Hugo Chávez and the opposition

In my opinion, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is a brilliant politician – though somehow controversial. In addition, I believe that he has been very fortunate. In this regard, I should point out that he is presiding over the highest crude prices which his oil-producing nation has ever enjoyed, as well as because his opposition has proven to lack of unification and sufficient power to remove him from power.

In 2002, the legacy of a corrupt political class that once had the power unsuccessfully attempted to take away power from Chávez with a coup d’état and a nationwide oil strike that paralyzed the country. Nevertheless, they only seemed to deepen their hole when they lost a 2004 referendum to oust Chávez, and then boycotted parliamentary elections last year. This situation allowed Chávez’s allies to take full control of Venezuela's National Assembly and strengthened his omnipotence. Since then, divisive infighting has been the opposition’s norm.

An opposition movement to Chávez has continued to gain foothold in Venezuela, which is dominated primarily by members of the middle and upper classes. These social groups were so angry with the Bolivarian government because they had lost much of their dominance over Venezuelan politics with the introduction of the 1999 constitution. Additionally, this wealthy elite owns most of the media in Venezuela and uses it to create an anti-Chávez campaign. One of the most prominent examples of this was the popularization of the racist term “ese mono” (“that monkey”), which began to be applied to Chávez by his opponents. Opponents of the government often accused them of trying to turn Venezuela into a dictatorship by centralizing power amongst its supporters in the Constituent Assembly and giving Chávez increasingly autocratic powers.

Chávez government has also been accused of Human Rights violation by many national and international organizations like Amnesty International. In this vein, according to the Washington Post, the Organizations of American States have found concerns “with freedom of expression, human rights abuses, authoritarianism, press freedom, threats to democracy, as well as erosion of separation of powers, the economic infrastructure and ability of the president to appoint judges to federal courts.”

Furthermore, crime rates within the country have increased significantly. According to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence :

“[Venezuela] has one of the highest crime rates on the continent, with 54 homicides per 100,000 citizens in 2009. With a murder rate of 140 per 100,000 citizens . . . Venezuela’s capital Caracas has the highest murder rate in South America, only exceeded in the hemisphere by Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez. Most of the deaths occur in crowded slums, but crime impinges on all sectors. In richer residential areas at night, cars shoot through red lights on often deserted streets and few people are willing to risk walking outside.”

Chávez’s popularity levels remain high. However, despite he obtained a majority in the legislative elections held in September 2010, the opposition secured at least one-third of the seats, giving them the ability to block critical legislation and top federal appointments. According to this article of The New York Times:

“By winning one-third of the seats in the National Assembly and about half of the popular vote, the opposition showed that it could learn from earlier mistakes like boycotting elections in 2005, which ended up strengthening Mr. Chávez and his radical allies, and could claw its way back from its self-imposed exile from the legislature.”

In practical terms, the seats won by the opposition enable them to block critical legislation and play a role in determining the makeup of important bodies like the Supreme Court, now packed with the president’s supporters. Beyond that, however, the elections also offered a view into the viability and direction of Mr. Chávez’s political movement, which has been in power for the last 12 years.

Furthermore, in state and municipal elections in November 2008, the opposition retained power in oil-rich Zulia and won a crucial contest in the capital, Caracas. Despite the inroads made by the opposition, supporters of Chávez still control the Supreme Court, the National Assembly, the federal bureaucracy and every state company.

In February 2009, Chávez won a referendum ending presidential term limits, allowing him to run for re-election indefinitely. The results pointed to his resilience after a decade in power, as well as to the fragmentation of his opposition. Chávez's term expires in 2013.

Members of the opposition celebrating the winning of one-third of the seats in the National Assembly (Miguel Gutierrez/Agence France-Presse Getty Images).