Chávez Faces Challenge From Former Comrade

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela's political future is shaping up as a battle between two former comrades-in-arms: President Hugo Chávez and former defense minister Raúl Baduel, one of Mr. Chávez's closest friends going back to their days together in the barracks.

In recent weeks, Mr. Baduel has emerged as perhaps the most significant rival to Mr. Chávez since he became president in 1999. The 52-year-old retired general was instrumental in tilting public opinion against Mr. Chávez's attempts to rewrite the constitution to give himself greater powers, including the right to unlimited re-election. Along with allies in the military, he is widely seen as having pressured Mr. Chávez to concede defeat in a Dec. 2 referendum on the changes.

Mr. Baduel's rise could constrain Mr. Chávez's well-known twin ambitions to stay in power for good and turn the world's sixth-biggest oil exporter into a Cuban-style socialist state. His opposition to Mr. Chávez also seems to reflect some dissatisfaction with the president within the armed forces. The president has politicized the military, forced tasks upon it such as running soup kitchens instead of preparing for battle and changed its traditional view of the world -- turning its longtime ally, the U.S., into its main foe.

Mr. Baduel's role on the night after the vote is fast becoming the stuff of legend in Venezuela. The country's electoral commission dragged its feet for hours in announcing the results. Shortly after midnight, Venezuelan TV showed soldiers preventing opposition representatives from entering the vote-counting hall, sparking rumors that Mr. Chávez was planning to rig the vote.

Then Mr. Baduel appeared on television, wearing a windbreaker and surrounded by grim-faced aides. "For the good of the country, the [election agency] cannot yield to any pressures which could lead to undesired situations," said Mr. Baduel, whose 36-year military career included stints in elite parachute, jungle and antiguerrilla units. His message was clear: Fraud could lead to civil war. Minutes later, the electoral commission stunned the country by announcing that Mr. Chávez had lost -- the first electoral defeat for the seemingly invincible president. Immediately it made Mr. Baduel a key player in shaping the country's future.

Mr. Chávez, who shot to fame as a military officer by launching a failed coup attempt in 1992, doesn't appear to be in danger of getting overthrown by the military. Mr. Chávez purged opponents in the armed forces after an attempted coup against him in 2002, and has sent many younger officers for training in Cuba, whose security forces are believed to have thoroughly penetrated the Venezuelan military, keeping a close eye on officers. But the defeat -- and the military's role -- show Mr. Chávez may have difficulty finding a way to stay in power past his term's constitutional end in 2013, which in turn may weaken him before that and bolster the opposition.

Mr. Chávez's communications ministry didn't respond to a request for an interview in the week prior to his defeat in the referendum. But in a long news conference at the ministry of defense three days later, Mr. Chávez said Mr. Baduel was a traitor in the pay of the U.S., denied he had been pressured to concede by the military, and said the armed forces had never been more loyal to the president than it is now.

The showdown between Mr. Baduel and Mr. Chávez is a remarkable turn in the two men's long and complex history. Mr. Baduel was one of three officers who made a secret pact with Mr. Chávez to conspire to overthrow the government when they were climbing up the ranks. When Mr. Chávez assumed the presidency in 1999, he made Mr. Baduel his personal secretary, and it was Mr. Baduel who helped save Mr. Chávez from a brief coup in 2002. Mr. Chávez is godfather to Mr. Baduel's 16-month-old daughter.

Yet Mr. Baduel also stayed out of Mr. Chávez's first attempt at revolution in 1992. Mr. Chávez tried to marginalize him early in his presidency. And Mr. Baduel abruptly became one of the president's boldest critics on the day he retired from the administration last July.

Divided Society

Now Mr. Baduel holds a unique place in this divided society: He is respected by both the president's supporters and detractors. Long a hero to one side for cutting off the coup against Mr. Chávez, he is now a hero to many on the other side for staving off a kind of coup by Mr. Chávez himself.

In an interview, Mr. Baduel said it would be best to keep details of what happened on election night private. He spoke respectfully of Mr. Chávez as "Mr. President." But Mr. Baduel doesn't hold his tongue when it comes to the direction he feels the government is going. In the referendum, "the tendency was to go towards a greater concentration of power around the figure of the president," he says. "That's undemocratic."

While he says he speaks as a private citizen, he also says he has close bonds with many officers with whom he served during his career. "It's well known that when you share risks with your companions in arms, you generate a lot of solidarity," he says. "When your companions see you manage risky situations in an appropriate way, they respect and appreciate you for it."

President Chávez with then-Defense Minister Gen. Baduel at army ceremony in 2006

Mr. Chávez says the election delay was because he wanted more votes counted. But people within the opposition say Mr. Baduel spoke to key officers that evening, urging them to resist any order that might pit soldiers against citizens. Many opposition leaders and others believe Mr. Baduel's prestige within the armed forces was a critical factor in convincing Mr. Chávez to accept the results. "In Caracas, it is a matter of religious belief" that Mr. Baduel is responsible, says Luis Garcia Montoya, a leading lawyer and professor at Caracas's IESA institute, a top business school.

"Baduel played a central role in avoiding confrontation, preserving democracy and stopping Chávez from not recognizing the results of the election," says Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations who is a top adviser to the country's opposition.

Mr. Chávez and the armed forces' high command have tried to dispel the idea that the president's hold on the troops has slipped. Three days after the referendum, Defense Minister Gen. Gustavo Rangel, flanked by a dozen generals and admirals, heatedly denied in a news conference that the military had pressured Mr. Chávez on election night. To show their absolute loyalty, Gen. Rangel shouted out the controversial Cuban-style salute recently made mandatory by Mr. Chávez for the armed forces: "Patria, Socialismo o Muerte!" (Fatherland, Socialism or Death). "Venceremos!" (To Victory) the assembled top brass shouted back.

Mr. Chávez then burst in unannounced, grabbed the microphone and during a long and rambling speech, lashed out at Mr. Baduel. "The Empire bought him," he said, accusing Mr. Baduel of being a U.S. agent. Mr. Baduel shrugs off Mr. Chávez's criticism and says he still considers the president his friend. "We just have different opinions," he says.

Mr. Baduel, a vegetarian with a deep and eclectic interest in world religions, is not a typical Latin American military man. He has spoken publicly of his belief that he has been reincarnated. Although a practicing Roman Catholic, he is fascinated by the Orient and is also adept in the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism. In his office filled with statues of Catholic saints and Chinese warriors, he keeps a Koran as well as a Bible and meditates and works amid burning incense while listening to Gregorian chants.

The religious music also serves another purpose: It hinders any listening devices. "My telephones are bugged," he contends, pointing to what he says is a government listening station on a nearby building.

Few people have been as close to Mr. Chávez as Mr. Baduel. Both grew up in relative poverty in Venezuela's rural plains, learned to view the ruling elite with hostility, and joined the army for lack of a better way to get ahead. In late 1982, together with two other young officers, Mr. Chávez and Mr. Baduel made a secret oath under a historic tree where Venezuela's independence hero Simón Bolívar made camp during the struggle against colonial Spain. Paraphrasing Bolívar's words from two centuries earlier, the four swore never to rest until they had "broken the chains of the powerful that oppress us."

Decadelong Conspiracy

The oath marked the beginning of a decadelong conspiracy that eventually led to Mr. Chávez's failed 1992 coup against President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Mr. Baduel didn't join because he felt the uprising was too disorganized. Mr. Chávez, who never discussed whether he was angry at Mr. Baduel for not taking part, spent two years in prison and Mr. Baduel continued his career. In 1998, Mr. Chávez, who had gotten out of jail on a presidential pardon, went on to win the presidential election on a wave of voter revulsion at the corruption of previous democratic governments.

Mr. Baduel, then a colonel, became the president's personal secretary, a second officer who took the oath was killed during rioting that shook Caracas in 1989, and the third became an outspoken Chávez opponent. Mr. Baduel declines to discuss details of his history with Mr. Chávez, but people who know both men say the president soon began to view his former comrade as a rival, and began to sideline him, removing him from the list of officers to be promoted. "Chávez told him that the only reason he had him around was that he knew how to tie a necktie," says Nedo Paniz, an amateur parachutist and former conspirator who knows both men well. Mr. Baduel says he never heard that directly from Mr. Chávez.

At the insistence of another officer who had taken the 1982 oath, Mr. Chávez grudgingly promoted Mr. Baduel to brigadier general and put him in command of a paratroop brigade in Maracay. It proved to be a lucky move for Mr. Chávez. Four years later, low oil prices and Mr. Chávez's divisive rhetoric had brought the nation to the brink of civil war. In April 2002 Mr. Chávez's generals refused his order to use force against an enormous protest march heading to the presidential palace. He was forced from power for two days, until Gen. Baduel rallied military support for Mr. Chávez and returned him to office. Mr. Baduel personally directed the helicopters which plucked Mr. Chávez from detention on an island navy base and took him back to the presidential palace.

Mr. Chávez gave him command of the fourth armored division, the most important in the armed forces. He later promoted him to head the army, and then last year made him defense minister. But in his rise to the top, Mr. Baduel began to view Mr. Chávez's transformation of the armed forces with dismay.

For decades, Venezuela's military enjoyed an unusually close relationship with the U.S. Washington was Venezuela's main supplier of weapons and training, and Venezuela was the only South American country to get U.S. made F-16s in the 1980s. The U.S. military had an office in the Venezuelan defense ministry building until Mr. Chávez closed it, and Mr. Baduel and many of his peers took advanced classes in Fort Benning, Ga. Partly as a result of the U.S. tie, Mr. Chávez has never trusted the military fully.

The mistrust blossomed after the 2002 coup. Mr. Chávez then purged even officers seen as politically impartial. He made several key units of the army, including ones based in strategic positions, report directly to him instead of the defense minister. He depends for his personal security on a Cuban Praetorian guard on loan from Fidel Castro, a fact that has caused friction with Venezuelan units. On the night Mr. Chávez lost the referendum, two lines of Cuban guards in signature red guayabera tropical shirts surrounded the presidential palace as dozens of dazed and drunken Chavistas nearby tried to absorb their defeat.

'People's Reserve'

Most problematic for many in the military is Mr. Chávez's creation of a "people's reserve" militia, equipped with the army's old FAL rifles which are being replaced with 100,000 AK-47s purchased from Russia. Its existence strips the traditional military of its monopoly over the state use of force. Although the militia was ostensibly formed to protect Venezuela against a U.S. invasion, most analysts see it as Mr. Chávez's way of warning the army not to take any action against him.

Mr. Baduel opposed Mr. Chávez's moves to elevate the militia and take control of military promotions, but like a good soldier, he held his fire -- until he retired as defense minister last July. He used his retirement ceremony to fire a warning shot in the president's direction. As Mr. Chávez sat stony-faced, Mr. Baduel gave an extraordinary speech warning that Venezuela should not repeat the errors of Soviet communism as it tried to define its path toward what Mr. Chávez has vaguely called "21st-century socialism."

"We must admit the theoretical model for it at this moment doesn't exist," Mr. Baduel said of Mr. Chávez's plan. Four months later, Mr. Baduel landed a bigger blow. In an unusual press conference, he recalled his 2002 role in defeating the coup against Mr. Chávez. Now he called Mr. Chávez's proposed constitutional reforms a "legal coup d'etat."

"If I defended the constitution then, I have the moral duty to defend the constitution now," says Mr. Baduel, thumbing through his miniature copy, which he keeps prominently displayed on his desk. Mr. Chávez reacted violently to the speech: He led a meeting of thousands of red-shirted followers who shouted, "Baduel, traitor! To the execution wall!"

Mr. Baduel's rise is seen with suspicion by some in the opposition. "I respect him enormously, but I never want to see another military man at the presidential palace," says one opposition leader who has worked closely with Mr. Baduel in recent months. "You know when they come in, but you never know when they are going to leave." Nevertheless, Mr. Baduel is preparing to enter the battleground of politics.

He has struck an allegiance with Podemos, a leftist party which also recently broke with Mr. Chávez. Some expect the former Chávez ally to run for a state governorship next year, or for president after that. "I don't discard, now that I have entered a new cycle of life, an incursion into politics," he says, as a Gregorian chant plays in the background.