CARACAS, Venezuela – As Venezuelans cast their votes Sunday in a historic, long awaited recall referendum on President Hugo Chavez, both he and his opponents are predicting a commanding victory, despite most analysts’ projections of a tight election.
The embattled populist has collided against a fractured opposition coalition for more than two years. Sunday the ballot box will be their battleground.
“This is a test to see whether constitutional means of resolving a political crisis will work,” said Michael Shifter, a Latin America analyst and vice president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.
At stake is the future of Chavez’s presidency, which ends in 2007. If he loses the recall he will face an early election within 30 days against an opposition candidate.
Either way, reconciliation will be necessary in this polarized country of 24 million where many voters reject the past political system dominated by two parties that are largely considered corrupt and inept.
Mobilizing voters will be key for both camps.
Armed with a megaphone, Ali Loreto is one of thousands of pro-Chavez volunteers in so-called “Electoral Battle Units,” grassroots organizations that will marshal Chavistas to voting centers Sunday, making sure the elderly and infirm have wheelchairs, motorcycles or jeeps available to facilitate their descent from the steep hillside barrios where most of Venezuela’s poor majority lives.
Loreto, who lives in a southern Caracas community where 85 percent of the residents are poor, sees himself as a soldier in Chavez’s “Bolivarian revolution.” He and his wife Thania Bandres have transformed their garage into a small medical clinic where a Cuban doctor, one of 13,000 currently stationed in Venezuela, examines patients and doles out medications for free. A few steps away, in a cheerful classroom with wooden desks and pro-Chavez posters, Bandres teaches a dozen retirees over age 60 to read and write.
“For me Sunday will be historic, it is the consolidation of our democracy,” Loreto, 36, said. “This is the only revolution which has not been bloody. Our weapon is the constitution.”
Shesnay Borges, a lawyer, had gone door to door in her neighborhood to convince undecided voters that a presidential recall will bring new faces and solid leadership to Venezuela.
“Those caudillos had their time,” Borges, 27 said.
Across town, in a middle-class, eastern Caracas neighborhood where gated condos, shops and restaurants line the streets, pro-and anti-Chavez camps staked out opposite corners of a busy intersection in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s election.
At the opposition tent, four unemployed professionals put up posters and handed out literature, giving their thumbs-up to drivers who honked their horns in support.
“We are looking for someone who truly represents us, who doesn’t steal, who is fair.”
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Former IBM employee Reinaldo Perdomo said he voted for Chavez during his first election in 1998. Six years later, Perdomo, like many, is frustrated with Venezuela’s high unemployment rate, which, at 15 percent, is four points higher than when Chavez came into office.
“Chavez betrayed me,” Perdomo, 57, said at a massive opposition rally last week. “He said he would fight against corruption, that he would help poor children, that he wasn’t a communist. He is looting the oil money and using it to propagate his revolution.”
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Chavez’s rollercoaster presidency has endured a costly three-month national strike that nearly paralyzed the oil industry, a stunning two-day coup and a heated petition drive that forced the recall referendum. He has bolstered his support by pouring millions of dollars in oil revenues into adult education programs, medical care and subsidized food for the poor.
In order to trigger new elections Chavez opponents must secure more than the 3.8 million votes that put him in office during his 2000 re-election. If the recall prevails new elections could be held in 30 days.
The opposition coalition Democratic Coordinator, which is made up of more than 20 political parties, also predicts a decisive victory. They plan to hold a primary to choose a candidate to run against Chavez. Enrique Mendoza, the governor of Miranda state, is one of the opposition’s most visible leaders and the likely front-runner.
Mendoza last week assured a sea of opposition sympathizers that they would win Sunday by a two-thirds majority and Venezuela will be “reunited towards reconciliation.”
With about a 75 percent voter turnout expected Sunday, Sumate, a nonprofit civic organization that helped organize the recall, predicts long lines at some of the country’s 8,300 voting centers.
Analysts have not ruled out the possibility of fraud or irregularities, which could lead to violent clashes. Three out of five members of the National Electoral Council, which is overseeing the recall process, favor Chavez.
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In the weeks leading up to the election the Venezuelan government registered more than a million new voters for a total of 14 million voters. About 40,000 people were mysteriously reassigned to new voting centers without their request. Fingerprinting machines meant to keep voters from casting more than one ballot, have also raised fears among some Venezuelans that their vote will not be kept secret and could lead to reprisals.
The Carter Center and Organization of American States will monitor voting centers across the country and Sumate plans to conduct exits polls and report irregularities.
“We realize what is at risk this Sunday is much more than the potential removal of a president,” said Sumate vice president Maria Corina Machado. “For us its the possibility of strengthening our democracy or perhaps continuing to debilitate it. We think it should be a transparent process.”
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