4 parties boycott Venezuela vote

The decision by Venezuela's main opposition parties to boycott Sunday's congressional elections is likely to further polarize this oil-rich nation and increase tensions with the United States, experts said.

By Gary Marx
Chicago Tribune
December 1, 2005

Three opposition parties withdrew Tuesday from the elections after saying the electoral process is flawed and vulnerable to fraud. A fourth opposition group announced Wednesday that it was also boycotting the vote.

Polls show the opposition was likely to get swept in the election, but the decision assures Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of winning an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly as he presses ahead with his socialist revolution.

Mark Falcoff, a Latin American scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, described the boycott as a "terrible mistake" that could weaken opposition prospects for challenging Chavez in future elections.

Falcoff said Chavez is riding a wave of popularity by channeling record oil revenues into social programs. Falcoff predicted that oil prices will eventually fall and with them Chavez's popularity.

"Even if they lose the elections, as long as they participated that keeps them in the game when Venezuelans fall out of love with Chavez," Falcoff said. "There has to be an alternative in place."

Already, the boycott has been sucked into the contentious relations between the United States and Venezuela, which remain at their lowest point in years despite Venezuela being a top supplier of crude oil to the U.S.

On Tuesday, Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel accused the U.S. State Department of being behind the opposition parties' withdrawal.

Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, denied Wednesday that the U.S. played any role in the opposition boycott while saying he understood why some opposition leaders distrusted the electoral process.

"Venezuelans, like all people, have a right to free and fair elections," McCormack said. "We are concerned that this right is increasingly in jeopardy."

However, the Organization of American States and other international groups plan to monitor the vote.

Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a policy group in Washington, said he expects the U.S. to support the boycott in an effort to portray Chavez as an increasingly authoritarian leader.

"Washington will use this decision as justification to ratchet up its anti-Chavez campaign," Birns said.

Venezuela's opposition parties have been reeling ever since Chavez first won election in 1998 by denouncing traditional politics as corrupt while promising to improve the lot of Venezuela's poor majority.

Since then, Chavez has survived a brief coup and a punishing, opposition-led national strike.

He easily defeated a recall referendum in 2004 aimed at ending his presidency.

Among the groups boycotting Sunday's vote are Democratic Action and the Social Christian Party, or Copei, two centrist parties that once dominated Venezuelan politics but have been largely discredited in recent years.

Opposition leaders say the National Electoral Council--the government agency that manages elections in Venezuela--favors pro-Chavez forces, making a fair vote impossible.

"Never in Venezuela have there existed conditions less favorable to participate in an electoral process," Henry Ramos, the secretary general of Democratic Action, said Tuesday.

But Chavez described the withdrawal as a stunt by desperate opposition leaders who faced certain defeat.

"What fraud? They should accept the truth that they have no public," Chavez said. "It's an attempt at political sabotage."

Pro-Chavez lawmakers currently hold a slim majority in the 165-seat National Assembly. Yet with Chavez's public approval hovering at about 70 percent, pro-government forces were favored to pick up many new seats regardless of an opposition boycott.

Experts say Chavez could now win the two-thirds majority in Congress needed to push through constitutional reforms, including a measure striking down the limit of two 6-year terms for presidents.

Chavez is favored to win re-election next year but said he would like to govern well past 2012.