2001 Scores

Status: Partly Free
Freedom Rating: 4.0
Civil Liberties: 5
Political Rights: 3

Ratings Change

Venezuela's political rights rating changed from 4 to 3 due to improvements in the political climate and elections process surrounding the national vote held in July. However, its civil liberties rating changed from 4 to 5 due to President Hugo Chavez expanding his attempt to centralize control from the state sector to civil society, including a naked power grab aimed at the country's independent trade unions.

Overview

President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's would-be savior and former military plotter, appeared to be riding the tiger of a sputtering revolution at the end of 2000, as Venezuelans showed increasing weariness with his controversial overhaul of their country's democratic institutions. Chávez, who won nearly 60 percent of the vote in a July 2000 presidential election, found little popular enthusiasm in a national referendum conducted in December that approved his attempt to curb the power of the country's labor bosses. Organized labor and the media continued throughout 2000 to be favorite whipping boys for the demagogic former army paratrooper, whose international forays included highly visible embraces of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Iraq's Saddam Hussein. In 1999, capital flight from Venezuela was estimated to be some $8 billion as the economy contracted by 7.2 percent, and many upper class venezolanos, mindful of Chávez's boast that his government is "doing away with the tyranny of the elite," have packed themselves and their businesses off to Miami. In September 2000 Transparency International ranked Venezuela as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

The Republic of Venezuela was established in 1830, nine years after independence from Spain. Long periods of instability and military rule ended with the establishment in 1961 of civilian rule. Under the 1961 constitution, the president and a bicameral congress are elected for five years. The senate has at least two members from each of the 21 states and the federal district of Caracas. The chamber of deputies has 189 seats.

Until 1993, the social-democratic Democratic Action (AD) Party and the Social Christian Party (COPEI) dominated politics. Former President Carlos Andres Pérez (1989-93) of the AD was nearly overthrown by Chávez and other nationalist military officers in two 1992 coup attempts in which dozens were killed. In 1993 Pérez was charged with corruption and removed from office by congress.

Rafael Caldera, a former president (1969-1974) of COPEI and a populist, was elected president in late 1993 at the head of the 16-party National Convergence, which included Communists, other leftists, and right-wing groups. Caldera's term was marked by a national banking collapse (in 1994), the suspension of a number of civil liberties, mounting violent crime and social unrest, and rumors of a military coup. In 1995, Caldera's reputation for honesty was tarnished by allegations of corruption among his inner circle. With crime soaring, oil wealth drying up, and the country in the worst economic crisis in 50 years, popular disillusionment with politics deepened.

At the beginning of 1998, the early presidential favorite was a former beauty queen whose appeal stemmed largely from her own roots outside the corrupt political establishment famous for its interlocking system of privilege and graft. Chávez's antiestablishment, anticorruption populism also played well in a country whose elites considered politics their private preserve. As his victory appeared more likely, Chávez moved toward the center, abandoning rhetoric in which he criticized the free market and promised to "fry" opposition leaders. Last-minute efforts to find a consensus candidate against Chávez were largely unsuccessful, and the Yale-educated businessman Henrique Salas, the other leading presidential contender, steered away from association with the old political order. Salas, a respected two-term former state governor, won just 40 percent of the vote, to Chávez's 57 percent. Chávez took power in the world's number three oil-exporting country in February 1999.

Upon taking office, Chávez promptly dismantled Venezuela's political system of checks and balances, ostensibly to destroy a discredited two-party system that for four decades presided over several oil booms but has left four out of five Venezuelans impoverished. He gutted the power of the opposition-controlled congress and placed the judiciary under executive branch tutelage.

Critics charged Chávez with militarizing politics and politicizing the military, with Chávez's army colleagues given a far bigger say in the day-to-day running of the country. Tens of thousands of soldiers were dispatched to build public works, 34 senior military officers were promoted without congressional approval, and regional army commands were given oversight powers of local elected officials. Generals were appointed to senior posts such as presidential chief of staff, head of the secret police, and head of the internal revenue service.

A constituent assembly dominated by Chávez followers drafted a new constitution that would make censorship of the press easier, allow a newly strengthened chief executive the right to dissolve congress, and make it possible for Chávez to retain power until 2013. Congress and the supreme court were dismissed after Venezuelans approved the new constitution in a national referendum December 15. In a positive move, the assembly offered the nation's 500,000 Indians constitutional guarantees to conserve their cultures and languages.

Despite Chávez's 21-point lead in the presidential contest, the July 2000 election marked a resurgence of a political opposition that had been hamstrung in its efforts to contest his stripping of congress and the judiciary of their independence and power. His ruling coalition, the Patriotic Pole, fell short of the two-thirds majority it needed in congress to rubber-stamp presidential appointments and spending decisions. Opposition parties won most of the country's governorships, about half the mayoralties, and a significant share of power in the new congress. In addition, Chávez found a number of key civilian and military allies deserting him throughout the year, many of whom joined forces with the opposition, including his erstwhile friend and colleague Lt. Col. Francisco Arias Cardenas, who had run second in the presidential race. In response, in November, Chávez's congressional allies granted him special fast-track powers that allowed him to decree a wide range of laws without parliamentary debate. Chávez's foreign policy forays also won him significant suspicion among Venezuela's traditional allies, particularly after suspected ties to Ecuador's unsuccessful military coup leaders were revealed.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Citizens can change their government democratically, although Chávez supporters appear at times on the verge of mob rule, particularly as constitutional checks and balances have been removed. The July 2000 elections were considered by international observers to be free and fair. However, government critics claim that democratic rule has been damaged significantly as independent institutions have lost their autonomy and the concentration of political power has put Chávez at the top of a pyramid of executive branch power unprecedented in modern times.

Until Chávez took power, the judicial system was headed by a nominally independent supreme court, although the court was highly politicized, was undermined by the chronic corruption (including the growing influence of narcotics traffickers) that permeates the entire political system, and was unresponsive to charges of rights abuses. Chávez, by sacking scores of judges, has successfully subordinated the legal system to his presidency. In August, 1999, supreme court president Cecilia Sosa resigned in protest after the court backed the assembly as it moved to give itself the power to dismiss judges and overhaul the country's judicial system. "The court simply committed suicide to avoid being assassinated," Sosa said. "But the result is the same – it is dead." In August 2000, a senior official who led the effort to replace corrupt or negligent judges resigned, complaining that cronyism prevailing in a Chávez-dominated judicial-reform commission led to the removal of controversial judges, who were replaced with Chávez's own political allies. In November, opposition legislators slammed as unconstitutional a nomination process to select the country's supreme court and other public offices, saying that the selection committee was packed with pro-Chávez legislators rather than made up of civil society representatives as stipulated. An unwieldy new judicial code has hampered some law enforcement efforts.

Citizen security in general remains threatened by a narcotics-fueled crime wave that has resulted in hundreds of killings monthly in major cities and vigilante mob killings of alleged criminals. In 2000 the murder rate reached 21 per day, double what it was two years ago; during the Christmas weekend alone, 144 homicides were logged, with 60 percent of the killings reportedly score-settling with criminal gangs or in shootouts with the police. A recent study ranked Venezuela as second of the ten most violent nations in the Americas and Europe.

Widespread arbitrary detention and torture of suspects, as well as dozens of extrajudicial killings by military security forces and the police, have increased as crime continues to soar. By mid-2000, an estimated 500 people had been killed by the police, a sign that, some observers say is evidence of a growing vigilante mentality among law enforcement personnel. Since the 1992 coup attempts, weakened civilian governments have had less authority over the military and the police, and rights abuses overall are committed with impunity. A separate system of armed forces courts retains jurisdiction over members of the military accused of rights violations and common criminal crimes, and decisions by these cannot be appealed in civilian court. Chávez's decision to preside over all military promotions and transfers has concentrated enormous patronage within the armed forces in his own hands. His meddling in all aspects of military affairs caused something of a backlash in 2000, as 42 of 93 retiring officers who were to receive one of the armed forces' highest honors preferred to stay away from the July ceremony rather than receive the recognition from Chávez's hands. In a disturbing trend, in October 2000, Chávez named two serving generals to head the world's second-largest state oil company and its U.S. refining and market branch.

Venezuela's 32 prisons, the most violent in the world, hold some 23,000 inmates – of whom less than one-third have been convicted of a crime – even though they were designed to hold no more than 14,000. Deadly prison riots are common, and inmate gangs have a striking degree of control over the penal system.

The press is mostly privately owned, although the practice of journalism is supervised by an association of broadcasters under government control. Since 1994, the media in general have faced a pattern of intimidation. International media monitors have condemned a constitutional article approved by the constituent assembly that would require journalists to publish or broadcast "truthful information," a move that they say opens the door to government censorship.

Few Indians hold title to their land, and indigenous communities trying to defend their legal land rights are subject to abuses, including killings, by gold miners and corrupt rural police. In 1999, the constituent assembly voted to include a chapter in the new constitution that sets forth the legal rights of indigenous peoples and communities in accordance with standards set by the International Labor Organization. Chapter VII would guarantee "the right to exist as indigenous peoples and communities with their own social and economic organization, their cultures and traditions, and their language and religion." In the July 2000 national elections, three indigenous candidates were elected to the national assembly, eight to regional legislative congresses, and four Indians won mayoralties.

Labor unions are well organized, but highly politicized and prone to corruption. Chávez supporters have sought to break what they term a "stranglehold" of corrupt labor leaders on the job market, a move labor activists say tramples on the rights of private organizations. The referendum approved in December 2000 allows Chávez to dissolve the Venezuelan Worker's Confederation and to organize new state-supervised elections of union representatives, a move that opposition and labor leaders say is the first step towards establishing a government-controlled labor union. Security forces frequently break up strikes and arrest trade unionists.

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