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Venezuela

A primer on the MUD, Venezuela’s broad opposition coalition

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Venezuela remains in somewhat of a twilight zone following Sunday’s election — CNE (the National Election Commission) has declared Nicolás Maduro the winner by a narrow margin, but opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has refused to concede until a full audit of all of Sunday’s votes has been conducted.Venezuela Flag Icon

The following days will put a brighter spotlight on Venezuela’s opposition than at any time since the early 2000s. The last broad opposition coalition, Coordinadora Democrática, disbanded in 2004 when it lost a referendum in August 2004 to recall Hugo Chávez from office by a lopsided margin of 59.1% to 40.6%.

Capriles (pictured above with Lara governor Henri Falcón)is the standard-bearer of a new, broader coalition — the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD, the Democratic Unity Roundtable). The MUD formed in January 2008, and Capriles was selected overwhelmingly to lead it into the October 2012 presidential election against Chávez. His loss to Chávez was by a margin of nearly 11%, but it was a better performance than any presidential challenger to Chávez in 14 years.

Capriles and the MUD have a lot of hard decisions ahead.

The first involves whether they have hard information that Maduro and the chavistas falsified the vote. As Maduro had the state media, the state oil company, the public bureaucracy and then some behind him, Sunday’s election was far from fair, though Maduro may have nonetheless won an essentially free vote, despite reports of all sorts of dirty tricks. But in the poker game that’s taking place today in Venezuela, we don’t know whether the MUD is holding a straight flush or a pair of 7s.

That defines the broader second decision facing the MUD — regardless of whether it thinks it can prove electoral fraud, will it do so? Capriles has two options here.

There’s the Al Gore / Richard Nixon model, whereby he can concede defeat for the unity of the nation, notwithstanding difficult questions about the election that may well never be answered, as was the case in the 1960 and 2000 U.S. presidential elections.

There’s also the Andrés Manuel López Obrador / Mikheil Saakashvili model. This is a high-risk / high-reward model. If Capriles presses his case on all courts, the result could be like what followed Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution, where Saakashvili mobilized popular opinion to dispute Eduard Shevardnadze’s fraudulent victory in the 2003 presidential election. But it could also be like the 2006 Mexican presidential election, when López Obrador fought an increasingly noisome battle against what most Mexicans concluded was a narrow but legitimate victory by Felipe Calderón.

But what is the MUD? So far, it’s been relatively united in the goal of bringing Venezuela’s chavismo chapter to an end, and it seems likely that the taste of victory in Sunday’s presidential election will fuel more unity. But it’s a far from homogenous coalition.

Here’s a look at its main components: Continue reading A primer on the MUD, Venezuela’s broad opposition coalition →

Venezuela

Capriles campaign optimistic with 48 hours to go — but can it win?

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CARACAS, Venezuela — The national headquarters of Henrique Capriles on Friday morning buzzed with optimism, with less than 48 hours to go before polls open in a race that many have judged hopeless for the opposition.Venezuela Flag Icon

In the wake of a rally in downtown Caracas last Sunday that brought hundreds of thousands of supporters to rally behind Capriles (without having to bus in massive numbers of supporters from across the country, as the chavista candidate Nicolás Maduro did in a similar rally on Thursday), and in the wake of a widely ridiculed comment by Maduro that a little bird told him that the spirit of Hugo Chávez blessed his campaign, Capriles campaign advisers are optimistic that their candidate has the momentum going into Sunday’s election, especially as voters realize the extent of Venezuela’s rapidly tumbling economy in recent months.

But Maduro, who is hoping to win a full term in his own right after the 14-year rule of his predecessor, Chávez, has everything else — the implicit support of the structure of the entire government, the armed forces, the state-owned oil company, plenty of resources, and significantly stronger media presence.

Though election law prohibits the publication of polls in the week prior to the election, polls are rumored to show Capriles closing a gap with Maduro — one such poll allegedly shows Maduro with a narrowing 55% to 45% lead, and Capriles’s internal polls show a massive swing as well. But whittling down Maduro’s lead and winning the election are two different things.

Leopoldo López, the former mayor of Chacao (one of five municipalities, and generally the ritziest, within Caracas) from 2000 to 2008, is one of the rising stars of the opposition. Chávez’s government barred López from running for office until 2014, a move that brought the censure of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 2009, he founded Voluntad Popular, a centrist party that’s a member of the broad opposition coalition, the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD, Democratic Unity Roundtable).

‘I’m excited about change, I’m excited about the real possibility of winning, I’m excited about Venezuela opening a new cycle,’ Lopez said on Friday morning at Capriles headquarters. ‘The worries? What the government could do to put a stain on what will happen. This is not a regular election. This is not Bush-Clinton, this is not Candidate A versus Candidate B. This is a race against a state. I doubt there are other democracies where there are [such] clear differences in terms of the abuse of power. In this case, this is PDVSA, the state oil company, and the other powers of the state, against the people. But we have great faith the people will make the difference.’

The executive director of the MUD, Ramón Guillermo Aveledo (pictured above, with Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma and other top MUD officials at his right, rejected outlandish charges made in recent days at a press conference earlier today at Capriles headquarters as well.

Here’s the arithmetic. Continue reading Capriles campaign optimistic with 48 hours to go — but can it win? →

Venezuela

Should Capriles automatically get a second shot at Venezuela’s presidency?

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Venezuela’s now-acting president Nicolás Maduro is tending to affairs of state today, including a funeral for the late president Hugo Chávez on Friday, and making sure that his longtime Venezuelan predecessor’s death doesn’t result in any turbulence.Venezuela Flag Icon

But as Francisco Toro, of the always-insightful Caracas Chronicles writes today in The New York Times, politics has not stopped simply because the 14-year leader has died:

And now, Chávez’s hand-picked successor is telling the man’s grieving followers that we — those who disagree with him — are responsible for the illness that took his life.

Within hours of the president’s death being announced, gangs of motorcycle-riding Chávez supporters burned down an encampment where opposition-minded students had been demanding that the government tell the truth about his condition. Rumors of riots circulated feverishly on Twitter throughout Tuesday evening, still unverified.

Maduro, for now at least, seems to have firmly grasped control of the government, including the immediate support of the Venezuelan military, and the parallel power structures of Chávez’s governing Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, or United Socialist Party of Venezuela).

Foreign minister Elías Jaua (former vice president), who announced that Maduro was taking over as acting president, seems to be on board the Maduro bandwagon, and Cuba has long thought to have favored Maduro as Chávez’s successor (incidentally, one of the most fascinating aspects of the past three months and the months ahead is the role that Cuba plays in Venezuelan governance).

There’s a chance that Diosdado Cabello, the speaker of the National Assembly, could attempt to win the presidential nomination, but that seems unlikely, at least today. Time will tell.

Under the Venezuelan constitution, Maduro must call an election within 30 days of Chávez’s death but, as Diego Moya-Ocampos noted last month in Americas Quarterly, it’s not clear whether Maduro must call the election to be held within 30 days or whether Maduro must make the announcement within 30 days.

In one instance, Venezuela faces a presidential election on or before April 5.  In another instance, Venezuela faces an election anytime over the course of 2013, conceivably, so long as it is announced before April 5.  My first instinct is that Maduro will want to schedule the election as quickly as possible — to take advantage of lingering sympathy for Chávez and the legacy of his ‘Bolivarian’ project, to subdue intraparty rivals such as Cabello and to avoid giving the opposition a chance to develop support over a long campaign, especially at a time when so many problems are so visible: Venezuela’s economy remains in shaky condition, shortages and outages are commonplace and the country’s violent crime remains, as ever, some of the worst in the Western hemisphere.

Chávez’s former opponent, Henrique Capriles (pictured above), is assumed to become the candidate who will challenge Maduro in the upcoming presidential election to determine Chávez’s successor — he was the candidate of the unified opposition umbrella group, the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), in the October 2012 presidential election.

There are a lot of strong reasons to make that assumption: Continue reading Should Capriles automatically get a second shot at Venezuela’s presidency? →

Venezuela

Chávez’s death kicks off sudden presidential election in Venezuela

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Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has died today at age 58 after a long battle with cancer, and that sets off a snap 30-day campaign to select his successor. Venezuela Flag Icon

Putting aside politics and policy for a moment, it is clear that Chávez commanded a huge amount of support among the 29 million residents of Venezuela.  Though many critics, both within Venezuela and outside the country, especially in the United States, found his style of populist ‘bolivarian’ socialist government offensive, his largest legacy may well be addressing poverty in Venezuela after decades of leaders ignored Venezuela’s poorest– and even lift many Venezuelans out of poverty with massive amounts of social welfare spending on health, education and other support through his misiones, though we’ll leave for another day the question of whether that spending, based largely on Venezuelan natural resources and high global demand for oil, is sustainable in the long run.

It’s a testament to Chávez’s influence that Henrique Capriles, his opponent in the October 2012 presidential election, campaigned on a basis of retaining many of the misiones.  Although Chávez won reelection with nine-point victory over Capriles, the opposition made clear to Venezuelans that, to some degree, ‘we’re all chavistas, now.’ (follow all of Suffragio‘s coverage here).

His legacy will also be one of a troubling, divisive, oppressive autocrat — an erratic style of rule that diminished press freedom and blurred the line between the military, the government and politics.  Although elections remained free in Venezuela under Chávez, his mobilization of government to support his political survival meant that elections weren’t necessarily fair.  He also championed an anti-imperialist style that antagonized the United States and other Western governments (he famously called former U.S. president George W. Bush ‘Mister Danger‘ and a donkey), seeking instead common cause with countries like Iran and other rogue states.

But Chávez’s health — which was always an issue, however muted, during the campaign — took a turn for the worse after his reelection.  He departed for Cuba very soon after the election for cancer treatment, missing his own re-inauguration, and really since the day he was reelected, Venezuela’s been trapped in a bit of political paralysis with a president on what turned out to be his deathbed.

Upon reelection, Chávez was scheduled to have remained in office through January 2019; now that he’s died in office, Venezuela faces a snap election to be held within 30 days.

That’s right — Chávez’s successor will be chosen by April 5.

Before leaving for treatment in Cuba, Chávez appointed a new vice president, former foreign minister Nicolás Maduro, and anointed him specifically as his successor.  That means Maduro is likely to lead Chávez’s ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, or United Socialist Party of Venezuela) into the snap election, though it’s possible that Diosdado Cabello, the speaker of the National Assembly, could attempt to win the presidential nomination.  Given the outpouring of sympathy for Chávez, though, and the suddenness of the election, that seems unlikely.

I’ll note that Cabello himself is far from Caracas today, dealing with the death of his own mother, Felicia de Cabello, which makes the timing of Chávez’s own death perhaps suspicious.

Though Cabello may command more support within the PSUV ranks, Cuba’s leadership is thought to back Maduro, and that’s likely to be a hugely determinative factor in the days to come — one of the key questions is the role that the Cuban government of Raúl Castro has played in Venezuela’s governance in the past couple of months while Chávez has been incapacitated.

His recent opponent, Capriles, was narrowly reelected as the governor of Miranda, Venezuela’s second-most populous state, in the state elections in December 2012, and so the dynamics of the snap elections, held so closely after the previous presidential election, means that Capriles, the highest-ranking official from within the broad opposition coalition, the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), will likely be its candidate — and we’ll be asking once again whether Capriles defeat chavismo, this time without Chávez.  Again, the governor of Lara state, Henri Falcón, himself a former chavista, might also emerge as a potential challenger, though with such a short presidential campaign, Capriles has more national name recognition and the ability to mobilize a rapid campaign team, and the opposition will surely see this as their best opportunity to take power in the past 13 years.

I’m not sure what the next 30 days will bring.

We could see infighting over the nomination from both the PSUV or the MUD or we could see very rapid alignment in light of the election ahead.

We could see Venezuelans turn away from the chavistas without their charismatic leader, with Venezuela’s economy sputtering and with the most credible opposition in years providing a compelling alternative government.  We could also see a wave of sympathy for the long-ailing Chávez sweep his chosen successor Maduro into power.

Although for now the military has vowed loyalty to Maduro, meaning that there’s no imminent threat of a coup, will the military, now fully integrated into Chávez’s political empire, even allow a fully free and fair election in 30 days that could result in the election of an opposition candidate?  We just don’t know.

For now, it’s enough to note Chávez’s passing, note his complicated legacy to Venezuela and to the world, and hope for the most peaceful and seamless transition possible for the people of Venezuela.

Miranda, Venezuela, Zulia

With Chávez’s health in doubt, regional Venezuelan elections assume greater importance

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With Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez recovering from surgery, due to what may be terminal cancer, it’s easy to forget that this weekend will mark a handful of key regional races throughout Venezuela, including a gubernatorial race in Miranda state that pits Chávez’s former presidential rival against Chávez’s former vice president.zuliamiranda flagVenezuela Flag Icon

Although the attention this week has been mostly on Chávez’s health, his departure to Cuba for surgery and, perhaps above all, his speech last Saturday night indicating that his preferred successor is former foreign minister and vice president Nicolás Maduro, the results of Sunday’s races will establish the backdrop for the leading figures of both Chávez’s Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, or United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the broad opposition coalition, the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD).

Indeed, with rumors flying of complications after his surgery, the weekend’s races have counterintuitively become more important as Venezuela prepares for the possibility, at least, of a new early presidential election if Chávez resigns or dies in office.

In their own right, however, because 20% of the federal budget is (theoretically) allotted to state governments, governorships provide the MUD and other opposition candidates a platform for government, notwithstanding the centralization of Venezuela’s federal system under PSUV rule.

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The key race that everyone will be watching is the governor’s race in Miranda, where the incumbent, Henrique Capriles, recently finished his unsuccessful presidential campaign against Chávez as the MUD’s standard-bearer — although he lost by 9 points, Capriles won 45% of the vote, making him Chávez’s most successful political opponent in his 13-year reign.  Miranda state is likely Venezuela’s most developed state and its second most populous, bordering (and in some cases including) the broad Caracas metropolitan area.  Chávez actually won this state in the October presidential race by a squeaker — with 49.96% to Capriles’s 49.52%, and Capriles won the 2008 election with just over 52% of the vote.

His opponent is the somewhat humorless former vice president, Elias Jaua, and although one poll has shown Jaua with a five-point lead against Capriles, other polls have shown varying Capriles leads and it’s certainly difficult to believe Capriles is an underdog.  By all accounts, the fresh-faced Miranda governor has been a more-than-capable administrator in the past four years, bringing a dose of good government to Miranda after the corruption of his predecessor, Diosdado Cabello.  Furthemore, Jaua’s record as a colorless Chávez yes-man makes it seem like he’s less than likely to sweep to victory, although if Chávez’s health takes a serious turn for the worst between now and Sunday, Jaua may yet benefit from a vote of sympathy.

Capriles defeated Cabello, the governor from 2004 to 2008, in the prior election, and Cabello, who’s since become the leader of Venezuela’s PSUV-dominated National Assembly, would temporarily take over as president in the event that Chávez resigns or dies after he is sworn in for his next term (set to begin January 10), with a snap presidential election to follow within 30 days.  Despite Chávez’s speech anointing Maduro as his preferred successor, Cabello has long harbored presidential ambitions, he, along with Jaua (especially if Jaua wins) may try to become the PSUV’s presidential candidate in any such election instead.

Of course, in the event of such a rapid election, Capriles is very likely to lead the opposition against Maduro, Cabello or whomever the PSUV runs.  But that  could change if Capriles doesn’t win Sunday’s vote in Miranda handily — given his narrow loss to Chávez and the very short 30-day window for a new presidential election, Capriles may nonetheless still be the main opposition candidate.  But it would open the door for another candidate to emerge, likely from among the other six states where opposition governors are currently in power.

That brings us to Zulia state and with 3.8 million people, it’s Venezuela’s most populous.  Nestled in Venezuela’s far northwest bordering Colombia along the Caribbean coast, Zulia’s oil and agricultural wealth makes it, like Miranda, one of the country’s wealthiest states.  Pablo Pérez (pictured above, top), who widely lost the MUD’s presidential nomination to Capriles by a 2-to-1 margin way back in February 2012, is running for reelection in what should be an even more solid opposition win for Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT, a New Era), the centrist party that was founded in Zulia in the late 1990s and which has controlled the governor’s office since 2000 (until 2008, under Manuel Rosales, who lost the 2006 presidential election against Chávez by a 25-point margin).  Pérez is running against the PSUV’s Francisco Arias Cárdenas, governor of Zulia from 1995 to 2000, though Pérez is heavily favored.  Capriles did better in Zulia than he did nationwide in October, winning 46.27% to just 53.34% for Chávez.  Both Chávez’s national government and Pérez’s UNT regional government have spent large sums on social programs in the state, and a win for the PSUV would be quite a staggering victory for chavismo.

If Capriles falters in Miranda, Pérez, who lies politically to the left of Capriles, could well become the next consensus opposition presidential candidate.

Continue reading With Chávez’s health in doubt, regional Venezuelan elections assume greater importance →