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What Chavez Victory Means for Latin American Democracy
2009-02-16
When President Hugo Ch[a {a}]vez first asked Venezuelans to eliminate presidential term limits in December 2007, they told him no. But on Sunday, as if resigned to the idea that he would keep on asking until he got the answer he wanted, voters said yes. Venezuela's second constitutional referendum in 14 months was approved by a resounding 54% to 45% margin, allowing ChÁvez to run for a third six-year term in 2012 and perhaps others after that. Standing on the balcony of the Miraflores presidential palace to declare victory Sunday night in his trademark red shirt, the socialist firebrand shouted: "Today we opened wide the gates of the future!" ChÁvez may well have opened another kind of gate. For much of the latter half of the 20th century, it was the norm in Latin America to limit presidents to one term, a safeguard against the lifetime rule so many caudillos had set up for themselves in the past. As democracy gained a stronger foothold on the continent, many countries voted to allow their leaders a second stint in office. (See TIME's Pictures of the Week.) The elimination of term limits in Venezuela could firmly establish a trend that, according to those who oppose such restrictions, will strengthen democracy by allowing voters to decide how long a popular leader can stick around. Term-limit proponents, however, say ChÁvez's triumph will only carry the region back to its authoritarian past. "What Venezuelan voters decide is their business," says John Walsh, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, an independent think tank. "But a threshold does seem to have been crossed." In neighboring Colombia, supporters of conservative President Alvaro Uribe, whose second and constitutionally final term ends next year, are pushing for an amendment that would let him run again. Just as Chavistas insist ChÁvez is the only man who can carry through the sweeping populist reforms he began a decade ago, many Colombians feel only Uribe can safeguard the economic revival and improved security he's brought to South America's most war-torn country. Uribe so far has played it coy, neither declaring he wants another term nor denying it. Pundits say they'd be shocked if, after watching ChÁvez gain the opportunity, he doesn't fight for the same treatment. (See pictures of Colombia's guerilla army.) Across the Andes in Ecuador, a constitutional referendum last year gave leftist President Rafael Correa the chance to govern until 2017. Correa first won in 2006; Ecuador's new constitution allows him to run for a four-year term in a special election this year, and then another in 2013. Bolivia's leftist President, Evo Morales, who was elected in 2005, won a similar reform in a referendum last month. The question now is whether both leaders will eventually follow their ally Chavez's lead and seek the right to run for re-election indefinitely. Elsewhere, political watchers are waiting to see if Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez, along with her predecessor and husband, Nestor Kirchner, will try to get term limits relaxed as well. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is another. Unless Venezuela's political landscape changes dramatically in four years, ChÁvez seems certain to win the next presidential election in 2012. His latest victory is a body blow to the country's struggling opposition, which scored some impressive wins in last year's regional elections but seemed to have lost the drive that helped it stun ChÁvez in the 2007 plebiscite. Opposition leaders caught ChÁvez napping in that election - he failed to get enough of his base to the polls - but this time it was their supporters who didn't show up. The Sunday vote had a 32% abstention rate, and election watchers assume most of the no-show was on the opposition side. Much of that can simply be attributed to voter fatigue: the referendum was the third national election for Venezuelans since December 2007. See TIME's Pictures of the Week. Read a recent TIME magazine story on Ch[a {a}]vez. ChÁvez's foes fear that he intends to set up a democratically elected version of Fidel Castro's autocratic rule over Cuba. His fans counter that some democratic countries such as France allow their leaders to be re-elected indefinitely. But analysts say France has more developed political institutions that exert stronger checks and balances on chief executives. That's not always the case in Latin America, argues Walsh, who says Chavistas "are deluded if they think those institutions are working as they should right now in in Venezuela." (See pictures of Castro in the jungle.) Walsh says ChÁvez already has inordinate control over the nation's legislative and judicial branches. If, as most expect, ChÁvez moves now to radicalize his socialist project, he could enervate them even more. ChÁvez's former ambassador to the U.S., Bernardo Alvarez, disagrees: "ChÁvez has had every opportunity in the world the past 10 years to become a dictator, and he hasn't done it," he says. "Instead he's created a real democracy here for a change, and under him those institutions will continue to strengthen." There has yet to be any reaction from the State Department but, before the vote, the State said simply that the referendum was an internal matter for the Venezuelans to decide upon. Despite declaring during his campaign last year that he'd be willing to meet with ChÁvez, U.S. President Barack Obama in a recent interview was critical of the Venezuelan and his stridently anti-U.S. stance. Washington will now watch to see if ChÁvez, who controls the western hemisphere's largest oil reserves, can retain his boisterous influence in the Americas - and survive politically at home - if oil prices don't rebound and the economy continues to slide. "The futures markets seem to think oil prices will rise soon enough that ChÁvez won't have to dip into his foreign reserves, which are about 25% of Venezuela's GDP," says Mark Weisbrot, head of the Center for Economic Policy and Research in Washington. "So I don't think ChÁvez will have too big a problem getting through the crisis." But other economists say ChÁvez won't be able to sustain the social largesse at home and petro-diplomacy abroad that have made him the standard bearer of Latin America's resurgent left. ChÁvez could also lose political steam at home if Obama doesn't provide him with a convenient U.S. foil for his fiery nationalistic rhetoric, as President George W. Bush so often did. ChÁvez recently remarked that Obama seemed to have the "same stench" as Bush, but over the weekend said he'd be willing to meet with the new U.S. leader before the Summit of the Americas in April in Trinidad. Obama has already invited Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to the White House next month, a sign that he'd prefer to deal with a more moderate Latin leftist. The only problem is that Lula's second and final term ends next year. ChÁvez now stands to be around quite a bit longer. - With reporting by Virginia Lopez / Caracas See TIME's Pictures of the Week. Read a recent TIME magazine story on Ch[a {a}]vez. View this article on Time.com Related articles on Time.com: - Hugo Chávez: Man With No Limits?
- Hugo Chavez for President ... Now and Forever?
- Chávez Beats Down His Student Opposition
- Behind the King's Rebuke to Chávez
- Behind Chavez's Anti-US Rant
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