The victory of the Venezuelan opposition in the referendum pushed for by President Hugo Chavez to reform the Constitution and create a totalitarian Cuban-style "socialist" state was far more significant than the official margin of 50.7% to 49.3% could ever indicate. Andres Oppenheimer analysed the Venezuelan elections in "El Nuevo Herald", and here follows a translation of his article.

Chavez has certainly kept a firm grip on power and has assured his government is not under threat in the short-term. However, the opposition's triumph changed the country's political panorama overnight, and will make efforts by the leaders of Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua- supported by Chavez- to change their own laws with the aim of enabling 'Presidency for life' significantly more difficult.

Amongst the evidence to support the claim that the opposition victory is far more significant than at first glance is: firstly, the opposition's victory could have been by a wider margin than the government claims. Whilst Venezuelan electoral authorities annouced defeat of the reform by a difference of 1.4% with 90% of the votes counted, Ojo Electoral ('Electoral Eye'), the independent body supervising the electoral process with the endorsement of the Venezuelan government, indicated that the opposition won by a margin of 3.8%.

"We don't know if in the haste of our counting we left some votes uncounted from rural areas or towns with populations of less than 10,000, where Chavez tends to win, or if there was some kind of agreement between the opposition and the government by which the electoral authorities announced the results, claiming them to be "irreversible", but by "a minor difference" Pedro Nikken, an official from Ojo Electoral, told me by phone.

Secondly, the defeat of the reforms, which would have created a constitutionally legitimate "Socialist state" and would have given Chavez power to be re-elected indefinitely, came about through an abstention of around 44% of those eligible to vote.

The investigators stated yesterday that a large amount of abstention occured in poor chavista districts, where people resisted voting for a Cuban style regime, as well as in anti-chavista districts, where people were intimidated into not voting or thought it would be a waste of time because whatever the outcome the government would manipulate the results.

Now that the opposition has triumphed, many of the opposition voters who previously stayed at home will make their voices heard in the next set of elections. This gives the opposition significant room for growth and weakens Chavez's strategy of winning elections through a combination of government intimidation and massive distribution of resources to get votes.

Thirdly, the result was a strong blow to Chavez's self-proclaimed aura of invinciblity. The president had won every single one of the five previous national elections, which had led many to believe that he was unbeatable, at least for as long as he was able to take advantage of Venezuela's great oil wealth.

Fourthly, the results of the referendum mark the uprising of a new opposition in Venezuela. Rather than being led by traditional political parties- brought into disrepute by a long history of corruption- this new opposition had a new set of leaders, like the student activists that took to the streets to protest against the closing of RCTV (a Venezuelan television channel) and Chavez's ex-defence minister, General Raul Isaias Baduel, who on the eve of the referendum proclaimed himself to be against the reforms.

In fifth place, the result of the Venezuelan referendum will encourage opposition forces in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua and will convince them that they can neutralize the attempts by their respective presidents to reform laws and create left-leaning regimes governed by lifelong presidents.

"In Venezuela, the message from many people who usually voted for Chavez was: we still love you, but we don't like the way you think" Ana Julia Jatar, from the Carr centre for Human Rights Politics at the University of Harvard, commented from Caracas.

The same could happen in other places. If the opposition won in Venezuela, where Chavez is swimming in oil revenue, has a popularity of 60% and control of the Congress, Supreme Court and much of the media, it's not impossible that the same could happen in countries like Bolivia, where the leaders are putting forward similar initiatives to those proposed by Chavez in order to cling onto their power, but without the financial or political support that Chavez had.

In summary, the opposition victory does not mark Chavez's demise nor does it stop him coming back with a new project to convert Venezuela into a Cuban-style dictatorship, but it is a serious turnaround for Venezuela's Leninist leader and could impact upon all his allies in the region.

Galleries:
Venezuelans said NO to the regime.
A hard hit for the Bolivarian Revolution.

Source: El Nuevo Herald.