Chavez
Set For Election Victory
By Andrew Buncombe
in Caracas
03 December 2006
The
Independent
They
arrived in a steady stream throughout the morning, bearing with them
a stack of Tupperware-style containers and the expectation of a decent
feed. Young and old, women and men, they handed over their tubs and
then took them back, steaming full of rice, chicken and soup.
"We come every day.
We come to get lunch - mainly for our children. It's really great,"
said Lilian Ibarra, a mother of three and a grandmother of nine, as
she waited for her food. "We all ate before but now we eat better,
with fruit and vegetables, the things the children need. [And] we have
healthcare, doctors. Whenever we have any problem the doctors are right
there."
She added, rather unnecessarily:
"We are all Chavistas."
Venezuela votes today, with
polls suggesting incumbent Hugo Chavez will be easily reelected to a
third term with a lead of anything up to 20 point over his centrist
challenger, Manuel Rosales.
His victory will be cemented
by people such as Mrs Ibarra, for if Mr Chavez's vision for the future
of Venezuela was first forged during his years in the armed forces -
and then further burnished as he cooled his heels in jail following
a failed 1992 coup attempt - it is in the hard-pressed barrios of Caracas
that such a vision is now being realised.
In places such as the scruffy
neighbourhood of El Guarataro, scores of " missions" have
been established using the country's oil wealth to help feed and educate
the poor. The Independent on Sunday was escorted on a tour by Mariella
Guzman, a 53-year-old Chavez activist who two-and-half years ago established
a government soup kitchen which feeds 150 people, six days a week.
Ms Guzman, wearing a bright
red Chavez T-shirt showing 10 fingers (referring to the hoped-for 10m
votes in support of the president), insisted that anyone in need - and
not just supporters of Mr Chavez - were welcome at the mission. Yet
the kitchen was full of Chavez election posters and Mrs Guzman made
no attempt to pretend that anyone coming to eat would not receive a
portion of proselytizing. "The idea is not to exclude anyone,"
she added. "[But] if anyone says anything bad about Chavez I will
tell them not to come to my house because this is a revolutionary house."
Another woman, Damari Briceno,
who arrives every morning at 6am to help prepare the food, spoke of
an adult education class she was taking - another mission set up by
the Chavez government. "It sets an example to others to do the
same because you're a mother or a grandmother," she said. The various
missions - there are almost 20 different types in all - have had real
results, reducing poverty, increasing access to free health and subsidised
food and helping teach 1.5m adults to read. Unesco has praised the country's
efforts in this area and estimated that the adult literacy rate stands
at around 93 per cent.
Mark Weisbrot, director of
the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research which has
collated government data, said: "Chavez is going to win reelection
because he has delivered quite a lot on his promise to share the country's
oil wealth with the poor - which are the majority of the population.
His anti-poverty efforts are certainly bigger than anywhere else in
the hemisphere."
But Venezuela is deeply polarised
between Chavez's overwhelming poor supporters and his largely middle-class
opponents. His critics say he wishes to turn booming Venezuela into
Cuba and seize private property. He has also been accused of increasing
authoritarianism and of using state resources for his campaign. In recent
weeks state television has featured a flurry of inaugurations of new
public works, including a subway line, a new bridge and new factories.
Paying state workers their Christmas bonus several weeks earlier than
usual has also been seen by some observers as an attempt to cement support.
Many of Mr Rosales' supporters
also cite the level of crime in Caracas, where kidnapping is a serious
issue, as a reason for changing the government. According to official
police figures the annual number of murders in the country increased
from 5,974 in 1999 when Mr Chavez first assumed office to 9,962 last
year.
Mauricio Blanco, 36, shopping
at a US-style mall in the capital, said he had not personally suffered,
but added: "It's about safety. I have children. I live in quite
a safe area but there are big problems. They do exist." Two years
ago Mr Chavez won a referendum vote that had been initiated by opposition
groups, some of which received considerable funding from the National
Endowment for Democracy, a US body that disperses Congressional money
for "democracy building" but which critics say routinely intervenes
in the domestic politics of other countries to the detriment of left-wing
or left-leaning candidates. In 2002 he was briefly ousted in a military
coup that was tacitly supported by Washington and which resulted in
the installation of an interim president, Pedro Carmona.
Mr Chavez's opponent Mr Rosales,
a state governor, was among those who signed the so-called Carmona Decree
supporting the appointment, though he has since said it was a mistake.
A campaign strategist, Eliseo Fermin, said Mr Rosales had been advised
to sign by a Catholic bishop who said it would be better to support
a new president than not to.
Mr Fermin disputed the idea
that Mr Rosales's supporters were overwhelmingly middle class. He said
the thousands of people who had attended Mr Rosales' campaign rallies
showed that if only middle-class people were attending " we would
be a developed country". He added: "We are fighting radicalism
and we are offering the country a leader who has demonstrated that you
can govern for everybody."
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
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