Stuart Munckton
A public fight has erupted inside the Movement for a Fifth Republic (MVR), the party of socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, over issues of internal democracy. According to an April 25 Venezuela Analysis website report, the previous day Chavez used his weekly Alo Presidente TV program to call an end to the dispute and for the democratisation of the party.
The MVR held internal electoral primaries over April 10-13 to determine its list of candidates for municipal council elections to be held in August, an important move to ensure greater rank-and-file control over Chavista candidates, a critical issue that many of those supporting Chavez have pushed for.
While there is very strong support from the Venezuelan worker and peasant majority for Chavez and the increasingly anti-capitalist Bolivarian revolution he is leading, there is also widespread distrust in many of the leaders of political parties aligned with Chavez, including the largely electoralist MVR. Many of Chavez's working-class supporters regard these party leaders as opportunists.
Some 2 million people voted for 5200 positions in the MVR primaries, which were held on April 10-13. However, a number of serious problems have surrounded the primary elections. The first is the relationship between the MVR and a number of other pro-Chavez parties.
While the MVR is the party that is most publicly identified with Chavez, there are others with members in key governmental positions and there are a growing number of new organisations formed by those who are sick of bureaucratic methods of operation prevailing in the older parties.
The desire of the masses to directly control the elected pro-Chavez governmental officials came to a head in the lead-up to the October regional elections. Pleading lack of time to hold open primary elections, a list of candidates drawn up by the leadership of the main pro-Chavez parties without consultation with the ranks was used.
However, the sentiment for open primaries to determine the parties' candidates was such that, following those elections, Chavez announced that in future the ranks would decide the candidates.
While the stated plan was originally for open primaries for the selection of all Chavista candidates for all 5618 positions up for grabs in the municipal elections, the MVR unilaterally announced that, on the basis of its electoral strength, it would take 70% of the candidate spots and leave 30% for the other pro-Chavez parties.
The second problem came when many in the ranks of the MVR complained that the primary elections where marred by fraud. An April 19 Venezuela Analysis article reported that hundreds of MVR members staged a protest in Caracas to denounce the "alleged fraud of party higher-ups" and what protesters considered to be the continued selection of party candidates from a high ranking elite — a method that marked the four decades-long era of corrupt two-party rule ended by the election of Chavez in 1998.
There were a number of irregularities in the elections due at least in part to the fact that it was the first time such elections had been held. However, the deadline for the electoral commission to receive candidate lists had passed, and thus it was not possible to alter the final list.
There also appears to be a power struggle within the MVR, with leaders of the different groupings being identified as the mayor of metropolitan Caracas, Juan Barreto, and the mayor of the Caracas municipality of Libertador, Freddy Bernal. However, both men have denied that competing currents exist and the political basis for any dispute is unclear — as is the way in which any such dispute intersects with the push from the ranks for more internal democracy.
The fight for internal democracy in the MVR and control over Chavista candidates is part of a broader push from the ranks, encouraged by Chavez himself, against bureaucratic operating methods, corruption and other habits inherited from the past. Chavez has labelled this campaign the "revolution within the revolution". This campaign extends into the social missions, the land reform project and state-owned and recently nationalised enterprises that are being put under joint worker-state management.
Referring to the internal dispute in the MVR, Chavez declared on Alo Presidente: "It cannot remain the same little group as always, the same national directorate as always...[that] perpetuate themselves and from which the bases receive the party line. No, that's the old politics."
From Green Left Weekly, May 4, 2005.
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