Venezuelans Gear Up to Put National Make-Over to Vote

BUENOS AIRES — If Venezuelans follow the lead of President Hugo Chavez in an upcoming referendum, their country will have a new constitution full of the grand ambition, ideological passion and nagging ambiguity that have characterized the year-old Chavez government.

The debate leading up to the Dec. 15 vote on the new Magna Carta drawn up by a Chavez-dominated Constitutional Assembly inspires hope and fear.

Many working-class Venezuelans, according to public opinion polls, hope to fulfill the president’s promise of a peaceful revolution ending 40 years of elitism and injustice in an oil-rich nation that has squandered its potential.

But dissenters--including the Roman Catholic Church, business leaders, journalists and academics--fear that the constitution is an insidious blueprint for Chavez to consolidate dictatorial powers.

The latest political drama in an action-packed year shows why Chavez, a populist ex-colonel who led a bloody coup attempt seven years ago, is one of Latin America’s most intriguing and complex leaders. This is a crucial moment for a society whose political and economic troubles are symptomatic of the woes of democracy in the region.

And because Chavez and Venezuela are involved, what could be a dry and sober process has had flamboyant touches. The proposed constitution weighs in at a whopping 350 articles. It would rename the nation the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in homage to Chavez’s idol, the legendary Gen. Simon Bolivar.

Moreover, the president would be granted the ability to run for reelection and given new power at the expense of Congress and regional governments; the privatization of the social security system and the massive state oil company would be outlawed; indigenous people would reclaim ancestral lands; and a new “moral branch” of government would fight corruption.

The document’s dimensions and its diatribes against free-market economics provoke warnings that it is ominously statist and archaic. With language typical of Venezuela’s free-swinging op-ed pages, columnist Oswaldo Alvarez Paz of El Universal newspaper denounced “stale neo-fascism tinged with Maoism [and] Castroism . . . impelled by the audacity of ignorance when it holds power. This monstrosity can never be the Constitution of Venezuela.”

Newspapers in Caracas, the capital, tend to speak for the elite. Chavez still enjoys public approval ratings near 80%, and he insists that his constitution enshrines a catalog of individual rights and innovative reforms, such as tougher scrutiny of judicial candidates and criminal penalties against tax evasion.

In dire battlefield rhetoric, Chavez recently painted the vote as a struggle “between black and white, God and the devil. If we continue with the same [political and economic] model, we will fall into a great and violent conflict. We could have an internal war.”

Support for the proposed constitution has fallen from 68% in October to about 56%, polls indicate. Chavez may be hurt by backlash in the provinces, where governors fear that the proposed law of the land would dismantle a decentralization process that was one of the few positive reforms in recent years, said Vladimir Chelminski, executive director of the Caracas Chamber of Commerce.

Chavez’s belligerence and his insistence on changing the country’s name, an idea that has been scorned as costly and capricious, also could hurt him, Chelminski added in an interview. “In our democratic system, despite all its defects, we haven’t ever had all these threats,” Chelminski said. “I think that among the masses there are many people who don’t like this talk of war and bullets.”

Some analysts and diplomats are concerned that all the politicking interferes with needed reforms of an almost dysfunctional state in a region with many utopian constitutions whose ideals remain unfulfilled. Although Chavez seems sincere in his commitment to the poor, he seems on occasion to contradict himself: He expressed admiration for Mao Tse-tung during a trip to China and for Lincoln and Jefferson while visiting Washington. At some point, voters will expect concrete results, analysts say.

But first, the dynamic leader--known among his red-beret-wearing followers as El Comandante--charges into yet another battle at the ballot boxes. And if the constitution is approved, Venezuelans will have to return to the polls in March--the fifth national election in 14 months--to “re-legitimize” governors, legislators and the president himself.