|
The
legalization of the recall referendum against President Hugo
Chavez—conducted by the Venezuelan right with pre-meditated fraud
and recurring acts that violate the rule of law—open the doors for
a possible loss of power for the Bolivarian forces. Such a loss
could occur either de facto or de jure (via the institutions).
The August referendum is, in military terms, the decisive battle
in the four year war between the oligarchic–imperial axis and the
presidential–patriotic axis. It is the Waterloo of Napoleon
Bonaparte, the Ayacucho of Antonio José de Sucre, the Kursk (1943)
of the Red Army, and the Carabobo of Hugo Chavez.
The importance of the coming referendum cannot be overestimated.
“The ultimate remains of Spanish power in America expired in this
fortunate field,” wrote the victor of Ayacucho to the Liberator
(Simon Bolivar), when the battle had just ended, on December 9,
1824. Nothing less is at stake this August, 2004, in Venezuela.
To lose this battle means to lose the war. It means, to lose
everything. Just as the legalization of George Bush’s electoral
robbery by Washington’s Supreme Court initiated a disgraceful
period, not just for the U.S. population, but for the whole world,
the liquidation of the Bolivarian Process would be the end of any
attempt to unify Latin America because its dynamic element, the
Venezuelan president, would disappear.
The defeat would be equivalent to the triumph of the FTAA, of
Plan Colombia, of dollarization, of the hemispheric exterritoriality
of U.S. jurisdiction and of the Democratic Charter; it would be the
end of the progressive and Latin American potential of Kirchner and
Lula’s politics; it would create an extremely dangerous situation
for Cuba and would leave the MAS of Bolivia and the FARC and ELN of
Colombia, the CONAIE of Ecuador, and the other progressive social
movements in all of Latin America without a concrete strategic
horizon.
In order to avoid a possible defeat in August it will be
necessary to take a number of urgent measures. The first is obvious:
the replacement of the campaign team that took the referendum to the
current disaster and which has been left in complete discredit: the
Commando Ayacucho, among other directive bodies.
Independently of the other factors that have produced this
calamity, it is unforgivable that one of the richest states of Latin
America, whose government counts on the solid support of the Armed
Forces, with a relatively high popularity, with massive social and
educational programs, and that disposes of state-run television and
radio stations, was not able to defeat a coup-oriented and
demagogically debilitated right wing, lacking in projects and
national political personalities.
This failure points to the principal Achilles Heel of the
Bolivarian process: the insufficiency of work groups in the
political and bureaucratic spheres that are efficient, committed to
the cause, and that give continuity to initiated projects. What
prevails instead, with some exceptions, is improvisation, the
constant change in directive positions, party and personal
opportunism, and routinized discourse, which make advances in the
process difficult.
Part of this landscape of human failure is the triumphalism that
has not been overcome within the Bolivarian ranks. A few months
prior to the military coup of April 2002 it was obvious that a coup
d’état against the president was being forged. Nonetheless, even
while the diagnosis of a coup was being reinforced by the opinions
of high ranking military officers and by the intelligence services,
it was impossible to penetrate the triumphalist and individualist
wall that dominated the highest levels of the process; a wall that
impeded taking preventive measures in the situation.
The failure of the “Bolivarianization” of the union movement
is another example in this regard. Trusting in the popularity of the
president, an improvised campaign was launched that was defeated by
the corrupt unionism of the Fourth Republic; a grave mistake that is
being paid for with years of destabilization coming from the white
unions.[1]
Connected to this triumphalism are two mechanisms that could
cause serious consequences if they are not taken into account during
the decisive battle. The substitution of precise and profound
analysis of the concrete present situation with references to the
past, on the one hand, and the chimera, supported by many
functionaries and leaders, that the Bolivarian revolution is a
unique and absolutely novel experience in Latin America, on the
other hand.
The first mechanism expresses itself in the idea that
Bolivarianism has electorally defeated the right seven times and
will also win, as a consequence, the August referendum. It is
possible that such a slogan would be useful to reinforce the
enthusiasm and emotional determination of those in one’s own
party.
However, one must differentiate between this psychological
extrapolation of the past and the nature of the objective truth.
From the point of view of science, it has to do with an absolutely
unsustainable argument. Every scientist knows that one tendency in
evolution is that a phenomenon can drastically change its course or
its behavior in very little time. For this very same reason, the
current popularity of the President does not confer any security
with regard to the future, that is, for the upcoming contest.
The idea of the historical uniqueness of the Bolivarian process,
which emerged immediately following the President’s electoral
triumph, has a defeatist effect that is complementary to the
mechanisms above. Something that is an absolute novelty cannot be
studied, per definition, neither in history nor in books. Thus, it
relieves political activists and the citizenry in general from
studying and learning from the destruction of Unidad Popular
in Chile, of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, of Peronismo in
Argentina, of Joao Goulart in Brazil, and, of course, of the war of
Paraguay.
The “Bolivarian Revolution” of Venezuela is a home-grown (criollo)
product as old as Latin American independence itself and, at the
same time, universal, just as European Bonapartism and Keynesian
developmentalism are. This is why the understanding of its
particular and universal historical components is so important for
the survival of the process, just as is the study of the concrete
current situation.
The underestimation of the manipulative power of contemporary
social sciences would be another major mistake. Nowadays, elections
in all countries are won with two essential ingredients: a) money
and, b) science. Money, in contrast to many other countries, is more
than enough for the Venezuelan state, a fact that would resolve, in
the abstract, fifty percent of the problem.
Missing is the use of science, in a double sense: a)
understanding its use by the enemy and, b) its use on the part of
the Bolivarians, in order to neutralize the maneuvers of the right.
To this end it would be important that the team that leads the
referendum battle researches in depth the upcoming electoral
processes.
The electoral process of 1990 in Nicaragua, in which the
paramilitary aggression of the “contras,” nine million dollars
given to the opposition by the U.S. Senate, along with the threat of
war on the part of Washington, caused the Sandinstas to lose the
government; comparing the populations of the two countries, the
Venezuelan right would receive about 72 million dollars for August.
The substitution of Edvard Schevardnadse in Georgia with Mikhail
Saakashvili in 2004, is probably even more important. In November
2003, following a prolonged campaign of street protests, organized
and financed by Washington and the mega-speculator George Soros,
Schevardnadse gave up the presidency, opening the path for the
country to be controlled by the energy transnationals of the empire.
The parliament’s speaker, Nino Burdshanadse, assumed the
presidency so as to be replaced subsequently by a perfectly designed
and financed campaign from Washington, which then brought the New
York educated lawyer Saakashvili to power in January 2004, with an
absolute majority of 96%.
Finally, the process of the electoral triumph of Boris Yeltsin,
of 1996. Faced with a popularity of 6% for Yeltsin in February of
1996—similar to Toledo’s in Peru or Gutierrez in Ecuador—the
white house was very worried about losing its puppet in the Kremlin.
It immediately sent a campaign management team that converted the
moribund candidacy of Yeltsin into a solid triumph in June (!!) of
the same year.
At that time, Stalin had positive valuations that were higher and
negative valuations that were lower than that of Yeltsin, who more
than 60% of Russians considered corrupt.
However, a combination of falsified opinion polls; the permanent
repetition of the supposed danger of a civil war in the case of a
triumph of the Communist party; the systematic violation of
electoral laws; the conversion of the media into a state propaganda
apparatus; the extensive use of focus groups, of representative
samples, of in-depth interviews, of visual culture, and of the
massive disbursement of money, brought about in merely four months a
result, which the moved President Clinton called, “The
consolidation of the democratic process in Russia.”
It is obvious that Bush will send a similar team, along with
suitcases filled with tens of millions of dollars to buy the
necessary voters, functionaries, judges, editors, and TV spots. If
the manipulative and corrupting machinery of Washington manages to
repeat the successes in Russia and Georgia, the headlines of the
U.S. press are predictable: “Consolidation of the Democratic
Process in Venezuela.”
In that event, Jimmy Carter would sweeten the return of oil to
hemispheric democracy with his sweet smile of [bonachon] and his
pastoral blessing; the wolf Cesar Gaviria, protected by a lamb’s
face, would say his usual silliness about representative democracy,
and Andrés Oppenheimer, the beacon of Latin American journalism,
would illuminate his anti-Castro (gusano) clientele, between
commercials, about the news that, against all expectations, the
populist Chavez accepted the results of the referendum.
So as to not arrive at this moment of extreme desolation for all
patriots and revolutionary Latin Americans, it would be convenient
if the Bolivarian forces consult with and support themselves with
the best professional teams that are available in the world market
for electoral marketing.
The referendum campaign should be, on the part of the Bolivarians,
a process of electoral homeopathy, in which fire is fought with
fire, and the poisonous with poison. This decisive battle cannot be
improvised because if it is lost, the future of the Patria Grande
(Big Fatherland) would be lost.
This should be planned scientifically, without ingenuousness, nor
triumphalism, nor misplaced democraticisms. It cannot be home-made
nor self-taught, but must be “industrial” and take into account
the first axiom of electoral marketing, which says, cynically, but
correctly: “perception kills reality.”
But, this being the case, it must be done with abundant funds,
with the best troops, and the best supplies that can be bought and
with the full will to neutralize the methods of dirty electoral
warfare that won in Russia, Georgia, Nicaragua, and in the first
phase of the recall referendum.
“A revolution that does not know how to defend itself is not a
revolution,” said the genius of political everyday dialectics,
Bertolt Brecht.
From today until August, the Bolivarian revolution must define
itself in the face of this imperative, what it is and what it wants
to be.
[1]
“White unions” refers to the union movement that is controlled
by Acción Democrática, the formerly governing party and whose
party color is white.
Original source / relevant link:
Rebelion.org
|