And that wasn’t all. Carlos Correa, of the human-rights organization Provea, said some of the detainees were tortured. “It’s a pattern we’ve been seeing,” he said, “and it’s being encouraged from the highest levels of government.” After opposition TV channels showed video of demonstrators being beaten, kicked and shot with rubber pellets at close quarters, Chavez praised the guards’ behavior as exemplary. It was all too much for Venezuela’s veteran ambassador to the United Nations, Milos Alcalay, who resigned, saying he could not work for a government that violated human rights and democracy.
He is not the only one to lose faith in Venezuela’s electoral democracy. The repeated rejections by the CNE have thoroughly disillusioned most Chavez opponents, and even many undecided voters; many of the council’s recent meetings have been held without the two pro-opposition members, who have boycotted them in protest. This time around, the opposition alliance handed in 3.4 million signatures on Dec. 19–a million more than required to trigger the recall vote. Ten weeks later the CNE invalidated 1.5 million signatures, chiefly because personal details about signees were filled out by others. That was not a rule, and had not been an issue in the previous two recall campaigns. “The institutional route remains open,” insisted Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, who pointed out that if 600,000 signatories reaffirmed their intention by later this month, in a process known as the reparo, or restoration, the referendum could still go ahead. “What’s their fear of going to the reparo?” Rangel asked.
Opposition leaders say the reparo is a trap: if they reject what they see as an illegal ruling, they will be blamed for abandoning the democratic route. But if they accept the present, stringent terms and fail to persuade enough people to sign again, the government will insist that the petition was marred by “megafraud.” More practically, it would be a logistical nightmare to find and mobilize the numbers of specific individuals needed to meet the reparo requirements. Even if the opposition coalition was successful, Chavez has said he would challenge the referendum in the notoriously pliant Supreme Court.
Having already tried and failed to bring down the government by strikes and economic boycotts, it is far from clear where the opposition goes from here. The opposition leadership “is imploding,” says political analyst Alberto Garrido. That’s no surprise to the more radical Democratic Bloc, long sidelined as alleged coup plotters. “We always said the referendum was a great big pantomime,” says Bloc leader Alfredo Garcia Deffendini. Their strategy, dubbed La Guarimba, is to incite mass action by civilians to block streets across the nation. They claimed credit for last week’s partial paralyzation of Caracas.
Gov. Eduardo Lapi, of the midwestern state of Yaracuy, was a member of the opposition team that signed a May 2003 agreement that appeared to ensure a referendum. Now, he says, the deal was a sham. “We fulfilled all the conditions,” Lapi told NEWSWEEK. “Then they invented a fresh rule to annul more signatures.” The Chavez government, he says, is a “totalitarian regime which has no intention of subjecting itself to a vote.” Venezuela is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections next year, and a presidential vote in 2006. But it would be “absolutely absurd” to think that elections could be held under these conditions, Lapi says.
Since there is next to no chance of a new CNE being appointed by consensus, representative democracy in Venezuela seems to have hit the buffers. In theory, the Organization of American States could begin applying sanctions of various kinds to try to force change. But there is little appetite in the region for a confrontation. Chavez has often declared that he will stay in power until 2021–in open defiance of his own Constitution, which allows two six-year terms. But unless he overreaches, there seems little the opposition can do to stop him.
