18. The Recall Referendum and the Constituent Assembly¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 18: The Recall Referendum and the Constituent Assembly¶
This chapter charts the escalating confrontation between the Venezuelan opposition (MUD) and the Maduro government through 2016–2017, focusing on the strategic shift from recall referendum to National Constituent Assembly (ANC) as the axis of political struggle. The core argument is that the MUD, having failed to secure a presidential recall referendum due to court-suspended irregularities, abandoned constitutional channels for a strategy of violent provocation aimed at precipitating military intervention, while the government's response—convening an all-powerful ANC—represented an attempt to bypass institutional crisis without challenging capitalist property relations.
The chapter presents detailed evidence of economic collapse: a Venebarómetro survey showing the percentage of Venezuelans eating three meals daily halved from 69.5% to 34.3% between February and December 2016, while those eating once daily quadrupled from 4.8% to 19.8%. This impoverishment drove a resurgence of children and young men scavenging garbage, yet the opposition's mobilisations remained confined to traditional support bases and failed to penetrate the armed forces despite public appeals for military coup.
The MUD's economic programme is reproduced verbatim: privatisation of state companies, massive cuts to education and health spending, privatisation of social housing, sacking hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, price liberalisation, and abolition of labour and trade union rights—exposing the class content of the opposition's project. The chapter contrasts this with the ANC's limited horizon: building a 'post-oil' economy maintaining all existing property forms, implying capitalist continuity.
The narrative details the opposition's escalating violence—guarimbas degenerating into gang warfare, with Chavistas and pardos stabbed, shot, or set alight—and the MUD's 16 July 'sovereign consultation', which asked supporters whether the armed forces should mutiny and form a 'government of national unity'. The chapter exposes the consultation's fraudulent mechanics: in Catia, 91,000 potential voters shared one polling station, requiring less than half a second per vote, with ballots burned after counting. The western media's uncritical reproduction of MUD figures is skewered—the New York Times reported 98% support for the opposition, while the main photograph used showed Chavistas queuing for the government's parallel dry run.
The chapter's polemical target is dual: against the MUD's terrorist methods and coup-mongering, and against the PSUV bureaucracy's reformist practice. The ANC elections saw the party machine pressuring recipients of CLAP food parcels and social benefits to vote, replicating the old Adeco clientelist style. Left Chavista lists emerged with anti-capitalist, anti-bureaucratic programmes but lacked clear understanding of expropriating means of production under democratic workers' control—a weakness attributed to how the PSUV had subverted workers' control. The 30 July vote produced 8,089,230 for the government, all 545 seats going to PSUV and allies, while opposition violence killed ten Chavistas and National Guard officers and attacked 200 voting stations.