Thank you.
I will try to address some of the questions the clerk gave that you might be interested in, starting very briefly with a little background about our work in Venezuela.
I am a political scientist and have been studying Venezuela since 1983, visiting back and forth over these many years. As director of the Carter Center's Americas program, I have monitored elections in Venezuela beginning in 1998, including national elections in 1998, 2000, 2004, and 2006.
We have also worked in Venezuela through a group that we have formed, called the Friends of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. It is a hemispheric group of some former leaders, ministers, and human rights experts. In fact, four distinguished Canadians are in that group: former foreign ministers John Manley and Barbara McDougall, as well as former Prime Minister Joe Clark and former ambassador John Graham. We have two members in Venezuela who are human rights experts there.
With that group we have also had some analytical missions to Venezuela and we've made about three public statements on various issues. One was the non-extension of the broadcast licence to RCTV in 2007. Another was urging people to participate in the constitutional referendum in 2007. Another was recently, just last fall, with regard to the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the disqualification of a political candidate from standing in elections this year, in which we were supporting the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
I want to make a few comments about the current political situation in Venezuela and the current human rights situation.
This year is the 13th year of the Chávez administration and the movement that's referred to as the Bolivarian Revolution, attempting to bring about major change to Venezuela on the social, economic, and political fronts. We're facing a presidential election year, so it's a very important year. It is also one filled with great uncertainty, partly because the most recent election results and public opinion polling indicate a potentially very competitive race, possibly a very close race. That election is coming October 7 of this year, followed by elections for governors in December of this year.
The uncertainty is added to by the illness and the state of health of the President—you know, when he will be recovering, to what extent, when he might be able to campaign, etc. As a result, this is a very important year for Venezuela and for the hemisphere, I would say. The implications are important for the hemisphere because of Venezuela's ties and foreign relations with many countries.
On the human rights subject, which you all are interested in, I think generally this is not a country with severe human rights abuses in terms of threats to the physical integrity of persons. The general concerns that are raised have to do with a weak independence of powers and accountability mechanisms in the country—that is, an erosion in the separation of powers in the presidential system as well as politicization of important institutions, including the judiciary and other entities such as the ombudsman's office, the attorney general, etc., and the perceptions that these are politicized.
When we think about human rights, we need to think about the broad range from economic and social to civil, political, and cultural. Here what we have, of course, is a great experiment in two areas, with Venezuela trying to increase participation and social inclusion of sectors of the population that had been excluded both in terms of their ability to participate in the wealth of the country and in terms of their ability to participate in political decision-making. We can see the increase in participation mechanisms politically in the large number of votes and referenda as well as in local neighbourhood communal councils and various experiments at that level.
On the economic and social side, we've seen great progress in reducing poverty and in providing social benefits to people in terms of education, health, subsidized food, etc. Within those economic and social programs I think there has been mixed progress. The record shows that some are working better than others. There is still a serious housing shortage, for example. There are occasional food shortages. We see a mixed record on the economic and social side.
In terms of civil rights, there are some concerns in particular areas. One serious area is the penal side. It has to do with the prison system. It has to do with the high crime rates, particularly the high homicide rates. It is also tied in with the judicial system. There's a great backlog of cases, so prisons are severely overcrowded and dangerous. We've seen various episodes of violence within the prisons. There are a number of reasons for this, and it is not new to the Chávez administration; this has been a concern over many decades in Venezuela. Nevertheless, the homicide rate is rising.
I think that some of the overcrowding may also have to do with drug policy. Venezuela is actually cracking down on small drug offences, which, as we know, leads to high rates of incarceration in many countries of the hemisphere.
A large number of people in jail are there on pretrial detention. The length of time spent waiting for a charge or a trial can sometimes exceed what is legally allowed, and this is a serious problem as well.
In terms of the police situation, the Chávez administration has tried to carry out police reform. They've had a couple of different councils and commissions look at police reforms and make recommendations. There was a very serious commission about four years ago, and one of the recommendations was to create a national police force, which they are in the midst of doing. I don't have specific records on that, but I have been told that in some areas it is an improvement over what we had seen.
There are some accusations of police abuse of people they are attempting to apprehend, but overall I think it's probably more of an issue that the transition in the police forces, the need for training of new police forces, is in process. That may be contributing to the high crime rates at this point in time.
Another issue of concern in this area has to do with the high level of arms in Venezuela—personal arms, arms and weapons in the home. Many families are personally armed for their own protection. There are a lot of arms in the streets, and this is a concern that the government has actually recognized in the National Assembly. They have set up a commission for disarmament. This goes back to 2002, when we at the Carter Center were helping to facilitate a dialogue and mediate the political conflict between President Chávez and his political opponents. There was a proposal for disarming the civilian population; it did not get off the ground. They're trying to move in that direction now. I think it might help in terms of the level of violence in the country if that could succeed.
On the political side, we might look at both freedom of expression and political rights, including voting and other kinds of participation. Freedom of expression is controversial. There are many people who are concerned about that. I would say that there is open expression in two areas. First, we can look at and document the level of social protests, of which there are many. There are protests about various social issues, including social security, pensions, housing, labour issues, etc. There is certainly freedom to have social protests, and they are occurring in large numbers.
There is a pluralistic media as well. The imbalance in the media that we saw a decade ago, in which the private sector completely dominated the airwaves, has now shifted. It's a bit more balanced. There are more public television and radio stations. The market share, though, is still dominated by the private sector.
There certainly is still a plurality of sources of information and the ability to speak out and express dissent through the media; on the other hand, there is some harassment. There is self-censorship among some media outlets and journalists. There has been harassment—that is to say, administrative sanctioning and fines—of the political opposition's two most vocal TV stations.
In terms of political participation, I think voting now enjoys a high level of confidence among the population. It had been seriously eroded between the period of 2004 to 2006. The national election authorities have been able to work with the political parties and put into place a number of audit mechanisms and security mechanisms. There is now, according to public opinion polls, about 70% confidence in the electoral system, including the electronic voting machines.
I don't think we need to fear about the integrity of the vote itself. In terms of the elections coming up and the recent elections, perhaps the biggest concern is more about the fairness of the campaign in terms of inequities in finance, access to the media, etc.
I expect participation to be high. It has been high in Venezuela, so I think we can expect an extremely high level of participation in this year's two important elections.
I'll make just one final comment. In terms of the security situation, particularly looking at the border, I think the rapprochement with Colombia is extremely important and positive. That has to do with an insecure border situation, a border where for many decades there have been problems with smuggling, contraband, and guerillas, with drug participants going back and forth. This is not something new to Venezuela, but with rapprochement, we're beginning to see more cooperation between Venezuela and Colombia on these issues.
Let me close there. I would be happy to take your questions.
