From the Presidential Election Observer's Tour

Nov. Dec. 2006
By Ken Orchard

December in Victoria, Canada was cold and dreary? Depressing? Like the politics? A magical solution to this dreariness, for myself, was to join a few people from Victoria and other West coast Island spots for a trip to observe the Presidential election in Venezuela last December 3rd.

The Election

The election itself was foreshadowed by demonstrations that some of us attended on the second and third days in the country. The opposition to the Chávez government rallied up to a million people, we are told. Personally I'm quite skeptical of that number. The newspaper photo the next day showed a crowd much larger than what I had seen and photographed. It suggested "creative Photoshop journalism" on the part of the openly Anti-Chávez media, that make up the majority of the Venezuelan press.

The next day, a pro-government, pro-Chávez demonstration rallied about two million. And that's the ratio of votes that resulted on election day: about 2 votes for Chávez for every 1 for the 14 opposition candidates. Chávez won over 50% of the votes in all 23 states, including the oil-rich Zulia State, the centre of Venezuela's oil industry, and home to the opposition leader, Manuel Rosales.

Last rally before elections

Rosales has advocated secession of Zulia State from Venezuela, and the reprivatization of Venezuela's oil industry. At present, oil extraction, refining and marketing is overseen by PDVSA, the publicly owned body that sells gas at about 5 cents (Cdn) a litre. PDVSA still makes a huge profit and that profit finances many of Venzuela's social programs.

The voting process was interesting. Every poll used both computer counted votes, for an instant result, and a computer-printed ballot that was then put into a ballot box by the voter, to be manually counted at the end of the day. The two counts had to tally.

The mechanics of the voting went relatively smoothly, although we saw a few glitches. The polls were not supposed to close while voters were waiting to vote, but ours did, leaving a dozen or so elderly voters without a vote. Their votes would probably have gone to the government. But none of the glitches could invalidate the overwhelming endorsement that Chávez received. The turnout was about 75%, and Carter Centre and EU Observers decreed the vote to have been transparent and fair.

It was a great time to be in Venezuela. Almost everybody had an opinion about social policy, and most were willing to express it; there was little reluctance shown to either support or slam the Chávez government.

Venezuela's Democratic Socialism

From Chávez' supporters, we heard about massive new funding for public education, health, public transport and environmental measures. We saw an agricultural co-op that was being kickstarted by public money, to help Venezuela get closer to food self sufficiency.

Public housing projects were springing up to supplement the predominantly private housing inventory. And industrial co-ops were forming, to balance the massive privately owned industrial complex that exists in Venezuela.

We shopped in Mercals, the privately run markets that are price- setters on food and other household items, that are supplied at a little above cost from government warehouses. These are all measures that any democratic socialist government would be proud of.

From the opponents of the government we heard concerns about a degrading of education because of a huge expansion of the school system, and people from public high schools now being accepted into university, instead of just grads from private high schools.

We heard that no one ever uses the thousands of new health clinics. This lost its credibility as we stood outside a clinic and watched patients come and go. We heard that the staff in those clinics aren't really doctors, but just paramedics. I talked to three doctors who all said that in many cases the Cubans that sometimes staff the clinics are better trained than Venezuela's doctors. But the Cuban doctors practice of medicine is a social model of medicine, rather than a business model, and alienates many Venezuelan doctors.

One of our party had to be taken in to a clinic late at night. Within about 10 minutes, he was wheeled in to see a doctor, who began a dehydration IV, and had him stabilized within about 40 minutes. There was nobody at the clinic asking for money, proof of residency or other documentation; all they wanted was medical information. We saw several Community Diagnostic Centres, complete with MRIs and other state of the art medical technology. There were no waiting lists beyond a few days.

While we were in Caracas, a new subway station was opened, and we saw work progressing on the new trolley bus system in Mérida. Legislation is in process to ban the importation of large American cars, and should help clean up the smoggy Caracas air. A large portion of the cars are 70s and 80s American Big Mobiles, gas guzzlers and polluters that will gradually be taken off the roads.

Many of the "Missions", Venezuela's parallel government system based in the communities, are dealing with other social issues as diverse as drug addiction, poverty and environmental degradation. In Caracas, one afternoon, we saw hundreds of "mothers of the barrio" lined up at a bank, collecting payments that were theirs to spend as they saw fit. That barrio (poor community) had decided that this was the best way to achieve the goal of "Mission Barrio Adentro", or the "Mission to raise the barrio". Chávez has huge support in the barrios. It will take a whole article to explain how the "Missions" work.

The Politics of community

Another complaint of the Anti-Chávez forces, is the corruption of power. Even before his overwhelming mandate, and maybe now because of it, Chávez is constantly urging people to take politics into their hands locally, and resolve issues of bureaucratic incompetence, stonewalling and corruption by local action. In my short time there, I observed two cases of that happening.

The day after the election, we attended a victory celebration in the small town of Sarare, which had voted over 80% in support of Chávez People were literally dancing in the streets. 5 days later, we were unable to drive through the town, because the local high school students had blockaded the road. Yes, they supported the Chávez government. But they had issues that had dragged on too long; clean drinking water in their school, and broken computers. And they weren't going to let traffic flow until the mayor got there, to work out a schedule to get these issues resolved. He did, and traffic flowed again.

Another time, we were at dinner with some University friends in Barquisimeto. A young Venezuelan student, a friend of one of the people travelling with us, mentioned that she had really wanted to study medicine but that her family couldn't afford the 3.5 Million Bolivars "Application Assessment Fee" demanded by the registrar of the local university. That is 7 months pay at the minimum wage. At that point, she was told in very strong language, by all at the table, to apply again; that the bureaucrats that had been demanding these bribes had been expelled from the university by a staff revolt. We heard lots of references to the "Venezuelan Mafia" that had run things for decades, but that were no longer being tolerated by the communities.

Chavistas

These kinds of actions were being strongly encouraged by Chávez and the new leaders, for Venezuelianos to "take control of their community politics".

I found the symbiosis of local community activism and the national government heartening and encouraging. Far from centralizing power in his own hands, as the opposition, and western press are saying, Chávez is strongly encouraging the voices of the dispossessed of the barrios, working people, and others that have been unheard in the past.

Venezuelas, and Chávez, is an achievement that I think that our political leaders should strongly defend, and even emulate a little more closely.