The opposition faces some extraordinary obstacles

The Economist
July 7, 2012

TO CHEERS from red-shirted supporters, on July 1st Hugo Chávez officially launched his campaign for Venezuela’s presidential election with a rally in Maracay, just west of the capital, Caracas, where he promised to “pulverise” the opposition. Mr Chávez is seeking a third consecutive six-year term, despite undergoing three operations for cancer in the past year. His centrist opponent, Henrique Capriles of the Democratic Unity coalition (MUD), spent the day flitting from the Brazilian border to the semi-desert of the Guajira in the north-west. His message was that the “most forgotten” communities can count on him to improve their lives.

That seemed calculated to underline how Mr Chávez’s uncertain health may prevent him from campaigning as actively as in the past. But in other ways, Mr Capriles is the one who faces unusual obstacles. Although almost all anti-Chávez forces are united under the umbrella of the MUD, the president can use the apparatus of the Venezuelan state to put roadblocks in his way. And he is taking full advantage.

On June 28th the supreme court (TSJ) struck against the only surviving anti-government television channel, Globovisión. As the 24-hour news channel sought to overturn in a lower court a $2.1m fine imposed by a government regulator, the TSJ ordered the seizure of assets worth $5.7m from the channel. Globovisión managers rushed to pay the original fine (imposed for its coverage of a prison siege last year) in order to avoid the seizure. Frank La Rue, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of expression, accused the government of using legal subterfuge to provoke the closure of critical media.

Although constitutionally independent of the executive, the TSJ has a history of obeying the president’s wishes. The former head of its criminal division, Eladio Aponte, who fled the country in April, has said the government issued instructions to the judiciary at weekly meetings.

After a 2002 coup attempt against Mr Chávez, which he accused private television channels of orchestrating, his government swore to establish its own “media hegemony”. It closed down dozens of radio and television stations, neutered others by intimidation, and created a vast state-media network which offers saturation coverage of the president’s campaign. Mr Chávez also claims the right to interrupt all terrestrial broadcast channels without notice, to speak for as long as he likes. Broadcasters are obliged by law to carry ten minutes of free government propaganda every day. Mr Capriles is mentioned in the state media only as the butt of insults.

In theory, under rules announced by the electoral authority (CNE), candidates will be entitled to just one three-minute television slot a day (and four minutes on radio) during the campaign. But the CNE has said it is powerless to prevent the president using his media prerogatives to transmit campaign speeches. It has nothing to say about the bias of state television, for whom Mr Chávez is the “candidate of the motherland”, while Mr Capriles is backed by “the bourgeoisie”.

The CNE has also ruled that 23,000 Venezuelans registered to vote in Miami, nearly all of them opposition supporters, must cast their ballots at the consulate in New Orleans, over 1,000km away by road. The excuse is that the government closed the Miami consulate after the United States expelled the consul last year. And just before the deadline for registering candidacies, the TSJ handed back to factions supporting Mr Chávez control over two formerly chavista political parties that had switched to the opposition.

None of these decisions on their own is likely to swing the result on October 7th. Most opinion polls show the president leading by a wide margin—though pollsters Consultores 21 recently put the two candidates neck-and-neck. And many voters are still undecided. But they reveal the lengths to which Mr Chávez is prepared to go to crush his opponent.

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