Significant sectors of Venezuelan society, including the combined opposition, civil society, academia, non-state media and the Episcopalian Church, have reacted strongly to the package of laws, including the Enabling Law granting the President special powers to rule by decree for 18 months, passed last December by what was effectively a lame-duck National Assembly.
The main concern continues to be the apparent intention of President Hugo Chávez to ignore resistance to his ‘Bolivarian revolution’ and to press ahead with the establishment of a socialist state. Mr Chávez’s opponents argue that all this is contrary to the provisions of the country’s 1999 constitution, revised and approved under President Chávez himself.
The opposition, collectively known as the Table for Democratic Unity, argues that President Chávez has mocked the will of the people by having the so-called “Cuban package” of laws pushed through in the last days of the outgoing parliament. This delegation of powers beyond its constitutional term was, in the opinion of the opposition, a usurpation of the authority of the new National Assembly.
In this respect, Democratic Unity claims that it speaks for the majority of the country. According to their calculations, the opposition parties believe that they won 52% of the popular vote in last September’s legislative elections, even though the National Electoral Council only credited them with 47.9% as opposed to 48.9% for Mr Chávez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Whichever figures are considered authentic, theirs is a voice that ought not to be ignored, as they still represent a significant percentage of the electorate.
Since President Chávez has refused to heed the clamour for a recall of the Enabling Law, representatives of Democratic Unity have mounted an international campaign to highlight what they consider to be a major threat to democracy in Venezuela. This week they were in Brussels to meet with the European Commission and the European Parliament, which has in the past few years adopted resolutions expressing concern at the erosion of democratic norms in Venezuela. A couple of weeks ago, they were in Washington presenting their case to the Secretary General of the Organization of American States.
Democratic Unity contends that the Enabling Law is illegitimate and that the Cuban package and Mr Chávez’s authoritarianism threaten the constitutional order by ignoring the rule of law, undermining the principle of the separation of powers and disrespecting fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression and association; all this is, moreover, in breach of the Inter-American Democratic Charter and other international instruments. The opposition further claims that Mr Chávez is attempting to create a parallel, unconstitutional model of governance via the Law of the Communes, which removes the functions of local government from elected officials to indirectly elected ‘popular’ bodies financed by and answerable only to the presidency.
As unpredictable as ever, President Chávez has surprised many by his latest move. In his recent accounting to the National Assembly of his stewardship of the country in 2010, he struck a conciliatory note, calling for dialogue between government and opposition and announcing that he was going to reduce the life of the Enabling Law to five months.
Democratic Unity is, however, sceptical. It is not the first time the mercurial President has assumed a moderate attitude; like most politicians, he can be pragmatic, diplomatic even, when it suits him. In this instance, the opposition believes that Mr Chávez is simply seeking to exercise damage control in the face of negative international reaction and that, in any case, the Enabling Law is simply a means to an end. That is to say, the President can use it as he sees fit in the time he has given himself to achieve whatever he wants.
In response, the Executive Secretary of Democratic Unity, Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, has stated that the fact that the President recognizes that the Enabling Law is “excessive” would indicate that the correct thing to do would be to derogate it, as it has already been promulgated, to allow the National Assembly to legislate for those affected by the recent heavy rains and flooding.
Whether one believes Mr Chávez is being cynical or not and even if his recent tone of moderation and call to dialogue are viewed as merely tactical, the opposition can go further in responding in kind to his apparent pragmatism and declare themselves ready for the dialogue he has proposed. There is no shortage of constitutional and legislative issues to be put on the table and time will tell whether Mr Chávez is bluffing or not.