Venezuela’s
D-Day - The December 2, Constituent Referendum
By
James Petras
02 December,
2007
James
Petras Site
On November
26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential
memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing
of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum
this Sunday (December 2, 2007).
The memo sent by an embassy official,
Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the head of the CIA, Michael
Hayden. The memo was entitled ‘Advancing to the Last Phase of
Operation Pincer’ and updates the activity by a CIA unit with
the acronym ‘HUMINT’ (Human Intelligence) which is engaged
in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and
coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government.
The Embassy-CIA’s polls concede that 57% of the voters approved
of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted
a 60% abstention.
The US operatives
emphasized their capacity to recruit former Chavez supporters among
the social democrats (PODEMOS) and the former Minister of Defense Baduel,
claiming to have reduced the ‘yes’ vote by 6% from its original
margin. Nevertheless the Embassy operatives concede that they have reached
their ceiling, recognizing they cannot defeat the amendments via the
electoral route.
The memo
then recommends that Operation Pincer (OP) [Operación Tenaza]
be operationalized. OP involves a two-pronged strategy of impeding the
referendum, rejecting the outcome at the same time as calling for a
‘no’ vote. The run up to the referendum includes running
phony polls, attacking electoral officials and running propaganda through
the private media accusing the government of fraud and calling for a
‘no’ vote. Contradictions, the report cynically emphasizes,
are of no matter.
The CIA-Embassy
reports internal division and recriminations among the opponents of
the amendments including several defections from their ‘umbrella
group’. The key and most dangerous threats to democracy raised
by the Embassy memo point to their success in mobilizing the private
university students (backed by top administrators) to attack key government
buildings including the Presidential Palace, Supreme Court and the National
Electoral Council. The Embassy is especially praiseworthy of the ex-Maoist
‘Red Flag’ group for its violent street fighting activity.
Ironically, small Trotskyist sects and their trade unionists join the
ex-Maoists in opposing the constitutional amendments. The Embassy, while
discarding their ‘Marxist rhetoric’, perceives their opposition
as fitting in with their overall strategy.
The ultimate
objective of ‘Operation Pincer’ is to seize a territorial
or institutional base with the ‘massive support’ of the
defeated electoral minority within three or four days (before or after
the elections – is not clear. JP) backed by an uprising by oppositionist
military officers principally in the National Guard. The Embassy operative
concede that the military plotters have run into serous problems as
key intelligence operatives were detected, stores of arms were decommissioned
and several plotters are under tight surveillance.
Apart from
the deep involvement of the US, the primary organization of the Venezuelan
business elite (FEDECAMARAS), as well as all the major private television,
radio and newspaper outlets have been engaged in a vicious fear and
intimidation campaign. Food producers, wholesale and retail distributors
have created artificial shortages of basic food items and have provoked
large scale capital flight to sow chaos in the hopes of reaping a ‘no’
vote. President Chavez Counter-Attacks
In a speech
to pro-Chavez, pro-amendment nationalist business-people (Entrepreneurs
for Venezuela – EMPREVEN) Chavez warned the President of FEDECAMARAS
that if he continues to threaten the government with a coup, he would
nationalize all their business affiliates. With the exception of the
Trotskyist and other sects, the vast majority of organized workers,
peasants, small farmers, poor neighborhood councils, informal self-employed
and public school students have mobilized and demonstrated in favor
of the constitutional amendments.
The reason
for the popular majority is found in a few of the key amendments: One
article expedites land expropriation facilitating re-distribution to
the landless and small producers. Chavez has already settled over 150,000
landless workers on 2 million acres of land. Another amendment provides
universal social security coverage for the entire informal sector (street
sellers, domestic workers, self-employed) amounting to 40% of the labor
force. Organized and unorganized workers’ workweek will be reduced
from 40 to 36 hours a week (Monday to Friday noon) with no reduction
in pay. Open admission and universal free higher education will open
greater educational opportunities for lower class students. Amendments
will allow the government to by-pass current bureaucratic blockage of
the socialization of strategic industries, thus creating greater employment
and lower utility costs. Most important, an amendment will increase
the power and budget of neighborhood councils to legislate and invest
in their communities.
The electorate
supporting the constitutional amendments is voting in favor of their
socio-economic and class interests; the issue of extended re-election
of the President is not high on their priorities: And that is the issue
that the Right has focused on in calling Chavez a ‘dictator’
and the referendum a ‘coup’. The Opposition
With strong
financial backing from the US Embassy ($8 million dollars in propaganda
alone according to the Embassy memo) and the business elite and ‘free
time’ by the right-wing media, the Right has organized a majority
of the upper middle class students from the private universities, backed
by the Catholic Church hierarchy, large swaths of the affluent middle
class neighborhoods, entire sectors of the commercial, real estate and
financial middle classes and apparently sectors of the military, especially
officials in the National Guard. While the Right has control over the
major private media, public television and radio back the constitutional
reforms. While the Right has its followers among some generals and the
National Guard, Chavez has the backing of the paratroops and legions
of middle rank officers and most other generals.
The outcome
of the Referendum of December 2 is a decisive historical event first
and foremost for Venezuela but also for the rest of the Americas. A
positive vote (Vota ‘Sí’) will provide the legal
framework for the democratization of the political system, the socialization
of strategic economic sectors, empower the poor and provide the basis
for a self-managed factory system. A negative vote (or a successful
US-backed civil-military uprising) will reverse the most promising living
experience of popular self-rule, of advanced social welfare and democratically
based socialism. A reversal, especially a military dictated outcome,
will lead to a massive blood bath, such as we have not seen since the
days of the Indonesian Generals’ Coup of 1966, which killed over
a million workers and peasants or the Argentine Coup of 1976 in which
over 30,000 Argentines were murdered by the US backed Generals.
A decisive
vote for ‘Sí’ will not end US military and political
destabilization campaigns but it will certainly undermine and demoralize
their collaborators. On December 2, 2007 the Venezuelans have a rendezvous
with history.
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