Rugged Terrain for Democracy in Venezuela
17 April 2006

In an Op-Ed Piece of May 10, Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post alleges that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has abused the legal system in order to harass opposition leaders and organizations in order to protect his hold on power. Diehl outlines how the leaders of Súmate, a non-governmental organization, and Henrique Capriles Radonski, the mayor of a district in Caracas, have been called to court on numerous occasions. Deihl claims that Chavez has attacked them because they challenge his political power. Súmate helped organize the recall efforts to remove Chavez from office in 2004. Capriles, a member of the political party First Justice, is being prosecuted, Diehl argues, partly because the Cuban ambassador’s “embarrassment of having appealed to an opposition leader for rescue” during 2002 riots, and partly because he is as a young, popular opposition politician.

Juan Forero of the New York Times, on March 31 in an article entitled, “Rifts Plague Anti-Chavez Venezuelans”, describes the political opposition to Chavez in Venezuela as fractured, possibly contributing to the drift of Venezuela to a ‘one-party state.’  Capriles’ party, First Justice, is the only opposition party to condemn the boycott of elections, argues that participation in the electoral process offers the most hope to counter that tendency. The article quotes the founder of First Justice, Julio Borges, as saying, “We spent seven years trying to get Chavez out of Miraflores.  What we have to do is get Chavez out of people's hearts.”  Forero notes that while First Justice is seen by some as elitist and has trouble connecting with Venezuela’s poor, “84 percent [of Venezuelans]…support taking part in the election, even if they question the impartiality of the electoral authorities.”