The legacy of Hugo Chavez suffered a monumental setback in Venezuela last week, with parliamentary elections resulting not only in a victory for the conservative opposition, in keeping with the opinion polls, but ushering in an unexpectedly huge majority.
Given that it was Chavez’s triumph in a presidential election at the turn of the century that seemed to change the political template across Latin America, as parties with socialistic or at least social democratic inclinations swept into power pretty much across the continent, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether the so-called pink tide has turned. Will forces wed-ded to the neoliberal Washington Consensus sweep back into power pretty much across the board?
The change in Argentina, where Mauricio Macri grabbed the presidential sash last week from Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner after defeating her designated successor in November’s run-off election, can easily be deployed as an argument in defence of that thesis. On the other hand, Kirchner’s fare-well rally in Buenos Aires suggests it would be unwise to write off the appeal of the progressive ascendancy just yet.
After all, Michelle Bachelet’s return to pre-sidential power last year following a four-year conservative interregnum shows that setbacks can be reversed. Besides, progressive ideals remain entrenched in several countries, not least Bolivia — Che Guevara’s final battleground — where Evo Morales has pulled off the remar-kable feat of largely retaining his popularity while earning kudos even from Western fin-ancial institutions for the success of his pover-ty-reduction endea-vours. And in Uruguay, the universally endea-ring José Mujica, the former guerrilla who gave away 90 per cent of his salary because it was surplus to his humble requirements, was succ-eeded last year by his reasonably like-minded predecessor, Tabaré Vazquez.
Dilma Rousseff’s popularity in Brazil has tanked to an extent that her Workers Party predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, managed to avoid, and it remains to be seen whether she will be able to complete her tenure as President. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa is also faced with a sea of troubles.
The extent to which the US plays a role in encouraging, coordinating and funding dilemmas for relatively progressive administra-tions in a region it largely continues to view as its backyard remains controversial. There can be no surprise, though, about its efforts to undermine Chavez, whose ascendancy took Washington by surprise.
Although Washington was believed to have abandoned its strategy of backing military coups to stave off the pos-sibility of leftist-inclined governments, as in the case of Chile in 1973, it was clearly complicit in the military-industrial attempt to oust Chavez in 2002. A popular upsurge, combined with backing for Chavez among sections of the Venezuelan military, foiled the coup that time, but efforts to undermine him continued apace, espe-cially in the economic sphere. His successor Nicolás Maduro’s complaint of economic warfare therefore rings more than one bell.
That Chavez and his supporters nonetheless managed to pursue their Bolivarian agenda, not least in terms of its geopolitical dimensions, was a formidable achie-vement, repeatedly endorsed by substantial popular majorities in a series of elections and referenda. But Maduro had big shoes to fill after Chavez succumbed to cancer in 2013, and he has floundered in many respects. The economy is demonstrably in a mess, partly as the consequen-ce of a devastating decline in the price of oil, and the disarray caused by rampant inflation has been compounded by fixed-priced outlets stru-ggling to cope with interminable queues of customers.
In the event, it’s hardly a surprise that many erstwhile devotees of Chavismo voted for change, embodied in the Movement of Democratic Unity, an alliance of dozens of Opposition parties, which has secu-red a two-thirds parlia-mentary majority that enables it to pursue constitutional changes and, quite possibly, abbreviate Maduro’s presidential tenure.
MUD’s unity could conceivably crumble now that it has achieved its primary objective. But there is dissension within the United Socia-list Party of Venezuela, too, and it remains to be seen whether it will be able to pull its act together and once more come up with a coherent programme for pursuing at least minimal goals, such as expanding the important but insufficient gains in respect of prioritising health, education and, more broadly, the redistribution of wealth.
By arrangement with Dawn
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