the validity of the law if he chooses. It is true that Bush has used far more signing statements than any other president but the whole process also gives tremendous power to all these elected officials and hardly any to the people. Let’s see what it would be like in Venezuela. Any group of citizens can ask for a vote to make any motion into law. They only need 5% of the electorate (currently 800K people) to ask for a referendum. If they gather all the signatures for the petition, it goes to a vote within 30 days in a nationwide referendum organized by the Electoral Branch of the government. If this passes, the motion becomes law without any elected official having any power to veto or by pass it.
If we look at the bigger picture, we can consider how this lack of democracy affects the people of the US. We can see that we have millions of US citizens that have lost their houses and life savings due to lack of health insurance, or they lost their jobs because of the free trade agreements, or the rural people in Appalachian that suffer cancer and asthma epidemics and displacement because of pollution produce by mountain top removal. Why don’t the US people have the right to put an end to these practices? Many South American countries have put to a popular vote if they want to join the free trade agreement with the US, why cannot the US citizens exercise the same right? These are all consequences of policies of the country that are decided by elected officials in the pockets of big corporations. Please notice that the problems I am mentioning are not from the strict domain of Bush’s administration. These are systemic corruptions of the US democracy that does not allow the poor people to have a voice. It is true that Mr. Mahajan could have not discussed all these issues in his short editorial piece, but removing that completely outrageous statement that Venezuela needs more democracy than the US would have sufficed. Perhaps, Mr. Mahajan has been unconsciously swayed by the imperial rhetoric.
The sad thing is that all these people, who lost jobs to free trade, that lost their houses to health care debts, or whose children get sick because of the pollution produce by coal operations, will (sickeningly) agree with the notion that they have the best democracy in the world and that there is nothing wrong with their system. It seems like the people, as well as the “liberal” pundits, have been brain-washed into believing that their system is perfect and there is nothing better than what they have. They do not seem to realize that they are subjects (as opposed to citizens) of the corporations that rule the country via their elected representatives. In fact, by failing to denounce the problems of the system, the “liberal pundits” are hurting democracy a lot more than we would think. By repeating the imperial line: “Venezuela is the one that has the problem because it is not like us,” media sources under the pretense that they are from the left, confuse the lay person: Hey, I heard that on the on NPR (or Washington post, etc), it’s got to be true! This prevents the lay person from seeking a real analysis of the facts.
The underlying difference between the democracy in Venezuela and the one in the US is that the Venezuelan process is a new, progressive system, that places as its first priority the well-being of the people while in the people the US have been hoodwinked for more than 200 hundred years under the soft tyranny of representative democracy. In fact this is quite the issue at the heart of the reform that has scared the soft liberals and confused so many people.
REPRESENTATIVE VS PARTICIPATIVE DEMOCRACY
Most of these aspects of the reform that confused some people and scared others has to do with the explosion of the popular power. The Venezuelan constitution gives the local community unprecedented power to decide over their own futures, make their own policies and rule their own destinies, more so than we have seen in any democracy any where any time. Unfortunately the wording of some articles handicap how much it can be applied and the reform has more effective versions of the same articles. Many of articles of the reform intent was to do away for once and for all with representative democracy. CAREFUL! Notice that I did not say “ to do away with democracy” just with representative democracy. The real spirit behind the reform has with strengthening participative democracy.
For most people in the US participative democracy only means getting involved in politics, writing to the elected officials or even running for office. All that is fine and well but it still has the same limitations that we have with representative democracy. Participating actively in representative democracy does not make it Participative Democracy. In the representative democracy the people write a blank check to an elected official and the elected official does what he wants to do with it, only to ask for another blank check in the next election (thanks to Marcelo Larrea for the image). Participative Democracy, in the sense of the Venezuelan constitution and its reform, is a very different political system.
For example, let’s consider Italy before the Iraq war. The Italian people were monolithically against the invasion. Something around 90% of the Italians opposed the invasion. There were demonstrations of millions of people in many cities in Italy (4 million in Rome only). You would say that those people were involved, they let their elected officials know what they thought and asked very vociferously not to join invasion. We know what happened: Berlusconi bowed to Bush, bowed to the big oil corporations and ignored the request of their constituent and still used their tax payers’ Euros, to send their young men and women to a war that the country did not approve of. That is representative democracy for you. If they had had a participative democracy there would have been a vote where the people could make a binding decision on the future of their country. Berlusconi would not have had the power to disobey his people the way he did. Sure he lost the following elections but after a full dreadful invasion, millions of Euros, and many lives were lost. In a participative democracy the elected official is not “the decider,” they are more like “spokesperson” of the will of the people. The people are the ones making the decisions. The spirit of the system was best captured by Comandante Marcos saying: “govern by obeying.” To listen to the will of the people is also possible in representative democracy if the leader wants to be a good leader, (this is the reason Poll Listeners of the likes of Bill Clinton come across as better leaders) but only the participative democracy offers a fail-proof system where we do not depend on landing a good president. If the president is good, better, if not the people can make him/her do the right thing, if s/he won’t listen the people can get rid of them.
This is the system currently in place in Venezuela at the central level. The reform contained explicit language for the local communities to take this kind of power not only at major events but in decisions of their every day life. Clearly, running their local communities as active citizens, making the important decisions takes time and demand dedication in getting informed about the issues in order to make the right decisions. In representative democracies we trust the elected officials (who in turn trust the lobbyists) to find out the information and make the right decisions for us. In the participative democracy this is everybody’s job to find out, to discuss and debate in communal councils before they make the important decisions. Notice that this would render political parties obsolete, there is no need (and they would have no power) of having political parties because this gave all the power to the local communities.
Among the many manipulations of the reform, it was said that it would take away power from elected officials and give it to Chavez. While the first part is true and the traditional elected officials (congress members, major, governors etc) would loose a lot of power, that power does not go to the central government. It goes straight to the local people at the local communities that now would have control of their own life, and destiny. No wonder why many “pro Chavez”, “leftish” politicians turned against the reform!!
The new reform included cutting the working hours to 6 hours a day. Many people interpreted this as “sugar coating” the reform to entice workers to approve the reform in order to have less working hours. What cutting the working day to 6 hours is all about is giving the people the possibility to get involved in the running of their communities. Understandably, to run your community you need to prepare yourself, learn what is going on, study, discuss all the options if you are going to make your own decision. This was the reason behind the 6-hour day, to give the workers time to get involved in running their policies and their communities. US analysts of the reform, even in the left, always misconstrued it as a way to bribe the poor to accept the “scary” political change.
From the point of view of environmental conservation, to give all the power to the well-informed local people is the best choice since they would chose the best for their own people and their own future. The future of the local community is always tied up to the future of the environment. They will not let a corporation come over and take up the resources leaving behind misery and destroyed habitat because that is the habitat they will need for themselves, their kids and grandkids. The decision in the hands of the local and well-informed people is as good as we can hope for conservation at every level.
THE TRULY SCARY PART OF THE REFORM
Now, I must confess that there is a part of reform that even scares me a little. I am not worried about the possibility that Chavez might take too much power because there are so many checks and balances that it is impossible. What I am a bit worried about is the feasibility of a country composed of thousands and thousands of small communities each one ruling their own destiny in their own directions. Is that any longer one country? Is it possible to run a country with such a structure? Will it be very easily divided by the empire to produce conflict between neighboring communities? These are all doubts and worries that I have about the new system and I do not know the answer to them. Again, this comes to show the complete faith that Chavez has in democracy and his true belief that the will of the people should be paramount. I wish the discussion and objection to the reform had dealt with this subjects, instead of lies and fabrications, because regardless of the outcome, this debate would yield productive insights. Yet, we did not hear any of this in the criticism of the reform.
Finally (yes, I am long winded like Chavez), as for my position being sectarian and dogmatic, I have clearly left it behind, since I have presented facts, arguments and reasoning beyond any dogma or sectarism. I am a strong critic of the revolution in the aspect where the revolution has flaws. Google my name in Aporrea.org and you will find plenty of essays where I dissent and criticize the current system in REAL problems that the revolution has. These essays are in Spanish, though, since English has ceased to be the language or cutting edge social and economic debate. Unfortunately criticism such as that of Mr, Mahajan about spurious problems distract more than help a debate. The discussion about the direction of the country boils in Venezuela but nearly none of it gets into the eyes and ears of US pundits that keep representing Venezuelan as this group of helpless negros and indios victim of the manipulations of the evil dictator without any voice or possibility to defend themselves. Not so!
This is not my comment. I’m just testing it out to see whether what I type here will actually show up as a comment on the web page.
An Essay in Favor of Presidential Term Limits
I would like to thank Sonali Kolhatkar, Rahul Mahajan, and Jesus Rivas for stumbling into the debate of our time. Regardless of what your opinion is in this debate, stating your opinion is an important first step. The debate of our time is Term Limits in Venezuela. There were 69 proposed constitutional changes in last December’s referendum there, but one of those changes stands out far above the rest, in importance: that was the proposal to allow unlimited reelection of presidents. This is not a debate for the coffee shop intellectuals and Starbucks analysts described by Mr. Jesus Rivas, lazily musing about current events in this or that country and ordering a passion tsao chai tea latté please! This debate is for socialists, communists, anarchists and revolutionaries in every corner of the world, and the question is simple. Are we going to sit back and remain silent, while the world’s leading socialist government switches over from a 100% democratic form of government to the “Zimbabwe model” of one-man rule?
Jesus Rivas. Thank you for saying what you believe – even though I disagree with you 100%. You had so many accusations in your two essays; I will address only a fraction of them here in my essay. Before getting started, I want to say that the weird psychological motives you attribute to people like me or Rahul are simply not true. “Displacement behavior” you say. I and the other U.S. opponents of Venezuela’s presidency-for-life proposal are “displacing” our inconformity with our own government’s actions to an easier target!, like a guy who is mad at his boss at work but takes it out on his wife at home! What!!?? How about supporting the revolutionary movement in Venezuela and around the world?, and not wanting to see that movement self-destruct?
Rahul Mahajan. Thank you for standing up for democratic socialism! I was flabbergasted by the lack-of-coverage and debate on English-language Pacifica Radio in the weeks leading up to last December’s vote in Venezuela. [Spanish-language Pacifica Radio included plenty of debate, week-after-week, and they made room for all points of view – especially on their main Latin America news show, Noticiero Pacífica.] I was not able to listen all that often, but from the programs I heard in English, you were the only commentator who was questioning what I’d call “the self-destruct referendum”. It is unbelievable that after all the blunders of non-democratic socialism in the 20th Century, our leading socialist-oriented radio stations would let this go with scarcely a word in English in dissention.
Jesus Rivas. Thank you for articulating some arguments as to why Venezuela should do away with presidential term limits. I would now like to respond to your arguments. [As for your discussion of the other 68 proposed changes to that country’s constitution, I am staying out of it. What I sincerely hope is that next time the Venezuelan government puts constitutional changes to a vote, they will not include the elimination of presidential term limits.]
(1) Rivas. “If these U.S. liberals did a better job at restraining their government, it would not have been so important for the Venezuelans to have Chavez in office all the time.”
Response.
First, some “language clarifications.” I will assume that your term “U.S. liberals” refers in this case to U.S. citizens and residents who act in opposition to the interventions in Latin America. Liberals are people who support some kind of more-humane form of capitalism; most anti-intervention activists are completely opposed to capitalism – so that would make us something other than liberals. Also, I’ll assume that “having Chavez in office all the time” refers to having him in office for his entire lifetime!, because that’s what removing presidential term limits is about. Nobody is disputing that Chavez remain in office “all the time” between now and January, 2013!
Now, to answer what you said. Several new socialist governments have taken office in Latin America in the last few years; in the case of Nicaragua a socialist government from the 1980s has returned to power. These events point to the fact that Left forces in the United States have attained a level of success in restraining our government. [Obviously, we need to do much better still.] But with regard to the U.S. anti-intervention movement, the removal of presidential term limits in Venezuela is one of the worst things that could happen. For all these years, beginning in the post-Vietnam era, United States solidarity activists have held the general belief that we’re fighting on behalf of democratic revolutionary movements standing up to various forms of U.S.-backed dictatorship. But now Hugo Chavez wants to tell us that these movements don’t need to be 100% democratic after all, that the goal of Left autocracy will be good enough. After he gets the unlimited reelection measure approved, this is going to take the wind right out of our sails. Into the mighty wild-eyed cause of Ernesto Guevara, Salvador Allende and S. Brian Willson, the mistake in Venezuela will cast a sour heaping bucketful of confusion – and make it a lot harder to convince people to join us.
(2) Rivas. “If this referendum had been about removal of term limits, it would have passed by a landslide.”
Response.
Perhaps this is true; if it is, then the revolutionary democratic socialist project in Venezuela remains in great peril – because if the voters didn’t approve the removal of term limits this time, they probably will approve it next time. – I myself am very enthusiastic about the job that Hugo Chavez is doing as president; he has all of 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 to keep doing that job (and about a week of 2013) – longer than an entire U.S. presidential term! Go for it! During the year 2012 there will be a new presidential campaign. The PSUV – Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela, can hold some primary elections and a convention, where they can decide on their new candidate for the Fall campaign. That new candidate can then go up against the opposition forces for the December, 2012 election. Problem solved! — Any kind of leader who becomes exceeding popular needs to step back a little; try to encourage people to look among themselves and have confidence in themselves! That’s kind of what the Beatles did when they stopped putting on live concerts and started recording alongside a symphony orchestra. (You think I’m making this up? Ask Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr!) So even if Hugo Chavez’ fans would like him to become president-for-life, he needs to step back and say, “No thank you, amigos!” “Thank you for the love and support, but it’s time for you to look amongst yourselves and find your next leader for this revolution.”
(3) Rivas. “While there are about two dozen politicians that could be as good (or perhaps better) than Chavez, Chavez is the only one that has the charisma to unite the country monolithically against an imperial aggression.”
Response.
A constitutional amendment to remove presidential term limits is a giant step away from democracy. In fact, it’s the same amendment that Mexico’s congress approved for President Porfirio Diaz in 1884, enabling him to become president-for-life. So in terms of “imperial aggression,” this amendment will make such an aggression more likely-to-succeed. Yes, you heard it right: just when Latin America is at last breaking free from United States imperial control, Venezuela would be giving the U.S. government interventionists the very thing they need – an undemocratic boogeyman to point at! Right now, all that the White House can come up with is a “democratic boogeyman”!; no wonder they’re not getting anywhere!
I am not kidding at all: one of the favorite U.S. intervention tactics against socialist opponents has been to purposely scare people, trick people, or provoke people into some kind of violent atrocity, or at least some kind of an undemocratic act. William Blum was able to uncover a U.S. government memo from the 1984 Nicaraguan election campaign, for example. The memo stated, “What we need is Arturo Cruz in jail.” [Arturo Cruz was the conservative opposition candidate, and the U.S. authorities were hoping to somehow trick or scare the Sandinistas into jailing Cruz. It didn’t work! Cruz never went to jail; in fact today his son is serving as an ambassador for the new Sandinista government!] — Returning to the present, I repeat that switching Venezuela over to a less-democratic form of government will represent not only a giant mistake for Chavez, but also a grand-slam homerun for imperialism.
On the other hand, let’s say that Venezuela decides to keep presidential term limits in place. Between now and January, 2013, President Hugo Chavez will be in charge; that’s a long time. If Chavez continues to do a good job and maintain the support of the voters, then a new candidate from his party should probably be able to win the December, 2012 elections. If some kind of coup attempt or invasion happens after that, Hugo Chavez can still help lead the fight to stop it. – There are plenty of people in world history who led successful campaigns against a foreign occupation or invasion without holding any official government position.
(4) Rivas: “Why would we risk our precious revolution to appease the criticism of some US liberals that (thinking UScentrically), expect that every country should limit the number of terms for a president; while many developed countries like UK, France, Germany, Italy, just to mention some, do not have them?
Response.
This debate is about the future of socialism; it’s a debate for radicals – not liberals. We’re thinking Americas-centrically, not only U.S.-centrically. You see term limits in several Latin American countries, because there were several dictators in the Americas who used multiple reelection to help keep themselves in office. (Obviously, there are and have been plenty more dictatorial governments in countries with term limits – so these limits make for only one of many features needed for 100% democracy.) The Mexican Revolution of 1910 opened with the battle cry, Sufragio Efectivo, No Reelección – Effective Suffrage, No Reelection.
Western Europe and Term Limits. – During his closing campaign rally last December, Hugo Chavez stated that if the referendum passed and “if the people ordained it,” he would stay in office until the year 2050 or age 95. This would put Chavez’ total consecutive years in office at about 52 years. If Chavez decides against eliminating term limits from the constitution, then he’ll leave office just after completing 14 years – about the same as for Francois Mitterand, who completed two 7-year terms in France. (Chavez could still run again for president after somebody else had served one or two six-year terms.) With regards to Western Europe, if Great Britain, France, etc. don’t have formal term-limits in their countries’ constitutions, they at least have some kind of informal term limits – an understanding whereby no president or prime minister stays in office for more than fourteen years. I seriously doubt that any of those countries went from a constitution with term limits, then approved an amendment to remove those limits. You mentioned four Western European countries in particular: Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy. (Since this part of your argument is focusing on Western Europe, I’ll assume that for Germany in the post-WWII period you’re talking about West Germany.) After checking over the 20th Century leadership record for these four countries, I was able to find only one where a president, chancellor, or prime minister had stayed in office for more than fourteen consecutive years. That was Italy under Prime Minister Benito Mussolini! (One of the main founders of 20th Century fascism, he stayed in for 20 years.) Do we want our movement to be in the company of Mussolini!!??
From now on, socialist countries should aim to have the most democratic political systems in the world – more democratic than Western Europe if need be – and formal presidential term limits are an essential part of that.
Why are presidential term limits so important? Once you have a structure in place where one man or woman can remain in office for years and years and years, you are no longer on a democratic socialist course. The form of government, by definition, will no longer be 100% democratic. Instead, you’ll have the “Zimbabwe model” of government. Depending on other factors, such as the level of patronage, the level of repression, or press restrictions, what we might call “the level of democracy” will now range somewhere between 50% and 90%. (In the case of Zimbabwe, the levels of repression and patronage are very high; so their “level of democracy” is closer to 50%.)
The Zimbabwe Model: they do have open elections, but they don’t have presidential term limits. Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe began in 1980, with a high level of optimism and potential. Mugabe has recently been trying to bring his country on a more-socialist course; the opposition favors capitalism. But in part because Zimbabwe failed to include presidential term limits in their constitution, the country is basically falling apart today. The political movement that Mugabe leads is ZANU-PF, (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front), which began as a socialist-oriented guerilla organization fighting semi-colonial, white minority rule. The country held its first open elections in 1980, under United Nations supervision, and ZANU-PF was able to win those elections. [The top leadership post from 1980 to ’87 was Prime Minister; but the country adopted a presidential system after 1987.] – Had Zimbabwe’s presidents been restricted to two six-year terms, then ZANU-PF would have had to come up with a new candidate for president during the 1990s. Instead, the party now lives in deference to one man: party members don’t dare to challenge Mugabe’s leadership, and so he remains in office, over and over and over. Mugabe is now over 83 years old, and he’s set to run for president yet again. Instead of revitalizing and debating the future from within the ZANU-PF movement, many party members who are tired of one-man rule either bolt for the pro-capitalist opposition party or drop out of politics altogether. Meanwhile, the country’s economy is approaching total collapse: the current estimated annual inflation rate is between 30,000 and 40,000 percent.
“Why risk our precious revolution” by maintaining presidential term limits? – Because democracy involves taking risks! If you don’t hold elections at all, you’ll have zero risk of losing an election. If you need to pick a new candidate at the end of two presidential terms, I suppose that could increase the risk of losing an election. A change of leaders, even from the same party, also involves a risk that government policies might change. Well, there’s no such thing as a risk-free revolution. That’s what revolutions are all about – taking risks and wading out into an unknown future.
Consider a revolution as a garden, cultivated by the revolutionaries. These revolutionaries can try for a risk-free garden – throwing on every kind of insecticide and fungicide to keep out every kind of invader, (adopting a less-than-100% democratic form-of-government). They might get giant, wonderful harvests from this garden – at first. But this garden will lose its natural resistance to insects and disease. (This revolutionary government will lose its capacity to win in open elections without cheating.) If there are no presidential term limits, the leaders will get old while still in office. Young people in that country will want those leaders out, if for no other reason than their age. And so at the moment the revolutionaries stop digging chemicals into the garden, (at the moment they try to open the country to a 100% democratic political process), the efforts of so many years can go to naught. The crops will fail; the revolutionary government will fall or lose the elections; – and worst of all, having left behind a memory of so many years of monolithic, risk-free rule, their chances of winning another election in the future will be very slim.
An organic garden is a lot harder to get started. At first, all kinds of bugs and plagues will attack. Until you have worked the soil for a long time with all kinds of compost, your pumpkins may be few and far between. But this garden will grow stronger each year that it survives. – This can happen with a revolution that places its complete trust in the people.
There are several such gardens now, several revolutionary governments in the Americas. There is no guarantee that the socialist parties in these countries are going to win all their elections, all the time. But so long as they continue to seek out what is good and what is right, they will have good chances of success overall. The fight between socialism and capitalism is not only between “us” and “them.” It’s also between the “good” and “bad” in all people, between sharing and greed. Of course we want our side to win, but that’s not all. We need to show ourselves and our opponents that in every aspect, socialism can be better than capitalism. I submit to you that a movement where the people act on their own, seeking several leaders and raising new leaders, is far better than one-man rule. It’s also a lot more about sharing.