Venezuela's revolution in decline beware the wounded tiger

World Policy Journal

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 45-58

  Rodríguez, Francisco ^a  

^a WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 48249083095     PISSN: 07402775     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/wopj.2008.25.1.45     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. On March 18th, a London judge lifted the asset freeze arguing that the court did not have jurisdiction over PDVSA's assets. See Tom Bergin "Court lifts Exxon freeze on Venezuelan assets," Reuters, March 19, 2008.
2. Daniel Wilkinson, "Chávez's Fix," The Nation, March 10, 2008, pp. 31-41.
3. "Informe sobre el impacto de la huelga general sobre las perspectivas económicas y fiscales del 2003," (Caracas: Oficina de Asesoría Económica y Financiera de la Asamblea Nacional).
4. Francisco Rodríguez, "An Empty Revolution: The Unfulfilled Promises of Hugo Chavez," Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008, pp. 49-62.
5. Venezuela's Central Bank calculates that the share of the lowest quintile in total income reflected in its Family Expenditures Survey declined from 6.3 percent to 4.1 percent between 1997 and 2005. The World Bank also calculates a decline using the alternative Households Survey, from 4.1 percent to 3.7 percent, during the 1998-2005 period. In contrast, the Venezuelan Statistical Institute claims that this share in the Households Survey actually increased from 4.1 percent to 4.6 percent during the same period; its results appear to be due to a set of questionable methodological assumptions. For example, in contrast to the World Bank, the National Statistical Institute excludes households with no income from this indicator. See Banco Central de Venezuela, Encuesta Nacional de Presupuestos Familiares: Principales Resultados, 2007; CEDLAS and World Bank, Socio-Economic Database for Latin America 2008, available at www.depeco.econo.unlp.edu.ar/ cedlas/sedlac/excels/inequality_lac.zip; as well as personal communication with World Bank staff (available upon request).
6. "Hugo Chavez Wins," The New York Times, August 18, 2004.
7. Gobierno Bolivariano de Venezuela (2005), "Un logro reconocido internacionalmente." The ceremony was timed to coincide with the 236th anniversary of the birth of Simón Rodríguez, the teacher of Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolívar, whose pseudonym gave Misión Robinson its name.
8. Daniel Ortega and Francisco Rodríguez, "Freed From Illiteracy? A Closer Look at Venezuela's Robinson Literacy Campaign," Economic Development and Cultural Change, forthcoming October 2008.
9. Ibid, sees. III-IV.
10. "Recursos Asignados a las Misiones hasta el 2005 y su Correspondiente Ejecución," (Caracas: Ministerio de Finanzas, 2006). The budgeted figure excludes the value of donations made by Cuba within the context of the Cuban-Venezuelan Cooperation Agreement, through which Venezuela receives inkind transfers in exchange for favorable conditions in oil sales. Cuban donations to the program included 1.9 million textbooks, 200,000 literacy trainer manuals, 80,000 television sets and video cassette recorders for classroom use, 1 million literacy lesson videotapes, 2 million family libraries, and 300,000 pairs of eyeglasses.
11. Literacy for Life: Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2006 (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation).
12. Ministerio de Finanzas, 2006.
13. Available at www.aporrea.org.
14. Análisis del Entorno Sociopolítico (Alfredo Keller y Asociados, May 2002).
15. Gobierno Bolivariano de Venezuela, Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela. (Caracas: Asamblea Nacional Constituyente, 1999), articles 71, 72 and 341-348.
16. Juan Francisco Alonso, "1.574.233 firmas válidas se entregaron al CNE," El Universal, November 11, 2002.
17. The opposition also decided to collect signatures for the recall referenda of 35 government legislators.
18. Available at www.rnv.gov.ve/noticias/ index.php?act=ST&f=2&t= 1724. These numbers are not strictly comparable since signatures against opposition deputies were not collected in all jurisdictions and because signers could petition the recall of several deputies. As a fraction of potential electors, the signatures that government sympathizers claimed to have collected against opposition deputies totaled 33.13 percent of eligible voters, while those claimed to have been collected by the opposition accounted for 26.13 percent of potential voters.
19. Johanne Betancourt Pérez, "Chávez advierte que está en marcha un megafraude," Últimas Noticias, December 1, 2003.
20. The original CNE announcement of March 2, 2007, noted 1,832,493 valid signatures and 816,017 under observation. However, those numbers were revised upwards on April 20. See Alejandro Rodríguez, "Casi dos millones de firmas de la CD a reparos," Últimas Noticias, April 21, 2005.
21. The CNE also invalidated most of the signatures collected to support the recall petition against government deputies, determining that in only one of the 35 cases could the threshold be met if enough signatures were ratified.
22. An additional 11,412 signatures were excluded by the CNE.
23. Nevertheless, there has been an intense academic debate on the existence of statistical evidence of fraud.
24. Taynem Hernández, "MVR Asegura que 72 dirigentes opositores no firmaron solicitud," El Universal, January 15, 2003.
25. "Lepage asegura que plan contra firmazo se diseñó en Miraflores," El Universal, September 5, 2003.
26. Ludovico Quiñones, "Diputado Luis Tascón denuncia fraude en firmas del consultivo," Venpres, February 20, 2003.
27. "Sin Indra," El Universal, February 27, 2003.
28. '"El Firmazo': 2 mil denuncias de firmas 'chimbas' ha recibido Luis Tascón a través de su página web," Aporrea, September 8, 2003.
29. "Venezuela: sigue polémica por firmas," BBC Mundo, September 4, 2003.
30. Confusion between the Tascón and the Maisanta database is common, and many Venezuelans tend to refer to both of them as the same. Indeed, since the information on Tascón's website forms a subset of Maisanta, the distinction should not be overblown. From the point of view of our study, what is relevant is that the list of signers was publicly available. Whether this was possible due to Tascón's website, the Maisanta program, or both, is of second-order importance.
31. See, for example, "Denuncian lista discriminatoria en organismos públicos," El Universal, August 8, 2005, and Organization of American States (2006), Informe de la Misión de Observación Electoral en la República Bolivariana de Venezuela: Elecciones Parlamentarias 2005 (Washington, DC: Organization of American States, 2005), p. 50.
32. Helen Murphy, "Chavez's Blacklist of Venezuelan Opposition Intimidates Voters," Bloomberg, April 17, 2005.
33. Ana Julia Jatar, Apartheid del siglo XXI: La informática al servicio de la discriminación política en Venezuela (Caracas: Súmate, 2006) pp. 160-74.
34. Edward Miguel, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Daniel Ortega, and Francisco Rodríguez, "The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela's Maisanta" Wesleyan University, 2008.
35. See "Rise of the Boligarchs," The Economist, August 9, 2007, for anecdotal evidence on the emergence of profitable pro-government business groups in Venezuela.
36. "PollShows Chávez with strong lead" Associated Press, November 23, 2006.
37. Javier Conde, "La confianza en Chávez baja de 30% en todo el país," El Nacional, March 18, 2008.
38. The Venezuelan government already charges that the United States plotted the 2002 coup attempt, a charge which Washington officials deny.