Venezuela, a very relaxed coup d´état

For the first time in history an abstract noun was sworn in today as president of Venezuela. Hugo Chávez, incapacitated through illness was absent from his possession, leaving Caracas to celebrate the start of a new presidential period of “Chavismo”.

Thousands lined the streets of the capital to “support the decision of the supreme court”, as Nicolás Maduro, the-Chávez-annointed new leader of the revolution, had warned the nation it must.

Maduro was referring to the ruling from the court that permitted the start of a new period of government even without the availability of the president to take the reigns of power. It concluded that the continuity of Chavismo – the fact that it was a re-election, not the start of a new regime – obviated the need to insist on the president´s physical presence.

We were told effectively that it was not Chávez that was elected in November, but rather Chavismo, the concept.

Of course this is total rot. The Venezuelan constitution was violated today.

So, let us be clear this is a form of coup d´état, or a “coup de constitution”. Sure, Chávez was elected in November, but amid a silence on his health it is constitutionally, morally, politically, and democratically untenable simply to pretend business is as usual.

The interim measure of swearing-in an empty chair smacks of the influence of the brothers Castro of Cuba, where Chávez is being looked after, and where Maduro has spent much of the last few weeks cooking up this plan.

None of this is at all surprising if you consider the supreme court is unmistakably Chavista – as are the vast majority of the country´s institutions.

As El País commented:

“Chavismo recently cleaned out its opponents in the court, and controls all the apparatus of power. Through the use of petrol money, Chavismo dominates the state, the armed forces, the supreme court. It is this state that is hiding the physical state of the president.”

El País could easily have mentioned the electoral commission, the media…the reach of the (until December) omnipresent Chavez is bizarrely similar to the dictators of the far East.

Still, if some news reports are to be believed the people of Venezuela are happy enough. Of course, many of them are not, but is certainly the case that Chávez enjoys a level of support that borders on religious fervor.

Of course many were paid to be there today, directly or indirectly. Many have government jobs because of him, many have received electoral bribes…But it is also the case that for many, such is the all pervasiveness of their “comandante” that life without him is difficult to imagine.

…As the kidnapped sometimes fall in love with their captors…as the abused finds it impossible to leave the abuser…Phsycologically the human is a complicated being.

There are many complex reasons why many Venezuelans turn out to support their ailing leader. The cocktail of emotions is fear of the unknown, sadness for Chávez´s personal battle with terminal cancer, a genuine belief in his politics…

There are too few reports that try to analyze this. There are too many analysts who conclude too easily that the support for Chávez is either a sign of democracy or on the other side a total fabrication – that Chávez´s popular appeal is pure propaganda.

There is frankly more to it than that. How else is it possible to explain the relaxed nature in which the coup d´état was carried out today?