When President Hugo Chávez doesn’t get his own way, Venezuelans have learned to prepare for the worst. So as the 65 new members of the opposition settled into their seats in the National Assembly at the start of this year—erasing Chávez’s “rubber-stamp” two-thirds majority—the people will have been bracing themselves once again.
Chávez’s 11-year rule has made Venezuela akin to another country where I have represented victims of political persecution: Russia. Like Vladimir Putin, Chávez has combined populism with strong-arming the judiciary and other state institutions to allow him to rule unchallenged. Unfortunately, while you hear some international concerns voiced in Russia’s case, nobody seems to be paying attention to Venezuela right now. A navel-gazing administration in Washington has run out of political capital to spend on foreign policy, and Europe, more than ever, appears naively detached from the pressing problems of the region.
This is a big mistake. Policymakers from Brussels to Westminster would be foolish not to realise their stake in Venezuela; in holding to account a man who has spent $6bn on arms, disrupted global energy markets and turned his country into a sponsor of pariah states and violent non-state actors—apparently selected at random.
Ever the astute populist, Chávez knows his own citizens are becoming increasingly dissatisfied: concerned about spiralling murder rates (according to the government’s own figures, just under 14,000 murders in 2009, four times the death toll for the same year in Iraq), chronic power shortages (a 12 per cent generation deficit that leaves the grid dependent on rolling blackouts), a frozen construction sector (the expropriation of some 200 building companies has exacerbated the housing crisis), and waning levels of oil production (despite high global prices, production was down 3 per cent last year). It is getting harder for him to ignore these realities by simply yelling about Yankee imperialism—which is why he is taking Mugabe-style steps to prepare for yet another presidential term in 2012. After his ruling party lost a large number of seats in September’s election, he started rushing through an aggressive legislative agenda and appointing a series of new Supreme Court justices and lower judges. As he knows, the legal system is key to his hold on power, and the next few months could be critical in this campaign.
In Venezuela, “rule of law” is a loaded phrase, a concept weakened by years of abuse. Since 2001, Chávez has introduced measures that make it far easier for him to influence the hiring and firing of judges, and has appointed a cadre of individuals known as “political prosecutors,” responsible not for investigating crimes but for opening cases against the president’s selected opponents, and sometimes against the business competitors of his friends.
Among the most emblematic cases was the 2009 arrest of Judge María Lourdes Afiuni, personally condemned by Chávez live on television to the maximum sentence before she had been charged or put on trial. Afiuni’s “crime” was her lawful decision to release the businessmen and Chávez opponent Eligio Cedeño, whom I represented as international counsel, as he had been held well beyond the legal term of pre-trial detention. This courageous move landed Judge Afiuni in prison, where she remains.
The country’s lack of judicial independence also enables Chávez to pursue corrosive and dangerous policies abroad, without fear of extradition. As he has developed closer ties with Russia, Iran and even repressive smaller countries such as Belarus, weekly flights between Caracas, Tehran and Damascus have allowed certain people to enter the country without going through customs, while the border areas are regarded as a safe haven for Colombia’s Farc rebel group. A report last year by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) detailed how the high level of police and military corruption had made Venezuela a major shipment route for trafficking cocaine—a significant proportion of which, we can safely assume, arrives in Europe.
Meanwhile, a Spanish investigation claimed in March to have “demonstrated the Venezuelan government’s co-operation in the illicit collaboration” in arms training exercises and other activities between the Basque separatist group ETA and Farc. (Chávez has denied these allegations.) And yet Spain remains, like the rest of Europe, oddly quiet. According to Spanish foreign minister Trinidad Jiménez, there are “no political prisoners in Venezuela.” To the families of Judge Afiuni and others, this is a bitter pill to swallow.
So what should Europe do? Chávez has based his survival on fostering an image of being under siege: the more he is personally attacked, the greater his ability to rally the country behind him and sow divisions in the international community. An integral part of the Venezuelan model (and the Russian one) is what I call the “algorithm of authoritarianism”—where the speed at which change is thrust on the institutions of government leaves opponents bewildered, unfocused and incoherent in response. Based on my experience, I would argue that Europe’s policy toward Venezuela must be conducted on a case-by-case basis, targeting not the Venezuelan people as a whole but the individuals responsible for distorting the rule of law. Revoke their visas. Freeze their assets. Impose sanctions on their businesses while offering preferential relations in return for specific measures to improve the rule of law.
There is, admittedly, not much time or space to implement a general policy to combat Chávez, but at the very least the EU, including Britain, can abandon its approach of appeasement and tolerance. This year, as the new parliamentarians take their places, politics in Venezuela will become even more unpredictable—with worrying consequences for the region at large. It is Venezuelans who have the most to lose. But there are urgent reasons why the rest of us should care about what Hugo Chávez does, too.
