Venezuela

Are they beginning to lose the faith?

Hugo Chávez's attempt to turn his country into a socialist utopia under personal direction is running into trouble

SOME of the proposed articles are “not good”, he admits, though he is vague about the details. But Freddy Medina has no doubt about which way he will vote in December 2nd's referendum on constitutional reform. “I will support my president,” he says. What makes this loyalty to Hugo Chávez remarkable is that Mr Medina, a building worker, is about to be evicted from the three-room home he has spent the past two decades building on a steep hillside in La Pedrera, in the poor suburbs of south-western Caracas, the capital. Years of leaks from poorly maintained water and sewerage systems, combined with recent rains, have triggered landslides that have wrecked several of his neighbours' homes and left his vulnerable. The government has promised to rehouse him, but has not yet done so.

Thanks to the devotion of people like Mr Medina, Mr Chávez has easily won ten national ballots—including two presidential elections and several referendums—since he first arrived in office in 1999. Only last December he won a new six-year term with 63% of the vote. He has showered record oil revenues on social programmes for the poor while gradually turning a liberal democracy into a more authoritarian and less plural regime. But now, in trying to push through the radical rewriting of a constitution that he himself fathered in 1999, he may have gone a step too far.

Mr Chávez's reform proposes radical changes to 69 of the constitution's 350 articles. They put into effect his campaign promise to implement “21st-Century Socialism”. On the one hand, the economy is officially declared to be based on “socialist, anti-imperialist [and] humanist principles”, with protection of private property weakened. On the other, yet more power would be centralised in the presidency.

Mr Chávez would have full control over the Central Bank and its reserves. Elected local government would be undermined: the president would have untrammelled power to appoint the governor of Caracas, to create new federal territories, and to set up and finance a national “Popular Power” based on unelected communal councils. The new draft also weakens some of the “participatory” clauses of the 1999 constitution, raising from 10% to 30% the proportion of voters required to petition for a referendum. And it would abolish presidential term limits, allowing Mr Chávez to run again indefinitely.

Officials claim that the reform will deepen a popular revolution and give Venezuelans more rights. They point to clauses offering a free education, a cut in the working day from eight to six hours, and the extension of social security to informal workers. The government has not revealed the cost of such measures, none of which requires constitutional change.

Opponents see the reform as a big step away from democracy and towards a totalitarian state along Cuban lines. The novelty is that so, too, do some of Mr Chávez's erstwhile supporters. The reform is opening up what may be a lasting fissure in the chavista camp, driving those who see themselves as democratic socialists towards the opposition.

“Many of the articles there flout the essence of democracy,” says Ismael García, leader of Podemos, one of four parties that have formed the governing coalition since 1998 but which has now joined the “No” campaign in the referendum.

Another weighty opponent is General Raul Baduel, who was defence minister until July and whose role in restoring Mr Chávez to the presidential palace after an abortive coup in 2002 made him a hero to chavistas. The proposed reform amounts to “constitutional fraud” and a “coup d'état”, he says. “Democracies should be very careful that there is a division of powers, with counterbalances. This [the reform] would put democratic institutionality at risk.” For its part, the opposition has been revitalised by the emergence of a powerful student movement, untainted by involvement in the 2002 coup or other failures of the past.

Several pollsters who predicted Mr Chávez's election victory last year reckon that the referendum is now too close to call. They find a majority of respondents oppose the reform, but it is not clear how many of them will actually vote. In one of several signs that Mr Chávez is rattled, the government-dominated electoral authority decided to ban the publication of polls in the last week before the vote.

The president is a formidable campaigner and has honed a powerful political machine that can draw on the state's resources: metro stations and government offices are plastered with posters backing the reform. A study by the electoral authority found that government-linked television channels gave those against the reform only 1% of the total time given to those in favour; the remaining commercial channels favoured the No campaign, but by a much smaller margin.

Mr Chávez points out that many of those now passionately defending the 1999 constitution originally opposed it. He remains popular (with 60% of Venezuelans, the polls suggest). He is striving to turn the referendum into a plebiscite on himself. In a play on words, the placards proclaim “SIgue con Chávez” (roughly, “Yes, let's go on with Chávez”). Many shrewd observers in Caracas reckon that all this means that the president may win, though more narrowly than in the past.

But there are signs that the Chávez magic is starting to fade. Inflation is rising, while three years of price controls mean that basic foods such as milk, eggs and flour are often unobtainable. Violent crime is rampant, especially in poorer areas.

The referendum may be decided by how many Venezuelans bother to vote. Those in the opposition who called for abstention in past elections (claiming that the electoral authority was not impartial) have this time called on their supporters to vote, whereas in the chavista camp, there are signs of apathy. How widespread this proves to be may determine whether or not Venezuela remains a democracy.