The Chavez Revolution

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n casting aside the corrupt political oligarchy that has wasted and misspent billions of dollars in the past decades, Chavez is also systematically casting aside all the current institutions of rule by civilians and in most cases replacing them with military personnel. His rationale, he told TIME, is that "the system had atrophied. The legislature was mired in corrupt anarchism, and the judges rule like eternal kings." Yet last week he firmly declared to TIME, "I'm not a tyrant. I have no intention to concentrate power. I'm dismantling power."

If Chavez has his way, the old order may soon disappear entirely. He has announced that the Constitutional Assembly has the authority to call for new gubernatorial and mayoral elections in November. His supporters are expected to easily sweep all 24 governors' mansions and all municipal offices. Chavez may then ask his dutiful Assembly to call for early presidential elections, say his advisers, in order to win power under a new set of institutions that will have been tailored to his liking. Says Alfredo Pena, a former crusading TV journalist who is a Chavez supporter in the Constitutional Assembly: "With the power Chavez has now, he could ignore democracy, but there's democracy here because Chavez wants it."

For the moment, however, a lot of the democracy-to-be is wearing khaki. Chavez's suspicion of the bureaucracy and the courts, which are stuffed with appointees from the old political parties, has led him to turn to old friends in the armed forces to get things done. To "rebuild the fallen house," as he says, he is bypassing the state governors and municipalities and funneling social services to the Venezuelan people through the military.

After his election, Chavez announced a millennial social-mobilization scheme called Plan Bolivar 2000, in which some 50,000 of the 90,000-strong armed forces are being directed through 26 garrison commanders to carry out "theaters of social operations." Military men are doing such jobs as holding "people's markets," at which food is sold at cut-rate prices, and adding cheap flights on air-force planes to remote locales.

Chavez has also put the armed forces in command of a $900 million program to create 440,000 civilian jobs through public-works construction. The program calls for the armed forces, after consulting with civic groups, to decide what each designated neighborhood needs--a new hospital or school, a job-creation program or a sewer system. The projects are built under direct military supervision. "We have the Ministry of Defense in charge of developing the country," charges former Assembly candidate Cira Romero.

The military's role has created other waves. Scores of police chiefs threatened to quit last month when a military officer was named to a post overseeing the judicial police force. The police wanted to remain under civilian control. Candidates who did not support the President said military helicopters flew over residential districts tossing down election propaganda for Chavez-backed candidates during the constitutional campaign. "He's trying to convert the armed forces into a political party," says Jorge Olavarria, an independent member of the Assembly.

A European diplomat explained the President's tactics: "It's simple. All the money that should be going to the governors and the mayors is going instead to the army." Chavez denies that he's squeezing the opposition governors. "I'm just examining their budgets more carefully, that's all," he says. Then, in an anecdotal manner reminiscent of Ronald Reagan, he tells a story about a state governor who budgeted for an air-conditioned cockfighting ring. "And his town didn't even have a hospital," Chavez scoffs.