While we may be running around watching debates and worrying about our own elections, 1000 miles away citizens of another country are getting ready to head to the polls in a election that may change the very face of Democracy in their nation. This Sunday Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez faces what is possibly the biggest challenge he has ever faced in his 14 years of Presidency: Henrique Capriles Radonski.
This is the closest race for the Venezuelan Presidency in the past 15 years. While polling outside of the Unites States is rarely accurate (with polls in Venezuela during the election cycle going from 15 points for Hugo to 15 points for Henrique depending on which polling agency and which day of the week it is), what the polling does show so far is this it is a extremely close election.
Hugo Chavez path to presidential success in the past has worked very well. Focusing on Venezuela's poor; which continue to make up a majority of the population, Chavez has focused on ensuring food and housing for them; if unfortunately not work. The Venezuelan economy which has had a tough shift over the past 15 years from a Capitalist to a Socialist based system; remains very fragile, and work remains very difficult to come by for most citizens. Most of Chavez's social programs are instead funded purely by oil sales from the nationalized oil fields that mark one of the biggest remaining oil deposits in the world.
Usually this would all indicate very good news for Hugo Chavez. But he faces instead unsure footing in this election. Local concerns remain unsettled; Venezuela has the highest crime rate in South America reaching levels surpassing previous records set by Colombia, and this issue combined with concerns surrounding the high rate of corruption in Chavez's administration and local governments have lead towards a shift in public opinion large enough to put him at risk of losing the election. Furthermore as the economy has waned over the past 4 years, Chavez's popularity among the shrinking Venezuelan middle class has dropped as well.
Capriles so far has remained wary of his chances of winning the election and possibly with good reason. Venezuela does not have a good record when it comes to Human Rights, in fact Human Rights Watch label it one of the biggest abusers when it comes to Human Rights in the Americas. Capriles knows this first hand, being one of over one hundred opposition politicians that were rounded up and jailed following the failed 2002 Coup. The crime he had committed was allowing a opposition protest to form outside the Cuban embassy a few days after. Now ten years later and cleared of all charges he has turned to another member of the prosecuted opposition to lead his campaign.
Leopoldo Lopez was one of the biggest and most popular faces of the Venezuelan opposition. And were he not banned from running for public office until 2014 he would be the one running for President. Leopoldo was one of 400 opposition politicians barred from running in a targeted sweep following Chavez's unsuccessful 2007 constitutional referendum. The ban succeeded in keeping the most popular of the opposition candidates out of the elections in 2008 and 2012, but behind the desk of the Capriles campaign Leopoldo has said he's managed to be just as effective as running for office.
Possibly another reason for the closeness of the race has been the many gaffes that have seemed to emerge from the Chavez campaign. Chavez who recently survived a bout with prostate cancer; compared Capriles, a Venezuelan Jew whose grandmother fled Germany for Venezuela following World War 2 to a Nazi. And as the sable-rattling often seen between him United States during the Bush Presidency has disappeared , so has the basis for many of Hugo's attacks against the opposition. The argument that Capriles will bring Venezuela back to Imperialism has so far failed to register as a convincing one among the general electorate.
Another problem for Chavez are the years in power which seems to have created a disconnect between him and the poor he once championed. He has failed to bring up any new ideas to help them during this election, which compared to the grand visions and social programs he usually presents during his normal campaigns seems rather odd. Instead Chavez is running on platforms of maintaining the status quo and "achieving equilibrium in the universe and guaranteeing planetary peace." Recently during one of his long reelection speeches he made a crucial mistake in saying something that the opposition instantly pounced on.
“Some might be dissatisfied with our government’s failings — that the potholes didn’t get fixed, that electricity is out and water isn’t running, that they don’t have a job and they haven’t gotten their house. That may be true in many cases … but that’s not what’s at stake. What’s really at stake is the life of the fatherland!”
Chavez remains one of the inventors and leaders of the New Left that rose in South America. The ideas of Bolivarianism and the Sao Paolo Forum have waned over the past several years in South America: but they haven't died. Chavez losing here could represent the first death throes of the movement which has faced problems overcoming economic troubled that have plagued countries like Venezuela and Argentina since adapting the policies.
Capriles represents a South American center-right position, similar on the political scale in the United States to the Democratic party. A system partly inspired by highly successful Brazilian President Luz Lula da Silva that champions foreign trade and Capitalism as a solution to economic woes and bases itself in Neoliberal policies that were popular in the United States under the Clinton administration.
The political scale in the United States is so skewed that it would be hard to compare these two candidates in our current political landscape. Although Chavez is far to the left economically of any big party candidate we have he'd be at home with third party candidates like James Harris of the Socialist Workers Party or Jerry White of the Socialist Equality Party. Capriles is most comparable to Bill Clinton in our political landscape, although a bit more conservative when it comes to social issues and a bit more liberal when it comes to economic ones.
Whoever wins this election will mark a major landmark for Venezuelan politics and may be the beginning of the end for Hugo Chavez.