Hugo! (38 page)

But he also used the show to discourse about everything imaginable,
citing famous thinkers, singing songs, making policy announcements,
outlining his agenda for the coming week, firing and hiring
officials, reminiscing about his childhood in Barinas, speculating on
the health of Atlanta Braves slugger Andrés Galarraga. In one typical
two-hour program that July, he blasted free-market economics, read a
section of the Bible, gave a mother advice about a rebellious teenager,
declared war against corruption, announced he was the target of a possible
assassination plot, sang a religious hymn, criticized Colombia's
foreign minister, and swore his love for the Venezuelan people. He
also made a man who entered the studio weep when he told him he
would help pay for an operation for his seriously ill daughter.

The show was a smash hit. Within a few months its reach went
from a handful of state-run stations to more than sixty, including
three in Mexico, Spain, and Miami. It was the highest-rated program
in Venezuela in its time slot, attracting 90 percent of listeners.
Telephones at the Radio Nacional de Venezuela started ringing at
5 A.M. on Sundays, four hours before the show began. Crowds carrying
signs asking Chávez for help gathered outside the studios before
dawn.

Chávez eventually merged his radio and television programs
into one show on Sundays, transmitted from locations around the
country — farms, schools, fishing villages, oil fields. It ran for seven
or eight hours at times and became required viewing for millions of
Venezuelans, including his ministers. If they were not on the set with
him, they tuned in to find out the latest policy initiatives.

Some opposition politicians complained that Chávez, with his
own television show, radio program, and newspaper, was creating his
own
small
media empire. "The only thing he lacks is his own movie,"
cracked the president of Democratic Action, Carlos Canache Mata.
But Chávez was merely trying to counter the onslaught of negative
coverage from the much more powerful corporate media both in
Venezuela and overseas. The state-run channel 8 television station,
for instance, was a small fry compared with the commercial networks
of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) or Venevisión. That station was
owned by media mogul Gustavo Cisneros, who was on his way to
becoming one of the richest men in the world. While the poor generally
loved Chávez's show, the upper class dismissed it — and Chávez
— with disdain. To them, he was
ese mono
— that monkey.

On April 25 Chávez breezed to an overwhelming victory in the referendum
on the constitutional assembly, with 88 percent voting "Yes" to
rewrite the nation's magna carta. Abstention was 60 percent, leading
some critics to call it an "outright defeat for Chávez." But that was a
hard case to make. Abstention in US presidential elections was commonly
50 percent. Many voters stayed home during the referendum
ballot because little doubt existed about the outcome. Opponents didn't
bother to campaign, knowing the result was unalterable. Chávez, said
one pollster, was "superman."

A few weeks before the vote, Congress buckled under his pressure
and granted him
emergency powers to rule by decree for the next six
months on economic issues. Critics called it another step toward dictatorship.
It wasn't the most
democratic of methods, but it was also something
many other presidents had done, including Rafael Caldera and
Carlos Andrés Pérez. Chávez felt he needed the temporary fast-track
authorization to combat a worsening economic crisis. The economy
was to shrink 7.2 percent in 1999, the fiscal deficit was to balloon to 3.1
percent of GDP, and unemployment was to reach its highest level in
four decades — 15.4 percent. Despite all that, Chávez remained stunningly
popular.

The one positive piece of economic news was oil prices, which
soared from $8.43 a barrel in February when Chávez took over as president
to $23.34 barrel in January 2000. Many attributed the
increase
partly to one of Chávez's first decisions as president — cutting back production
and
complying with OPEC quotas.

With his longtime dream of a
constitutional assembly close to
becoming a reality, Chávez set his sights on the next election — to
choose its members. In what was to turn into a dizzying series of events
in his first year, the date of the next vote was set for July 25, one day after
Bolívar's birthday. The campaign turned into a frenzy of activity, with
everyone from street vendors to policemen to sports celebrities to astrologers
to lawyers and doctors weighing a run for one of the 128 seats in the
assembly. Three more were designated for representatives of Venezuela's
half million
indigenous people, who were to elect them in tribal councils.
Chávez may have been a dictator-in-waiting, but Venezuela certainly
seemed like a beehive of democratic activity. The country was
alive with debate about the constitution, from Indian villages in the
Amazon rain forest to the barrios of Caracas. Potential candidates put
together proposals and walked the streets trying to recruit voters. One
street vendor who hoped to run commented, "It's the first time in five
hundred years that the people have been asked what they want."

The stakes were high. Chávez believed a constitutional assembly
controlled by his supporters was the major breakthrough the country
needed to end the traditional parties' stranglehold on power. The
oligarchy,
the traditional parties, and much of the media feared it was the
final step to establishing a one-man dictatorship. Chávez pulled out
all the stops to win. Five
cabinet members, including Luis Miquilena,
resigned to run. His wife, Marisabel, threw her hat in, too. So did his
brother Adán, and Chávez's personal psychiatrist, Edmund Chirinos.
Former coup leaders, including Joel Acosta Chirinos and Francisco
Visconti, ran. Even the wife of legendary folk singer Alí Primera, Sol
Mussett, became a candidate.

The electoral council prohibited the use of political party names
on the ballot. So Chávez came up with a device to make sure his
candidates won. He created a card called the
kino
, the name of the
Venezuelan lottery card. Each card contained the names and photographs
of some of his candidates, who in some cases were unknown to
many in the public. Supporters simply had to enter the voting booth
with their kino and pull the levers.

More than 900 of the 1,171 candidates who qualified to run for the
assembly by collecting enough petition signatures did not belong to
Chávez's Patriotic Pole. Yet his forces won an overwhelming victory.
They took 125 seats including the indigenous spots, or 95 percent of the
total. The opposition managed just six seats. The top vote getter was
Chávez's former chief of staff, journalist Alfredo Peña. Number two was
Chávez's wife. The wife of the late Alí Primera also won a seat. So did
the others the president supported, including a popular
llanero
singer, a
horse race announcer, and Maisanta biographer José León Tapia. Some
weren't exactly constitutional experts. But it didn't matter. The new
constitution would be in the hands of
el pueblo
rather than the elites.
Enough experts would be on hand to guide them.

The night of his victory Chávez was delirious with delight. He opened
the grounds of Miraflores again and appeared on the balcony. This time
he was with Marisabel. It was a scene straight out of Evita's Argentina as
she stood with him in the tropical night, illuminated by a spotlight with
the adoring masses at their feet. Chávez called his triumph a "home
run with the bases loaded." Then in an unusual public gesture for
him, he kissed his bride. The crowd went wild. Chávez capped off the
unforgettable night by announcing that he would ask the
constitutional
assembly to change the name of the country. He wanted to call it the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The overwhelming victory of the Chávez forces made it clear a
showdown was coming. For months Chávez had urged the incoming
assembly to temporarily shut down Congress and the Supreme Court
until new institutions were created. He argued that the constitutional
assembly would be the supreme power in the
nation, above even the
president himself. Many constitutional experts agreed. The Supreme
Court and the opposition did not. Chief Justice
Cecilia Sosa warned
Chávez against closing the Supreme Court, arguing that the assembly's
job was to draw up a new constitution, not supplant existing institutions
or govern the country. With a constitutional crisis looming,
Congress
went on vacation.

When the constitutional assembly convened the night of August 3, its
newly elected president, Luis Miquilena, promptly declared that the body
had an "originating character." He meant it could shut down Congress, the
Supreme Court,
and other institutions. The crowd at the magna aula of
the Central University of Venezuela burst into applause. The fight was on.
Chávez urged quick action. "Venezuela is a sinking ship," he told reporters.
"We can't wait too long to do something before it sinks completely."

They didn't wait too long. Nine days later, on Thursday, August
12, the assembly voted to give itself far-reaching powers to abolish government
institutions, dismiss officials, and intervene in other ways. A
week later, on Thursday, August 19, it
declared a "judicial emergency,"
giving itself the power to overhaul the courts. The next day it appointed
a nine-member panel with the power to suspend or dismiss nearly half
the country's forty-seven hundred judges, clerks, and bailiffs because of
pending accusations of
corruption, incompetence, or other irregularities.
Even Supreme Court justices could be removed.

It was a breathtaking move. To its supporters, it could force reforms
that had been blocked for years by corrupt politicians and judicial authorities.
To its critics, it was an overreach of power and a threat to democracy.
The stage was set for a confrontation with the Supreme Court.

No one disputed that the judicial system needed cleaning up.
Corruption was rampant. A best-selling 1995 book,
¿Cuánto Vale Un
Juez?
—
How Much Does a Judge Cost?
— filled 144 pages with story
after story of crooked judges. Finding material wasn't hard. The previous
year, a judge was caught throwing bribe money out of her office window.
Another was taken into custody with bribe money stuffed in her underwear.
The book's author, journalist
William Ojeda, ended up spending a
year in jail after another judge found him guilty of defamation.

The entire system was susceptible to bribery and influence peddling.
For decades most judges, including Supreme Court magistrates,
were appointed by the majority party in Congress — either Democratic
Action or COPEI. Only one-quarter of Supreme Court justices held permanent
posts; the rest could be dismissed at will. That made moving
against politicians, well-connected businessmen, or other members of
the power elite unlikely. The system was dominated by interlocking
judicial
tribus
, tribes, comprising law firms, politicians, judges, and
other powerful figures who could get clients any decision they needed
for the right price or the right connection.

The Supreme Court held up corruption charges against President
Jaime
Lusinchi for years even though the investigating magistrate recommended
putting him on trial. CAP himself was finally indicted, not
because he was corrupt but mainly because he was politically unpopular.
After winning a seat in the senate in the November 1998 election
to represent his home state of Táchira, he suffered a humiliating defeat
in the constitutional assembly race when the same voters dumped him
in favor of a Chavista.

If all that wasn't enough, the judicial system was also notoriously
backlogged. Only about ninety-seven hundred of the nation's twenty-three
thousand prisoners had actually had their day in court and been
convicted. The rest were awaiting trial, often for years.

While few doubted the system needed fixing, the disagreement
was over whether the constitutional assembly had the right to do it.
Stepping back into the fray, on Monday, August 23, the Supreme Court
reversed its earlier ruling that the assembly's sole mission was to write
a new constitution. Instead, it ruled eight to six that the assembly did
not act unconstitutionally in assuming judicial powers. The decision
provoked a crisis on the court. The next day
Chief Justice Cecilia Sosa
resigned. In a live, nationally televised news conference, she declared:
"The court simply committed suicide to avoid being assassinated. But
the result is the same. It is dead."

It was a dramatic appearance. Her resignation and rapidly ensuing
events provoked an uproar among Chávez's opponents and consternation
in the United States. "We regret that she has chosen to leave public
service for she is a person of great ability and integrity and has been a
true leader in Venezuela's efforts to reform the judicial system," State
Department spokesman James B. Foley said.

But Chávez's allies noted that Sosa was implicated in the delay of
a number of high-level corruption cases. They called her a symbol of
a court system gone amok. While the constitutional assembly's actions
were bold and controversial, they argued, it was not a time for timidity.
A revolution was under way. US-born political analyst
Eric Ekvall, a
former adviser to high-level, old-regime politicians and no Chávez fan,
put it this way: "He's come in to clean up town, and that doesn't happen
without a showdown. He's not here to fine tune. He's here to tear things
down and build them up again." The
Reverend Raúl González of the
Jesuit think tank Centro Gumilla added that Chávez was merely implementing
what his supporters demanded. "Chávez was elected in order
to carry out the coup d'état that he left unfinished in 1992, that is, to
bury one political system and give birth to another."