CARACAS (Reuters) – A thawing of relations with neighbour Colombia is unlikely to give Hugo Chávez a boost ahead of legislative polls next month, and the bombastic Venezuelan leader could well ramp up his rhetoric again.
At talks on Tuesday, Chávez and his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos restored diplomatic ties, which Chávez had severed over Bogota’s charges that he backs leftist Colombian rebels and lets them operate on his territory.
While the move is the first step to rebuilding cross-border trade that had amounted to $7 billion a year before a previous spat, the detente is not seen improving domestic support for Chávez’s party ahead of a parliamentary election on Sept. 26.
And the verbose Venezuelan president may be tempted to renew his vocal criticism of Bogota before too long.
“Make no mistake about it: to the extent that Chávez feels more politically cornered at home … he will play the Colombia threat card again in the future, some time in the medium to long term,” Eurasia Group analyst Patrick Esteruelas said.
“The pressure is certainly not going to disappear. In fact, if anything, it might increase as a result of the elections, where I foresee he is going to lose the popular vote by a not insubstantial margin, while probably being able to retain a slim majority in Congress.”
Hardline backers of Chavez’s socialist revolution are unlikely to be pleased by his rapprochement with Santos, who has often criticized Chavez and whom they blame for a Colombian conflict that has spilled over the Andean border.
And many Venezuelans are focused on economic woes in the OPEC member, where a stubborn recession could prove to be the biggest threat to his party’s popularity at the ballot box.
Restoring relations could ease existing restrictions on Colombian imports — but given recent changes to the foreign exchange regime and a scarcity of hard currency that affects all imports, it is unlikely to provide much domestic respite.
Venezuela is expected to be the only nation in Latin America to post negative growth this year, analysts say.
In June, it launched a new, tightly regulated foreign exchange system in a bid to halt a sharp fall by its bolivar currency on an unofficial, parallel market that fueled sky-high inflation.
Rebels and bases
remain issues
Next month’s election is seen as an important test of Chávez’s popularity ahead of a presidential poll in 2012. His lawmakers are expected to retain a majority in parliament, but the result could be closer than the former soldier would like.
In that case, some analysts say, he could well toughen his stance again, returning to his common theme of bashing Colombia for what he calls its complicity in US “imperialism.“
“Few think this honeymoon will become a stable marriage,” said local think-tank Veneconomia.
As Washington’s top ally in the region, Bogota is not seen changing its position on a deal last year that outraged Chávez by giving US forces more access to Colombian military bases for operations against guerrillas and cocaine traffickers.
The Venezuelan leader’s PSUV party issued a statement on Wednesday welcoming the agreements reached in Santa Marta, but reminding everyone the underlying issues were far from solved.
The party remained fully committed, it said, “to defending the motherland, the people and the revolution … in a regional and global situation marked by an imperialist offensive: the coup in Honduras, the expansion of military bases in Latin America, and the global media war against Venezuela.”
Another issue that is still unaddressed is the alleged presence of leftist Colombian FARC rebels on Venezuelan soil. Chávez has recently urged the guerrillas to disarm.
But in the past he has defended the FARC as a legitimate resistance army that did not deserve the “terrorist” label given to them by the United States and European Union.
At the same time, he put his nation on a war-footing when Bogota accused him of sheltering them, and rejected the newly nominated US ambassador to Caracas after the diplomat said the FARC had “clear ties” to his administration.
For some analysts, such apparent contradictions are typical of a leader they say has used drama and rhetoric to whip up nationalist sentiment to distract voters from domestic issues.
“Maybe in Chávez’s world you can have it both ways, but to everyone else, he reminds no one of Winston Churchill rallying his country to arms,” Jose Cardenas, a former senior official at the US State Department and National Security Council, wrote in an article on the Foreign Policy journal’s website
