CHAVEZ IN TROUBLE : Report from Venezuela.

The work stoppage called by Venezuela's main business organizations along with prominent labor leaders last December 10 demonstrated just how divided and conflict-ridden Venezuela has become under the "revolutionary" government of President Hugo Chavez. On that day Chavez told thousands of peasants, gathered in Caracas to celebrate the passage of an agrarian reform law, that he had nothing to discuss with the "immoral" organizers of the strike. With reference to his revolution, he warned "there will be no turning back."

But Chavez's opponents were also vocal and implacable. Every time portions of Chavez's speech were broadcast on TV, the banging of pots and pans filled the air in middle-class neighborhoods throughout the country.

Business groups and unions called the strike to protest the government's failure to submit the agrarian reform and forty-eight other simultaneously promulgated laws to a "national consultation," as is required by the nation's new constitution. The list of grievances does not stop there, though. The business community opposes just about everything that Chavez (who has been in office for three years) says and does. Above all else, they object to his leftist orientation, which has taken an even more radical turn in recent months. Opponents criticize Chavez's close friendship with Fidel Castro, his outspoken nationalism as manifested recently by his criticisms of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, and his key role in favor of reducing OPEC oil production to shore up prices. Chavez is the only president since the outset of democracy in 1958 who has not named business representatives to cabinet posts, not even to head their traditional preserves, such as the finance and development ministries.

The strike's success in closing most private establishments of all sizes put in evidence Chavez's declining popularity. A recent survey by pollster Alfredo Keller indicates that 54 percent of Venezuelans feel that the only way to resolve the nation's current political crisis is to remove Chavez from office prior to the expiration of his term in 2006.

For the first time in decades attitudes regarding a president vary sharply along class lines. Chavez drew most of his votes in 1998 from the marginalized class consisting of street vendors and others lacking steady employment. Indeed, street vendors were the only ones who showed up in large numbers at their work places on December 10, ignoring the call of the strike's organizers to stay home.

Two decades of economic stagnation have put an end to the class fluidity that historically characterized Venezuela, thanks to easy and abundant oil money. In February 1989, mass looting signaled a wave of often violent protests among slum dwellers and eventually led to the 1993 impeachment of President Carlos Andres Perez. This was followed by an alarming surge in crime rates, including violent theft, all fed by pressing economic conditions.

In 1998, a sizable minority of the middle class voted for Chavez, but since then they have gone over to the opposition. In a 2000 interview in his Caracas office, Minister of Interior Relations Luis Miquilena, the number-two man in the government, told me: "We have lost the middle class. Even though their numbers have shrunk with the economic crisis, they cannot just be written off."

Many middle-class Venezuelans blame Chavez for stirring class resentment. His explanations about the new agrarian reform law did not come close to mollifying them. A wave of land occupations inspired by the president's fiery rhetoric in favor of the poor sent chills up the spines of the middle class and big landowners alike. While the president appears unfazed by the loss of middle-class support, the country's persistently antigovernment communications media are replete with accusations that the new laws are Communist-inspired.

In recent months Chavez has moved too far too fast. At his December 10 rally he declared: "The oligarchy demands that we eliminate these laws. That means we must apply them and do it as quickly as possible." Chavez's refusal to engage in dialogue and his subsequent appointment of military officers to top government posts may signal a turn to antidemocratic procedures.

The hard-line approach has generated tensions even among Chavez's followers. Many pro-Chavez congressmen adhere to the position of Minister of Interior Miquilena, who favors negotiations with political parties and other organizations opposed to the forty-nine recent laws.

The parties of the opposition are emboldened by Chavez's loss of popularity, declining oil prices, and the initiatives taken by the business sector. After the December 10 strike, Democratic Action, the oldest and largest party of the opposition, proposed a broad alliance to prepare for a new government after Chavez is forced out. The party indicated that such a grouping would include military officers who "do not share the president's gross, intolerant, and hegemonic attitude." Another opposition party is gathering signatures for a presidential recall, while still other opposition forces have proposed an indefinite general strike.

Nevertheless, the most effective action to date has been the December 10 "civic strike" called by business and union interests, not political parties. For all their belligerence, the traditional parties of the opposition lack credibility and have failed to offer the country a self-critical analysis regarding the widespread corruption and protracted economic contraction which paved the way for Chavez's rise to power. Indeed, the average Venezuelan is disenchanted with the government but is equally critical of the opposition. The radicalized stands of both sides spell trouble for Venezuela in 2002.

Steve Ellner teaches at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela. He is co-editor of the forthcoming Venezuelan Politics in the Chavez Era: Class, Polarization, and Conflict.