Crowding Out the Opposition in Venezuela

In the Corrales & Penfold-Becerra article for this week they discuss Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s continuous power grabbing from around 2005 to around the publication of this article in 2007. During his presidency, Venezuela had a fairly weak system of checks and balances which allowed Chávez to gradually gain control of more elements of the government, and in 2005 he even gained control of the country’s unicameral legislature, the only potential blockade to his actions. This almost total control of Venezuela’s government allowed Chávez to set down a path that can hardly be explained by any existing theories. The article mentions how usually authoritarianism arises out of “chronic governability crises”, but that after the 2004 presidential election in which Chávez received 63% of the vote he should not have felt threatened enough to pursue every ounce of power he could get his hands on, but he did anyways. Chávez was able to gain as much power as he had because of his exploitation of the nation’s weakened system of representation as well as his own vast economic resources, and he was successful enough so as to essentially eliminate his opposition.

In the early years of his presidency, Chávez’s main plan of attack was singling out various government institutions and either stripping them of all power or filling them with his own supporters so to be sure they would not oppose his actions. Beginning in 2003 his administration began a new tactic of targeted state spending that would help those loyal to Chávez, but seriously hurt those who opposed him, leaving his opposition with hardly any resources to fight back. Chávez was allowed to get away with all this by framing it as him cleaning house by ridding the government of traditional party influence, which was a very large reason why Chávez was elected in the first place. This framing, along with the current good economic state of the country allowed Chávez to enjoy high approval ratings that allowed him to gain even more power, something prior presidents had attempted, although they rebuked at the polls because of it. Through convoking a National Constituent Assembly Chávez made the whole government centered on the president, allowing him to do things such as eliminating the Senate and enact laws or hold referendums without any interference from the legislature. All these actions led to the almost complete disenfranchisement of any opposition to Chávez, which is still being felt in Venezuela today. The rigid governmental structure has proved disastrous, because while it worked fairly well with Chávez, current president Maduro does not enjoy the levels of public support or economic prosperity that his predecessor did, resulting in a very tumultuous state of affairs in the country as even though serious change may be wanted by voters it is still difficult for the opposition to get a foothold in the government. 2015 saw a victorious election for the opposition to Maduro, they gained the majority of seats in the National Assembly, but Maduro used the powers created by Chávez to create a new “National Communal Parliament” that would take be controlled by presidential loyalists to attempt to sideline the incoming opposition-controlled National Assembly, a move that was not looked upon well by the international community and only added to the potential for increased instability in Venezuela.