Global Policy Forum

Summary

With both oil prices and his popularity falling, the Venezuelan president's chances of staying in power for more than a year appear less and less likely. Even worse, a rift is developing between the president and the country's armed forces, and this could potentially lead to a coup in the near future.

Analysis

In a recent speech to a small group of his supporters, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said defiantly he would rule the country until 2013, the maximum allowed under the new constitution approved in 2000. But with his support falling and opposition growing, it is becoming increasingly likely Chavez will be forced out of power within a year, possibly through a military coup which many Venezuelans would support.

The pillars that upheld the Chavez regime for nearly three years are already crumbling. Barring an unexpected spike in oil prices, Chavez's popularity will collapse in the coming months as the economy stagnates, and his erratic behavior will increase his isolation at home and abroad.

When the Chavez's presidency began in early 1999, the stability of his regime rested on three things: immense popular support, which topped 85 percent of voters early on; high oil prices that peaked at $30 per barrel last year (but which have since dropped to under $17 a barrel); and the loyalty of Venezuela's armed forces.

But it has been clear for some time now that retaining the military's backing depends on Chavez's ability to stay popular, maintain high oil prices and keep the armed forces happy by dispensing promotions and higher salaries. If he cannot do these things, the military's loyalty will likely implode.

This process is already evolving in Venezuela.

After 33 months in power, Chavez is losing public support at an increasingly rapid rate. More than half of likely voters now disapprove of Chavez, 34 percent say they have lost patience with him, and his hardcore support has shrunk to 27 percent, according to recent polls. These numbers will get worse for Chavez as the economic slump deepens in coming months.

Chavez also suffered his first major electoral defeat this past week in national elections to choose new leaders for the Venezuelan Workers Confederation, the largest federation of unions in the country. Across the nation, anti-Chavez labor candidates handily defeated opponents allied with the pro-Chavez Bolivarian Workers Front.

Chavez's response to his waning popularity and recent political setbacks is to lash out at his critics and even some allies, and this only adds more fuel to growing political instability. For example he recently ordered an investigation of the Globovision television network on charges of reporting false information injurious to the government. If Globovision, one of the president's fiercest media critics, loses the case, the government likely will attempt to suspend its broadcast license.

But instead of cowing Chavez's critics, the government's apparent effort to censor Globovision and intimidate other news media backfired. The threat of suspension hanging over Globovision is uniting Venezuela's media owners against Chavez, and it is also drawing criticism from the Organization of American States. Moreover if Globovision's broadcast license is suspended, it's also likely the Bush administration will interpret the action as an attack on freedom of expression and will see opportunity to turn up the diplomatic heat on Chavez.

Chavez is now trying to consolidate even more political power and is increasingly relying on the military to bolster his regime. For example, in a speech Oct. 4, the president warned landowners opposed to a government land-reform bill that he has "weapons, tanks to defend the revolution," the daily El Nacional reported.

But the biggest problem Chavez faces is the split emerging between the government and the military over the issue of terrorism. It began with Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel saying that Ilich Ramirez (a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal), the Venezuelan national jailed for life in a French prison, is not a terrorist because he has never been convicted of terrorist acts in a Venezuelan court.

Lucas Rincon Romero, the army general in chief and the highest-ranking officer in Venezuela's armed forces, later refuted those remarks and said Venezuela's military considers Carlos the Jackal a terrorist regardless of where he was judged for his crimes. Rincon then added that the military also views Colombia's rebels as terrorists, publicly contradicting both Rangel and Chavez, his two immediate superiors in the chain of command, who have long-argued the opposite.

Finally, the general declared that Venezuela's armed forces "unconditionally" support the U.S. military in the war against terrorism despite Chavez's earlier statements that the United States has not shown Venezuela any proof that Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Rincon subsequently told a group of Venezuelan journalists personally that it had been his decision to clarify the military's position on terrorism.

The general's official statement was the first public sign of a high-level crack in the military's loyalty to Chavez. Since 1999 the president has worked to consolidate his control of the military and assure its loyalty to him personally. For example, he has appointed generals and other senior officers to key civilian government jobs, promoted officers he perceives as loyal to command positions within the armed forces and used the windfall resulting from higher oil prices to increase military salaries and benefits.

Nevertheless the military's loyalty to Chavez has never been complete even within the army, where Chavez served as a lieutenant colonel in command of an elite paratrooper battalion before he led a failed coup in 1992. Conservative elements of the country's armed forces have become increasingly dismayed since 1999 as a result of Chavez's flirtations with the regimes in Cuba, China, Russia, Iraq, Iran and Libya, as well as with Colombia's rebel groups.

Chavez's increasing anti-U.S. stance has also upset many career officers who feel it is more in Venezuela's strategic interests to maintain good relations with the United States than to conduct a foreign policy based on continually challenging and provoking the U.S. government. And if Chavez starts confiscating privately owned land as part of a planned bill, opposition may also increase among sectors of the military, which include many landowners.

Meanwhile Chavez's opponents are starting to criticize his mental stability. Leopoldo Puchi, general secretary of the leftist Movement Towards Socialism party, said Oct. 28 that "symptoms of his insanity can be seen everywhere," and warned that Venezuela is barreling toward an institutional crisis. Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, a leader of the Christian Democratic Copei party, also told El Nacional that a "confrontation between Chavez and the armed forces is inevitable. Chavez is a threat and must be neutralized."

Chavez is urging his party's supporters to be on the watch for conspiracies against his so-called revolution. But just as Praetorian guards in Rome toppled the Caesars they were sworn to serve, the closest supporters of Simon Bolivar repudiated him and forced him into exile. Chavez is the constitutional commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but he is also a lieutenant colonel who was dishonorably discharged for attempting a coup. Rincon, on the other hand, is a three-star general.

As Chavez becomes more erratic and isolated in the coming months, the military's fidelity to the president and the country will be challenged. Chavez will lose in the balance, and Rincon will likely be the kingmaker for whoever steps in to fill the presidential void.

Eventually conservative elements of the military will rebel against the president, but Chavez will not go without a fight, and casualties are likely. Nevertheless the military, political and civilian leaders who support a coup would likely seek to justify their action on the grounds that Chavez is mentally unstable and would try to appease the Bush administration by pledging new national elections as quickly as possible.

With such assurances, the U.S. government, which isn't fond of Chavez anyway, would not protest too loudly about his undemocratic removal, especially if Venezuelan oil shipments to the United States were not interrupted.

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