Millions of Venezuelans took to the polls Feb. 15 in a nationwide referendum to eliminate term limits for elected officials.
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The result was yet another victory for the revolutionary process unfolding in Venezuela. The final vote for amending the constitution to strike term limits was 54.4 percent in favor and 45.6 percent against. Prior to the vote, supporters gathered more than 4.7 million signatures in support of the amendment, which were delivered to the National Assembly in December 2008.
The end of term limits means that Venezuelans will have the option of keeping Chávez as their president beyond 2012 should they so choose. Chávez has provided critical leadership to the Bolivarian revolution, which has challenged the political and economic dominance of the Venezuelan ruling class and advanced the interests of the Venezuelan masses. Under Chávez millions of impoverished Venezuelans have benefited from improvements to health care, education, housing and social services.
Predictably, the right wing attacked the democratic referendum as an instrument to establish a totalitarian dictatorship. Failing to derail the Bolivarian revolution through elections or by coup, the Venezuelan oligarchy and its Washington allies hoped that term limits would finally force Chávez out of office and help them usher in a president more inclined to serve their interests.
Venezuelan corporate media and leading U.S. newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post all launched direct attacks on the broadly popular—and democratic—referendum. These attacks reveal the anti-democratic character of these imperialist mouthpieces and the lengths they will go to to usurp the fundamental rights of the working masses.
Term limits are not the real target of these media attacks. If they were, those same newspapers and television networks would have expressed much greater outrage when the administration of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe paid off several congressmen to amend the constitution to allow his 2006 re-election. Sixty of the congressmen who voted in favor of the constitutional change are currently under investigation for their connections to the drug trade and paramilitary death squads.
In contrast to the democratic process underway in Venezuela, there was no national referendum for the Colombian people. Uribe has not ruled out seeking further amendments to pave the way for yet another term.
Why such disparate coverage? Unlike Chávez, Uribe has proved to be a loyal representative of U.S. interests, pursuing a neoliberal agenda and carrying out a war of extermination against Colombia’s revolutionary guerrillas.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg successfully led an effort to scrap a 1993 referendum in which New Yorkers approved a two-term cap. Bloomberg stepped over voters and asked the city council to extend term limits. Mainstream media that did not outright support the move certainly did not cry “authoritarian dictatorship.” Bloomberg is a founder and major stakeholder in Bloomberg L.P., whose news services have not hesitated to join the attacks against Chávez.
As is often the case, the coverage in the mainstream media has ignored the single biggest player in Venezuelan politics, its own people. During the past week, Venezuela has been witness to several large campaign rallies, including one in Caracas on Feb. 12 where hundreds of thousands of Chávez supporters flooded the streets.
The successful campaign has been an important example of the maturation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which mobilized tens of thousands of campaign organizers throughout the country. Union activists, women and indigenous organizations, public school students and social workers organized rallies in every corner of the country supporting the constitutional amendment. Activists took to the streets in U.S. cities in support of the Bolivarian revolution and the constitutional amendment.
The referendum is yet another step forward for the Bolivarian revolution. The Venezuelan oligarchy and its imperialist allies will spare no effort to prevent a third term for Chávez, be it by legal or extralegal means. The resilience and steadfastness of the revolutionary leadership and their supporters will continue to be tested in the period ahead.
