As clear as MUD: government and opposition in Bolivarian Venezuela.
Cannon, BarryORCID: 0000-0002-5205-6634 and Gonzalez Torres, Ybiskay
(2012)
As clear as MUD: government and opposition in Bolivarian Venezuela.
In: Society of Latin American Studies (SLAS 2012), 18-20 Apr 2012, Sheffield, UK.
Since President Chávez was first elected in 1998, the Venezuelan opposition has tried civil disobedience, mass demonstrations, a coup, strikes/lock-outs and a recall referendum to remove him from office. None of it has worked. Now concentrating primarily on the electoral route, it has sought a united front through the MUD – the Mesa de Unidad Democrática (Democratic Unity Board). With relative electoral success in 2010 and a physically weakened Chávez, suffering from cancer, the upcoming 2012 presidential elections are the opposition’s best chance yet to finally oust the Venezuelan president. But if they succeed, who and what will replace him? This paper first looks at the historical trajectory of the Venezuelan Opposition’s power strategies. It then provides a detailed examination, based on fresh field research, of Opposition policy proposals. Finally it provides a detailed critique of these policies, the main point of which is that they are too ideologically and temporally bound to offer genuinely novel solutions to Venezuela’s problems. Rather they run the risk of repeating many of the policy mistakes of the previous Punto Fijo period hence recreating the conditions which led to the emergence of Hugo Chávez in the first place.