Two Votes
Venezuelans choose freedom over Hugo Ch¿vez.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

THE DEFEAT of Hugo Ch¿vez's proposed rewrite of the Venezuelan constitution Sunday was a landmark victory for freedom in a country that stood at the brink of autocracy. Mr. Ch¿vez had proposed to make himself a de facto president for life, with power to supplant locally elected governors with his own appointees, dispose of the reserves of the central bank and suspend due process and freedom of information in an indefinite state of emergency. Venezuela was formally to become a "socialist" state modeled on Cuba. Remarkably, this revolution was rejected by millions of Mr. Ch¿vez's former supporters, who abstained from voting or switched to the side of Venezuela's long-beleaguered opposition. Just over 4 million supported the constitutional reform, compared with 7 million who voted for Mr. Ch¿vez a year ago. Nine long hours after the first polling stations closed, the man who said last week that he hoped to rule until the year 2050 appeared on television to concede defeat.

Mr. Ch¿vez deserves credit for accepting his loss. Revealingly, he said he did not want the "pyrrhic victory" of pushing through his constitution against the wishes of the majority. Polls before the vote showed that only about a third of Venezuelans favored the amendments; among those who voted, the reported outcome was 51 percent to 49 percent against. Urban slum dwellers who have supported Mr. Ch¿vez in the past had good reason for second thoughts: Thanks to his crackpot economic policies, milk, eggs, chicken and other staples have been disappearing from stores, and prices are soaring. Crime, corruption and drug trafficking also have boomed during the Ch¿vez years -- and many people resent the president's clownish behavior in international forums and his politically motivated handouts to other countries, including Cuba.

Above all, the vote showed that Venezuelans both rich and poor are not willing to give up basic political freedoms or support Mr. Ch¿vez's vision of himself as the 21st-century version of Fidel Castro. Sadly, the outcome will not restore full democracy to Venezuela: Mr. Ch¿vez still controls the legislature, courts, national television and the state oil company, and he retains the authority to rule by decree. But his recognition of defeat, like that of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in a 1988 referendum, may finally place a limit on his rule. Under the surviving constitution, Mr. Ch¿vez will have to leave office in just over five years, when his present term expires.

Not that he intends to. In accepting defeat, Mr. Ch¿vez said he would not retreat from "one comma" of his plans, adding ominously "this is another 'for now,' " a reference to his famous words following a failed military coup he once led. Mr. Ch¿vez can be expected to keep pushing to consolidate power and to remove his term limit. Yet now he will face a Venezuelan opposition that knows it has majority support for its democratic agenda. If the opposition can unite around the cause of restoring full democracy, there may be light at the end of the long tunnel into which Venezuela has been dragged by Hugo Ch¿vez.