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Chavez sweeps Venezuela vote

An election boycott leads to the Latin American president's allies winning all 167 legislative seats.

By DAVID ADAMS
Published December 6, 2005

An unstoppable force for the last six years, Venezuela's revolutionary President Hugo Chavez looks even more invincible after sweeping congressional elections Sunday.

Parties allied to Chavez appear to have won all 167 seats in the assembly, after the opposition boycotted the election at the last minute.

The outcome cements Chavez's new-found status as the main antagonist to Washington's free trade agenda in the region, as well as delivering a blow to U.S.-funded prodemocracy programs in Venezuela.

Chavez's party, the Fifth Republic Movement, said it won 114 seats in the 167 single-chamber National Assembly. The remainder were claimed by allies of the president. Previously, Chavez's supporters had held only 89 seats.

The unprecedented results now give Chavez complete control of every branch of the government. Chavez's critics say he has grown increasingly authoritarian, packing the Supreme Court and the Electoral Council with political pawns. He has spent billions in Venezuela's oil revenue on projects for the poor. His popularity remains high - around 50 percent - albeit down from around 70 percent earlier this year.

His supporters already have signaled their intent to remove the current constitutional limit of two presidential terms. Chavez is seeking re-election next year, but under current rules, he would have to stand down in 2013.

But Sunday's result could be a pyrrhic victory.

Before the vote, Chavez urged voters to turn out in force. But only about 25 percent of registered voters cast ballots.

Polling stations in middle class urban areas were almost empty. Longer lines in poorer areas signaled the country's yawning class divide.

The opposition parties blamed their last-minute pullout on a lack of confidence in the government-dominated Electoral Council and fears that the secrecy of the ballot might be violated.

Concerns were raised when a CD-ROM that included voters' addresses and voting history, and evidently produced using official data, turned up in street markets.

Using the CD, it is possible to discover each voter's political profile.

Government departments and agencies are accused of using the information to hire and fire workers and to grant or withhold government contracts.

Many public sector workers complained they were implicitly threatened with firing if they failed to show up to vote.

Chavez condemned the boycott as a U.S.-backed plot to destabilize his government - a charge Washington rejects. He has directed some of his strongest attacks at Sumate, a controversial Venezuelan election monitoring group. Four of its leaders go on trial today charged with plotting with a foreign power to "destroy the country's republican system."

The government says that the United States, through Sumate, is trying to overthrow Chavez by taking a $53,000 grant in 2003 from the National Endowment for Democracy, a prodemocracy group funded by Congress.

"We are not in the business of removing regimes. We are in the business of supporting democracy," said endowment president Carl Gershman.

The organization works with several groups in Venezuela and hands out small grants around the world for projects involving civic education, protection of human rights and the rule of law.

"This is mainstream work. The United Nations supports this kind of work," Gershman said.

Sumate points out that a small fraction of its funding comes from Washington, and those funds are limited to election monitoring and forums on electoral democracy.

However, Sumate has at times trodden dangerously close to crossing the line into partisan politics. Its vice president, Maria Corina Machado, has lately become a darling of the Bush administration, including a high-profile White House visit this summer.

That's a dangerous liaison these days. U.S. officials portray Chavez as the region's most conspicuous threat to democracy, equal to Fidel Castro.

In an op-ed piece in the Miami Herald Monday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., vowed to push for a doubling of funding for the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela. Accusing Chavez of "dictatorial tendencies," he said more U.S. funding would "give the Venezuelan opposition a fighting chance."

For the time being, the United States seems powerless to thwart his growing influence. Flush with oil revenue, Chavez has spread largesse around the region, developing especially close ties with Cuba.

Chavez has other friends, too. Poverty and class divisions in Latin America have spawned a generation of leftist leaders who pose major political challenges in other countries, notably Bolivia, which has elections later this month, as well as Mexico and Nicaragua.

With opposition to Chavez's rule now effectively powerless, many worry that the country has lost its main forum for democratic debate, raising fears of further polarization and possible violence.

"When you have that amount of concentrated power, bad things tend to happen," said Michael Shifter, a Latin America specialist at the Inter-American Dialogue, a private Washington policy group.

--David Adams is the Times Latin America correspondent.

Phil Gunson contributed to this report. He is a Times special correspondent based in Caracas.

[Last modified December 12, 2005, 20:20:19]