This context of social, political, and economic polarization created the political space for a new vision of the
country based on social equality, political participation, and economic development that gave birth to the
Bolivarian project. This explains why one of its first projects, after electing Hugo Chávez as president with
59% of the vote in 1998, was a re-founding of the Republic with the drafting of a new Constitution. While US
media often refer to this process as “Chávez rewrote the Constitution in 1999,” from a quick examination one
can see that the new Constitution was approved in one of the most democratic processes in the history of Latin
America. 57
Soon after Chávez took office, a popular referendum was organized in April of 1999, in which 88% of the
electorate voted in favor of developing a new Constitution.58 Another election was held in which the Constituent
Assembly was popularly elected – which included voices from traditionally marginalized communities, such as
Venezuela’s Indigenous populations and representatives from the country’s poorest barrios, as well as from
vocal opponents of the Chávez administration. Then after months of deliberations, in December 1999, the new
Constitution was approved by the voters, garnering 72% of popular approval in a referendum.59
Under the new Constitution, the Venezuelan government is divided into five branches of power: the executive;
the legislative; and the judiciary; as well as the electoral power, comprised of the National Electoral Council
(CNE); and the citizen power branch, comprised of the attorney general, the ombudsman, and the comptroller
general.
Venezuelan elections have been subject to regular monitoring by international observers, who have regularly
found Venezuelan elections to be “free and fair” according to widely held democratic standards. The CNE has
instituted a wide range of new policies to ensure a free and fair election, such as universal implementation of
electronic voting machines with a paper trail that can be easily monitored and verified; cleaning up the electoral
rolls to ensure that deceased persons do note cast ballots,60 and increasing the number of voting stations in poor
areas that were previously underserved based on their population.
Other efforts at ensuring universal access to democracy include Venezuela’s massive education campaigns,
detailed below, which have taught over 1.5 million how to read and write, affording new access to political
participation for previously illiterate adults. In addition, Venezuela has naturalized millions of immigrants,
many of whom had lived in Venezuela for decades, but whom had previously faced enormous political and
bureaucratic barriers to citizenship. And Venezuela has embarked upon a massive campaign to ensure that all
citizens posses the proper identification cards, 61 which has massively increased access to voting.
Regarding the legislative branch, up until December 2005, the opposition held 48% of seats, and the parties
aligned with the Chávez’s party, the MVR, held a slim majority of 52%. Elections for the National Assembly
were held on December 4, 2005. Polls heading towards the elections showed the parties aligned with the
government holding a strong lead over candidates aligned with the opposition political parties, which were only
expected to take about 25% of the seats. This is not that surprising, considering that the opposition’s primary
political platform has focused on the fact that it is “not-Chávez,” and President Chávez is one of the most
popular leaders in Latin America.
Opposition leadership made demands that the CNE change certain policies, stating that they would not
participate unless their demands were met. Their greatest concerns was the practice of using fingerprint-reading
machines at the polls, because they alleged that the government was somehow getting access to citizen’s voting
records. The OAS negotiated with the CNE, which had implemented the fingerprint reading machines as an
anti-fraud measure, and the CNE agreed to accommodate the opposition and discontinue their use, after which
the OAS affirmed that it “expects that all institutions, in respecting the commitments they have assumed, the
guarantees offered, and the existing laws, contribute to the realization of successful elections on December 4”.62
But in the end, despite their demands for participation having been met, the opposition parties boycotted the
election.63 Candidates aligned with the government swept the legislature, and the MVR in particular picked up
114 of the 167 seats.64 While there are certainly a sizeable number of people who oppose the Chávez
administration, the political leadership of the opposition has now ceased, of their own accord, to have an
organized political presence.
US officials have also repeatedly accused Chávez of undermining judiciary independence for carrying out a
judicial reform in late 2004. Most commentary in the US imply that the problems of the Venezuelan judiciary
either emerged under the Chávez government or are worse under the Chávez government than under previous
administrations, or, more perniciously, are an attempt to subjugate the judiciary to the executive branch of
government. An extensive analysis of the realities of judicial reform in Venezuela found none of these to be the
case.65
In fact, is widely recognized that Venezuela’s judicial system had very low credibility prior to the Chávez
government.66 In addition, the Supreme Court in 2002 ruled that members of the top military command who
had participated in the coup could not be tried for orchestrating the coup, because a coup had not taken place,
evidencing a clear bias towards the opposition.
In response to these deficiencies, the National Assembly passed a judicial reform law in 2004, for which US
officials accuse the Venezuelan government of “stacking the courts”. The new law allows the National
Assembly to appoint the new judges with a simple majority instead of a two-thirds majority, when the
legislature has failed to achieve a two-thirds majority after three attempts. Approval by a simple majority is not
unusual by international standards, such as in the US. The law also created certain streamlining reforms in the
judicial system, including making the judicial system more “modern and efficient.”67 In addition, the law
expands the number of justices on the Supreme Court from 20 to 32, a change that was made necessary by the
new Constitution, which placed additional demands on the Supreme Court.
In addition to creating five branches of power, the new Constitution added “participatory” and “protagonist”
democracy to Venezuela’s representative democracy. Venezuelans often carry their Constitution in their
pockets and quote from it regularly; copies of it, and various laws, are available on many street corners along
with baseball caps and phone cards. In a practical sense, this new participatory democracy has resulted in a
massive participation of the majority of citizens in the social missions, described in detail below; higher levels
of participation in voting; and mandates that varying percentages of state and regional budgets must be set aside
for citizen-initiated “participatory budget” projects. This new sense of empowerment is palpable among the
poor in Venezuela, yet is rarely commented upon in the media.
Commitment to democracy by the opposition has unfortunately not been as marked. In addition to carrying out
a coup in 2002, an oil sabotage in 2002-2003, and amidst calls to violence by many sectors of the opposition,68
certain elements of the political leadership of the opposition have still refused to recognize the results of the
referendum, including Súmate, the “electoral watchdog” that has received funding from the National
Endowment for Democracy. In addition, while the government repeatedly campaigns for the importance of all
citizens to vote, the opposition has called for electoral boycotts that drive down citizen participation in the
electoral system, most notable in the legislative elections of December 2005.69
It might also seem important to keep in perspective how Venezuelans view their own democracy. According to
the 2005 poll of Chilean polling firm Latinobarómetro, enthusiasm for democracy has declined throughout the
hemisphere, due to the failure of many elected governments to curb crime or decrease poverty. However,
Venezuela has resisted this trend. In fact, Venezuelans are more likely than citizens of the other 18 Latin
American nations polled to describe their government as “totally democratic.” With a regional average of only
5.5, Venezuelans gave their government a high 7.6 on a scale of 1 to10. And in a crucial response, Venezuelans
have the second highest level of satisfaction with the way their own democracy functions.70
It should not go unnoticed that the five countries whose citizens rated the “level of democracy” in their country
the lowest (less than 5 on a scale of 1 (not democratic) to 10 (totally democratic)), three have just signed Free
Trade Agreements with the US (Peru, Guatemala, and Nicaragua); one is in negotiations for an FTA (Ecuador);
and another just became the site of a Marine contingent (Paraguay.) So it does not appear that a country’s
citizen’s own considerations about their own democracy weigh in heavily on the Administration’s view about
that country, but rather, that a countries that receive a democratic stamp of approval correlate highly with those
that agree to US foreign policy goals in the region, particularly the promotion of the neoliberal economic model
and military cooperation.
Venezuelan democracy, like all democracies, is a work in progress with many strengths, and many weaknesses.
But it Venezuela’s five distinct branches of government, traditional checks and balances, educated population,
empowered citizenry, and energetic social debate offer its citizens a more vibrant democracy than many
countries could boast.
Ravaged by Chavism, Venezuela is nearing collapse
Originally Posted by The Economist
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