Cuba Anxiously Eyes Venezuelan Election

Cuba Anxiously Eyes Venezuelan Election
Ben Cohen | @BenCohenOpinion 10.01.2012 - 12:47 PM

Over the last week, indications have emerged from Venezuela that the
fourteen year rule of President Hugo Chavez may be coming to an end this
Sunday, when voters will choose between El Comandante and his dynamic
opposition rival, Henrique Capriles. There are the polls from local
companies like Datanalisis and Consultores 21 which show that Capriles
has slashed Chavez's lead, and may even be edging ahead. There is the
large pool of "undecided" voters—anywhere between 10 and 20 percent—who
will probably vote for Capriles, but are too afraid to let a pollster
know. And there was the opposition rally in Caracas yesterday which drew
tens of thousands onto the streets of the capital, all chanting "You See
It! You Feel It! President Capriles!"

Perhaps the most striking suggestion that change is in the air came from
a group of Cuban doctors who were sent to Venezuela under the Misión
Barrio Adentro, a Chavez-financed social welfare program whose core
purpose is to lock up the votes of poorer Venezuelans for the current
regime. Back in 2006, the George W. Bush administration, having
registered the large number of Cuban medical personnel working on such
solidarity missions in countries like Venezuela, created the Cuban
Medical Professional Parole program to assist those wishing to defect.
Now, the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal reports (English translation
here) that the Cubans are deserting their posts at a rate of 80 per
month, in large part because they anticipate a Capriles victory in
Sunday's election.

"Many see that things are not going well and have brought forward their
decision to desert because they think the defeat of Chávez is imminent,"
Yumar Gomez, a doctor who found his way to Miami, told El Universal.
"And let me tell you… many don't want to go back to Cuba." Delia Garcia,
a Cuban nurse, added: "Our leaders tell us that Chávez is not certain
for October and say that the rate of desertions is now accelerating.
That's why I'm leaving. If there isn't going to be any more misión in
Venezuela, where will they send us then? To Burundi?"

The revelation that Havana's communist rulers aren't betting on a Chavez
victory is another welcome boost for the Capriles campaign. After all,
Chavez has never looked as vulnerable as he does now. His grandiose
public works schemes are coming undone through the incompetence and
corruption that inevitably accompanies the stuffing of political
appointees into state-owned companies. For example, FONDEN, a
Chavez-controlled fund that has spent $100 billion of Venezuelan oil
revenue over the last seven years while bypassing the approval of the
country's congress, has come under fire for a range of misdemeanours,
from abandoned building projects to the purchase of Russian fighter
jets. And after a series of devastating fires and explosions at various
oil installations, including one at the Amuay refinery in August in
which more than 40 people were killed, it is hard to find a single
Venezuelan who retains faith in PDVSA, the national oil company milked
as a cash cow by Chavez.

As talk of an opposition victory on Sunday gathers pace, so does
speculation that Chavez will consult the playbook of his close friend,
the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and manipulate the election,
perhaps by intimidating voters in areas that lean towards Capriles, or
even by stealing it outright. Last week, the Spanish newspaper ABC
claimed that Chavez has been readying revolutionary militias, modeled on
the feared Basij units in Iran, for mobilization in the event that he is
defeated.

Still, as Diego Arria, the former Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN and a
leading opposition figure, pointed out in a recent interview with New
York's WABC radio, such action is unlikely to be successful without the
backing of the Venezuelan armed forces. And so far, Venezuela's military
commanders, mindful that Chavez may shortly succumb to the cancer eating
away at him, have stated that they will respect the choice of the voters.

Is the Chavez era coming to an end? One would be foolhardy to make that
exact prediction, but even so, the signs all point to the Comandante
emerging from Sunday's election chastened, and the opposition further
empowered.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/10/01/cuba-anxiously-eyes-venezuelan-election/