The Grinch Who’s Stealing Venezuelan Democracy
Chávez makes a play for absolute political power, and gets it.
For the past five years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, has been able to exercise absolute control over the Venezuelan National Assembly, fooling nobody as he tries to hide his authoritarian ways behind an aura of democracy. The National Assembly has effectively served as a rubber stamp for every Chavista law that came before them and which consolidates power in the Executive and erodes the independence of all Venezuelan democratic institutions. That was then and this is now .
The success of the united opposition political parties in gaining a substantial number of seats in the new Venezuelan congress that takes office in January marked the beginning of the end of Mr. Chávez’s one-way-street politics. As of January 5, 2011 , no longer will the Executive be able to so handily and unopposed propose and sign laws at its whim.
In the run up to the new Congress being in place, many Venezuelans fear that Mr. Chávez will take steps to further weaken Venezuelan democracy. Those fears are now becoming a reality. Last week, What’s Next Venezuela highlighted the government’s manipulation of the flood crisis for political gain, and further advancing its attacks on private property .
This week things have taken a turn for the worse. Mr. Chávez is now using the flood crisis to ask the lame duck National Assembly to grant him the power to rule by decree for a period of 18 months. His justification for the measure is that the Executive needs all that power to resolve the crisis. The lame duck congress is poised to approve the measure as soon as today. Click here to read the legislation . Once approved, Mr. Chávez’s power to rule by decree will be almost infinite as the legislation allows him total control of:
• Vital necessities to address the emergency created by the flooding;
• Infrastructure and public services;
• Housing;
• Territorial organization and structure;
• Development and use of urban and rural land;
• Finance and taxes;
• Citizen security and judiciary;
• National security and defense;
• Telecommunications and public media
One may ask: What does this mean for Venezuela, its people and Venezuelan democracy? Just a mere three months ago, President Chávez suffered his worst electoral setback since taking office in February 1999. The results of the September parliamentary elections are testament to the desire for change of the Venezuelan people. Yet, the will of the Venezuelan people has fallen on deaf ears. The legacy of the outgoing congress will be to give President Chávez the power to govern in a way that bypasses the newly-elected National Assembly. In short, the newly elected representatives of the Venezuelan people will have their power diluted even before they take their oath of office.
While granting President Chávez the power to rule by decree is legal, it is also a ploy to sabotage the will and mandate of the Venezuelan people. After all, this is not the first time Mr. Chávez performs this democracy-shattering gimmick. In 2007, immediately after losing a referendum where Chavez sought to reform large chunks of the Venezuela Constitution, the rubber stamp National Assembly granted Mr. Chávez the power to rule by decree . In the process, President Chávez implemented many of the same constitutional reforms that voters had rejected just a few months earlier.
President Chávez’s latest move is part of his well planned out strategy to consolidate power in the Executive and his person and in the process eroding Venezuelan democracy. Unlike Dr. Seuss’ “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” the situation in Venezuela is not fictional and has no happy ending in sight.