Making Chavez "Keep His Word"

["Jay Moore" <pieinsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chavez raises Venezuelans' hopes with revolutionary zeal

11.39 a.m. ET (1547 GMT) October 23, 1999 By Steven Gutkin, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Young toughs break into a school and steal
chalkboards, smash desks and spray classrooms with bullets. A neighborhood
leader says it's up to President Hugo Chavez to repair the damage.

At a hospital, where basic supplies have long been scarce because of
mismanagement and corruption, Chavez has sent in soldiers to begin a
refurbishment by painting the walls and fixing up the operating rooms.

In slums and shantytowns, on the streets and in neighborhood bars, millions
of Venezuelans are pinning their hopes on Chavez to reverse the steady decay
of public institutions and the rule of law.

Eight years after staging a spectacular but failed coup attempt and eight
months after being elected president, Chavez is turning Venezuela into a
closely watched test case of Latin American democracy.

The former paratrooper's rush to impose a radical overhaul of a
corruption-riddled political system inflames the passions of those who love
him and those who despise him.

Chavez's defenders say he should be applauded for carrying out a revolution
peacefully and through elections. Opposing him, they say, is to ignore the
aspirations of the majority of Venezuela's 23 million people, who see the
president as an antidote to despair.

"He is my hope,'' said Moraima Sojo, a 28-year-old mother of three who lost
an eye from a stray bullet while sleeping in her bed in one of Caracas's
most dangerous slums. "All I want is a little security.''

Chavez's fiercest critics paint his revolution as mob rule. They warn of a
dangerous concentration of power in his hands, noting the appointment of
loyalist military officers to what used to be civilian positions.

When he took office in February, Venezuela was a nation ripe for revolution,
where the government had lost the capacity to perform even core functions
like ensuring public order or providing a minimal social safety net.
Critics ask whether Chavez's remedies - assaults on the legislative and
judicial branches and the use of soldiers to rebuild schools and hospitals -
amount to a "social revolution'' as he insists or a return to old-style
Latin American authoritarianism.

In August, the president's supporters shut opposition lawmakers out of
Congress, even though they knew a new constitution being drafted by an
elected assembly will soon create a new legislative body to replace it. So
why the spectacle televised around the world of lawmakers forced to fight
their way into the capitol building?

"The people want blood,'' explained Froilan Barrios, a pro-Chavez delegate
to the constitutional assembly.

For a while, "blood'' is what the people got. Congress was virtually
dissolved, the Supreme Court emasculated and the traditional political
parties that had governed for decades cast aside like so much refuse.

But Chavez has backed away from the most aggressive elements of his
revolution, apparently realizing the turmoil was hurting the already
slumping economy and inviting international scorn.

He allowed Congress to reconvene. And the constitutional assembly, where
more than 90 percent of the delegates are Chavez supporters, let the Supreme
Court keep functioning after the assembly drew criticism for usurping the
powers of the courts by declaring a "judicial emergency.''

For most Venezuelans - furious over decades of declining real incomes in a
nation that sits on the Western Hemisphere's largest oil reserves - making
ends meet is more important than democratic niceties like checks and
balances.

Venezuelans' exuberance for Chavez manifests itself in many ways, including
the recent "peaceful occupation'' of The Associated Press bureau in Caracas
by a group of artists protesting what they said was the international
media's unfair portrayal of Chavez.

People congregate every day at the gates of Miraflores presidential palace
to ask Chavez for help. During the president's weekly radio call-in program,
Venezuelans ask Chavez for everything from a loan to purchase a taxi to help
in repairing broken sewer pipes.

Mireya Fernandez, a neighborhood leader trying to fix the bullet-riddled
school in a hillside Caracas slum, said Chavez's showcase plan to use 70,000
soldiers in public works projects would soon come to the rescue.

"We're going to make Chavez keep his word because we're the ones who elected
him,'' Fernandez said.
Most Venezuelans feel Chavez is on their side. The 45-year-old leader,
through fiery speeches, an athlete's confidence and a daily schedule that
puts him in direct contact with common people, has earned an approval rating
of over 70 percent in opinion polls and boosted spirits like no Venezuelan
leader in memory.

In early October, he announced he will increase spending on health and
education by more than 10 percent in 2000. He's set up a "people's bank''
that will soon begin offering loans to the poor. His ban on school entrance
fees has boosted enrollment 25 percent, authorities say.

But some economists say Chavez's program could be undercut by economic
mismanagement and a return to statist policies. More than a half million
workers have lost their jobs since Chavez took office in a slump that saw
the value of the economy slide 10 percent in the first half of 1999.

Others are optimistic that the last year's strong rise in the price of oil -
Venezuela's main export - will help the economy begin recovering.

The anger that fuels Chavez's revolution has its roots in the widespread
belief here that affluence is the birthright of all Venezuelans because of
that pool of oil.

During the 1970s oil boom, so much money flowed into the country that it was
dubbed "Saudi Venezuela.'' Four Boeing 747s a day ferried Venezuelans back
and forth between Caracas and Miami.

"Scotch whisky and champagne were flowing like water,'' said Otto Reich,
former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela. "They would fly in sliced bread from
the United States rather than bake it themselves.''
Instead of preparing for a rainy day, Venezuela plunged into a feeding
frenzy in which political parties and other privileged groups looted the
state's shrinking resources.

When the oil boom ended, an austerity program implemented by then President
Carlos Andres Perez was greeted by mass rioting in 1989 and two failed
military coups in 1992.

Now that the coup leader is president, many people hope Chavez will use his
enormous popularity to carry out overdue reforms such as trimming the
bloated bureaucracy and reducing the country's dependence on oil.

He has made fighting corruption and promoting civic values hallmarks of his
administration, just recently making an impassioned plea, for instance, for
people to pay their taxes.

"This is about honesty - honesty with the country and with yourself,'' he
said.