Writer, activist, sociologist and director of the Centre for Studies for Socialist Democracy ( https://cedesve.com/ ) Reinaldo Antonio Iturriza López discusses the competing — and inadequate — narratives surrounding Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election in this interview conducted by Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal ( http://links.org.au/ ).
*The July 28 presidential election seems to be a repeat of previous elections, with the opposition again claiming fraud and the government once more denouncing an attempted coup. What is your assessment?* Allow me, first of all, to sketch out the typical assessments made every time an election occurs in Venezuela. As a general rule, the basic starting point — supported by empirical evidence — is that each campaign sees two antagonistic sides facing off: the set of forces aligned with the program of the Bolivarian revolution against the set of forces opposed to it. >From there, we get varying interpretations as to why the former has been in >power for 25 years. One section of the left tends to see Chavismo’s successive >victories as proof of the enormous capacity of its base to resist and the >undoubted political capacity of its leadership to neutralise imperialism’s >attacks and prevent the most reactionary forces from returning to power. For >its part, the right constructs a narrative according to which Chavismo’s hold >on power can only be explained by its authoritarian character: all its >electoral victories are invariably dubious or lacking legitimacy and are the >result of the government manipulating the masses, indiscriminate use of public >resources during election campaigns, blanket disqualification of opposition >leaders, or fraud. Another section of the left endorses some of these views in >a bid to dissociate itself from Chavismo on the basis that it is >authoritarian, disrespects the principle of the democratic alternation of >power, manoeuvres against the opposition, represses public demonstrations, >curtails freedoms, control of institutions and is responsible of economic >excesses. In response, the section of the left with a more positive assessment of the Bolivarian revolution tends to denounce the gross double standards that exist when dealing with Venezuela. It points out that what are identified as mistakes, weaknesses or excesses of Chavismo in power are considered normal in any other democratic country — not to mention the silence when it comes to societies under truly dictatorial regimes or in the face of the genocide in Gaza, for example. Those are the facts and the different interpretations of those facts, outlined in a very summarised fashion. Periodically, elections take place in Venezuela where particular forces face off against each other. Then, once results are known, we move onto the phase of debating what happened based on evaluations informed by preconceived political beliefs. This is normal, this is how it has been, and, in principle, everything indicates this is how it will continue to be. So, there seems little point trying to explain these different interpretations, because we already know that they simply reflect pre-existing political positions, etc. If we are genuinely interested in understanding what is happening in Venezuela, we need to instead start with what has actually occurred; that is, with indisputable facts. As this was a presidential election, we need to not just focus on the competing political forces — which, of course, includes the nefarious influence exerted by US imperialism — but above all on the sovereign; that is, the depositary of popular sovereignty, the citizenry. The first fact to bear in mind is that Venezuelans who voted on July 28 did so in a context of a profound crisis of political representation. Generally speaking, the political class is in the worst state it has been for the past 25 years. On the one hand, we have an anti-Chavista political class burdened by the accumulated weight of successive defeats; reviled by its social support base; prey to its own contradictions; lacking an undisputed and unifying leadership; with little strategic clarity; that is under the tutelage of the US government; and is paying the price for its anti-democratic dalliances that squandered its accumulated political capital. On the other hand, we have a governing class that is also prey to its own contradictions. This generated an internal dispute in which the most conservative and pragmatic tendencies won out and imposed what [Italian Marxist Antonio] Gramsci called the anti-program of the passive revolution. This in turn led to the working class ceasing to constitute the backbone of the governing bloc of forces. Since the governing class’s defeat in the 2015 parliamentary elections (a clear sign of the fracturing of this national and popular hegemonic bloc), but especially from September 2018 onwards (when it began implementing an orthodox-monetarist economic program), this governing class has tried to recompose its bloc of forces from above together with fractions of the capitalist class. This process created the conditions for a gradual disintegration of its political strength from below. For the past decade, huge contingents of what was once the government’s working-class support base have disaffiliated from Chavismo. An important part of Venezuelan society once again finds itself in a “ situación de vaciamiento ideológico ” (situation of ideological emptiness), to use an expression coined by [Bolivian Marxist René] Zavaleta Mercado. This phenomenon has not existed in the country since the 1990s and, it should be noted, was a political problem of the first order that Chavismo was able to resolve. What are the implications of all this for the July 28 presidential elections? First, it was quite clear that both forces went into the campaign with their respective social bases in a profoundly weakened state. Second, that the strategic shift adopted by the governing class means we have to question a fact once taken for granted: that elections are a contest between two antagonistic historical projects. Programmatic debate was practically absent throughout the campaign. Third, and directly related to the previous point, an important segment of the citizenry — those in a “situation of ideological emptiness” — exercised their right to vote despite not feeling represented by any candidate. Lastly, a considerable part of the opposition candidate’s vote did not reflect an identification with anti-Chavismo, but was fundamentally a vote against the government. The opposite is also true: part of the official candidate’s vote did not reflect support for the government, but rather rejection of a potential ultra-right victory. It is important to underline that in such a scenario, it was crucial that the electoral arbiter left no room for doubt as to the result, by guaranteeing that corresponding audits were carried out and publishing results broken down by polling booth. Not only has this not happened, but the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) explanations as to why it was unable to carry out its functions — namely, a hacking of the voting system — have been quite frankly inadequate, to say the least. All of this means that typical interpretations are completely inadequate for assessing what has happened in Venezuela since July 28. They are based, at best, on superficial readings and, at worst, on a complete ignorance of what has occurred in recent years in terms of the balance of political forces. It is also clear that, beyond the counterposed versions of events (fraud or attempted coup d'état), what we have is a situation in which reasonable doubt, and with it a genuine sense of unease, has taken hold in the heart of Venezuelan society. The popular protests that took place on July 29 were a direct result of this. There is no doubt that both forces sought to eventually intervene in the events of that day: one side by seeking to capitalise on discontent and stoking violence, the other by imposing order. We can clearly say that today, order reigns in Venezuela, though lingering doubts and a sense of unrest remain... 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