Ensure low margin of victory for Chávez
by Javier Corrales *
The turn to the left among South American governments that started in Venezuela with the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998 will not end in Venezuela, at least not this year. Presidential elections in Venezuela are scheduled for December, and chances are, Chávez will be reelected. Yet, the prospects for the opposition are not entirely dismal. Understanding both the strengths and weaknesses in Chávez's electoral coalition could help the opposition make inroads against Latin America's most formidable political juggernaut. Chávez will win because all the economic variables that typically help incumbents are pointing in the right direction -- high export commodity prices (gas and oil), rapid economic growth, heavy social spending, and declining inflation and unemployment.
But Chávez's advantage is not all economics. It also stems from his capacity to reconfigure his own political movement.
No longer revolutionary
The Chávez coalition has changed enormously since 1999. Back then, the movement offered a progressive ideology that promised to free Venezuela of the stranglehold of the old parties. This agenda attracted the vast majorities. Today, Chávez's coalition is different -- and smaller. Its focus is no longer revolutionary, but rather, conservative. The new campaign slogan seems to be ``let's preserve the gains achieved thus far.''
As with many conservative movements, Chávez's supporters today no longer include the losers in Venezuela, but the new winners: welfare recipients, actors with ties to the state and those who profit from corruption. Although these winners come from different income groups (welfare recipients are mostly poor, state employees come from the low middle classes, and corrupt folks are wealthier), they share the same electoral objective -- preserve their gains. These gains are access to social programs, state jobs and contracts, and impunity. What unites these groups is a fear that the opposition will take away their gains.
For the opposition, the dream of a victory in the elections is unrealistic, not so much because the opposition is amorphous, which it is, but because it faces a formidable coalition of state clients and state predators that is almost impossible to defeat in any country.
The opposition should thus focus on the second best outcome: ensuring a low margin of victory for Chávez. A close victory would be nightmarish for Chávez. His aura of being ''democratic'' would suffer, since he will lack proof that his margin of victory is greater than the margin of irregularity in the electoral process. These irregularities (biased electoral officials, nontransparent electoral registration procedures, biased use of state resources) have been documented by the OAS and European Union in their reports on the December 2005 elections to the National Assembly. What remains to be demonstrated is that his margin of victory is lower than the advantage conferred by these irregularities.
So what should the opposition do?
First, it should condemn and participate. This means continuing to divulge the irregularities in the electoral process but still participate in the elections. For many Venezuelans, this strategy seems illogical: How can one denounce a game and simultaneously play it? If the goal of the opposition were to unseat Chávez, the condemn-and-participate strategy is clearly pointless. But if the goal is instead to reduce the incumbent's margin of victory yet amplify knowledge about the irregularities, then the obvious strategy is to condemn and participate.
Second, the opposition should unify around one candidate, but not just yet. Waiting a few months before unifying is necessary to give the electorate time to evaluate the candidates. The unifying candidate should be the one who proves to be not just the most popular, but also the one with the lowest rejection rates, and thus, the more capable of garnering votes. This also means that the opposition should not rely on primaries because primaries never reveal rejection rates.
Third, the opposition should focus not only on how to rally the economic losers, but more challengingly, how to lessen the fears of the new winners. A discourse that is highly accusatory of the corrupt and opportunistic is irresistible for the opposition, but scary for everyone one else. Speeches should focus in- stead on how to make corruption less likely in the future.
These strategies are risky. They will not suffice to bring the opposition to power in December. But they can help shrink Chávez's advantage, even under his own biased rules. This outcome would not necessarily constitute a defeat for the opposition.
* Javier Corrales is associate professor of political science at Amherst College and author of Hugo Boss, an essay on Venezuelan politics published in Foreign Policy Magazine.
Source: Miami Herald
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