Civil Society, Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, Poverty & SDGs

VENEZUELA: Social Issues Played Down in Referendum Campaign

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Feb 12 2009 (IPS) - A mob seized a man suspected of rape in El Valle, a populous district in the southwest of the Venezuelan capital, beat him to death, and then burned his corpse – twice over, so that the press could film and photograph the scene. In spite of the horrifying images, few public figures mentioned the case.

The lynching took place in the final run-up to the referendum on a new constitution that would allow unlimited reelection to all elected posts. However, it was barely noticed by political campaigners: the government issued a condemnation, and the opposition criticised the state of public safety.

Social issues appear to be overshadowed by the purely political battle that will be decided at the ballot boxes next Sunday and is centred on Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who has governed for 10 years and aspires to continue to do so for at least another decade.

A publicity spot for the “Yes” vote (to approve the constitutional change proposed by Chávez) shows a poor woman arriving at a private clinic seeking help. She is rejected because she does not have a credit card; but it turns out this is only a nightmare, as in reality she lives close to a free health centre that is part of the Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighbourhood) health programme initiated by Chávez in 2003.

However, programmes like Barrio Adentro, their implementation and their defects, have been disregarded during the four-week referendum campaign. “We haven’t time to persuade so many people; what we have to do is get our voters, who are in the majority, to turn out and vote,” said Chávez at one of his meetings with his campaign managers.

The proposal to amend the constitution would remove all term limits for elected officials, so that candidates have the opportunity to be reelected indefinitely. Chávez, elected president in 1999, went to the country again in 2000 and was reelected in 2006. His presidential term ends in 2013, but he hopes to stand again and govern “at least until 2019,” in his own words.

“The balance of these 10 years in government is a very positive one, but there is still much to be done,” the president said in a television interview. “A decade ago, half the population lived in poverty, and we have reduced that to 25 percent,” he said.

He quoted Alicia Bárcena, the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in whose view Venezuela has achieved “very positive social indicators, and is one of the countries that spends most public money on social programmes, nearly 14 percent” of gross domestic product (GDP).

Bárcena confirmed that, according to government statistics, the proportion of the population who are indigent (extremely poor) has fallen from 25 percent to 8.5 percent over the same time period.

“These indicators show a reduction of both general and extreme poverty. There has been good continuity in the implementation of inclusive educational policies, as well as improvements in nutrition and consumption among Venezuelans,” Marino Alvarado, the coordinator of the Venezuelan Programme of Education-Action in Human Rights, (PROVEA) told IPS.

Overt unemployment stood at approximately 12 percent of the economically active population a decade ago, but has fallen to 6.1 percent, Chávez said.

“In spite of this, opinion polls place unemployment as people’s second largest concern, after public safety. This can be explained by the persistence of very precarious and poorly paid jobs,” the head of the polling firm Datanálisis, Luis León, told IPS.

The Information Ministry indicated advances in gender equality as another achievement. “A large number of neighbourhood councils (promoted by the government) are headed by women, and 16 percent of lawmakers in parliament are women.

“In addition, four out of the five branches of government are headed by women,” they said. (The Venezuelan state is made up of executive, legislative and judicial branches, the Citizens’ Public Power and the electoral authority).

Chávez admits to failures in housing provision. Venezuela, with nearly seven million households, has a housing deficit estimated at up to two million units, but only a few tens of thousands of dwellings a year are being built.

Public insecurity is identified by up to 80 percent of interviewees in opinion polls as the country’s number one problem. There are over 13,000 homicides a year in Venezuela, equivalent to an annual murder rate of close to 50 per 100,000 population.

In the poorest sectors of Caracas, dozens of killings take place every weekend, totalling an average of over 130 per 100,000 people in these areas.

The opposition have taken up the cause of public safety as their own, especially when student demonstrations against the proposed constitutional amendment threatened to get out of hand, and Chávez ordered the security forces to “lob the strongest (tear) gas” at the young people.

Meanwhile, in communities like El Valle, people are demanding that the police fight crime more effectively.

“The issue of insecurity is on our agenda every day,” Chávez retorted. “I don’t have a repressive mentality, and when we fight unemployment and poverty, and work for inclusiveness, we are combating delinquency,” he said.

Nevertheless, as one of its main strategies, the opposition has linked a “No” to insecurity to a “No” vote for what they call the “indefinite reelection proposal”.

Chávez made a previous attempt to clear the way for possible further reelection with an earlier constitutional reform that was rejected by 51 percent of voters in a referendum in 2007. On that occasion, millions of people who had reelected him as president in 2006 chose to stay home.

The level of abstention among low income sectors, who suffer the brunt of insecurity and other problems, was interpreted as a social protest against the government.

Perhaps for this reason, in spite of all the social achievements, in his many national broadcasts on radio and television and a vast amount of official publicity President Chávez “is trying to reconnect with his electorate by making emotional appeals, rather than analysing the positive or negative aspects of his administration’s record,” Oscar Schémel, an analyst with the polling firm Hinterlaces, told IPS.

The opposition, for its part, has only just taken possession of the handful of state (provincial) governorships and mayors’ positions it won in the November 2008 regional elections, and has discovered that health and education institutions, the police, transport and even television channels are firmly in the hands of the central government.

With this lightning referendum coming close on the heels of an exhausting year of campaigning for the regional elections, Chávez’s opponents have not succeeded in getting across a message that raises the profile of social demands, in the face of the purely political proposal for constitutional amendment.

Along with possible economic adjustments in the context of the global crisis, social issues in Venezuela appear to have been postponed until after next Sunday’s referendum.