Quotes of the Day
As a psychiatrist, Jorge Rodriguez knows how to quiet a patient. But while wearing his other hat — federal election official — he may have kept an entire nation from snapping. For more than a year, Venezuela's political opposition sought a referendum on whether to recall leftist President Hugo Chávez. They insisted they had more than the requisite 2.4 million petition signatures for a recall vote. But in April, citing technicalities, Rodríguez and the rest of the pro-Chávez majority on the National Electoral Council (CNE) validated only 1.8 million of them. Venezuela looked poised for another bloody round of protests — until Rodríguez stepped up to negotiate a solution: a three-day period in late May to let petitioners "repair" disputed signatures. Now a referendum is slated for Aug. 15, and even opposition leaders like former oil executive Alberto Quiros concede that if it wasn't for Rodríguez, "the country might be locked in a very ugly civil conflict right now."
That conflict could still erupt in Venezuela, the western hemisphere's major oil producer — especially if either side in the nation's long, bitterly polarized political crisis smells fraud in this month's balloting, which features untested computer-voting technology. So while both camps pour martial rhetoric into their summer campaigns for what is the world's first recall referendum on an elected head of state, many are counting on Rodríguez's comparative levelheadedness to keep the vote credible.
404 Not Found
Rodríguez, 39, was medical director at a Caracas psychiatric clinic before the Supreme Court tapped him and four other nonpoliticians last year for the CNE, where he's now the de facto leader. But he didn't have to be a shrink to know how brutal Venezuelan politics can get. In the 1970s, his father died after being tortured by the army for alleged involvement with communist guerrillas. It's all the more reason why the referendum, he says, needs to be a steam valve for Venezuela's boiling political tensions, which have left scores of people dead in the past two years. A presidential recall vote "is unheard of, has never taken place in history," Rodríguez tells TIME. As a result, "I've never seen so many insults and threats against personal safety launched at election authorities," from both sides. "But I continue believing that in Venezuela elections can resolve our differences."
Still, those who know him say Rodríguez walks a personal tightrope between his desire to see Venezuela become a modern democracy and a filial duty to defend the leftist politics his father died for. Chávez's populist revolution has made significant efforts to empower Venezuela's vast numbers of poor. But it has also led to charges of authoritarian rule, and has divided the country so angrily that Chávez, who led a failed coup in 1992, had to fend one off himself in 2002.
Opposition leaders credit Rodríguez less with political goodwill than with pro-Chávez savvy. "He's a shrewd student of human nature," says Quiros, liaison to the CNE for Venezuela's main opposition group, the Democratic Coordinator, "but in the end he's there to play the role of the reasonable face of chavismo." Julio Borges, head of a conservative group called Primero Justicia (First Justice), says Rodríguez consistently backed the CNE's long, controversial string of antireferendum rulings until public and international pressure forced him to bargain with the opposition. "Even if [Rodríguez] has accepted the referendum," says Borges, "it's been against his will."
Rodríguez denies that his politics have compromised his probity — or that a pro-Chávez majority even exists on the CNE. "Removing a president from office is not something to be taken lightly," he says. "We've been acting on the basis of constitutional instructions." Like Chávez, he makes no secret of his disdain for the Bush Administration, which has insisted on a referendum. But diplomats in Caracas — even those who have reacted in disbelief to some of the CNE majority's nit-pickier decisions, like voiding the signatures of those who let recall petition workers fill out their personal information forms for them — say the council's two opposition members can also be exasperating partisans. As a result, come Aug. 15, the reasonable face of chavismo may turn out to be the best way to stare down the Venezuelan crisis.
- TIM PADGETT | Caracas
- As Chávez's recall vote looms, a psychiatrist tries to keep Venezuela calm