AFP

A supporter of constitutional reform

THE history of Venezuelan politics over the past eight years is littered with failed attempts by the opposition to halt the progress of the country's increasingly authoritarian leftist president, Hugo Chávez. These included an abortive coup in 2002 and a prolonged shut-down of the vital oil industry a few months later. “With failure after failure,” reflected Teodoro Petkoff of Tal Cual, an anti-Chávez newspaper, in an editorial this week, “the mistake of basing a strategy on the search for ‘fast-track' solutions became clear.” But with a referendum on a controversial constitutional reform due on December 2nd, the government seems to have been wrong-footed by an opposition student movement whose leaders neither seek to oust the president nor to stray from constitutional norms.

The students started to march and protest in late May when Mr Chávez refused to renew the broadcasting licence of the main opposition television channel, RCTV, on the grounds that it had supported the 2002 coup. Although they failed to reverse the decision, they helped bring the issue of free speech to international attention. Now they are attempting to derail the president's bid to change the constitution to allow his indefinite re-election and to entrench his revolution by turning Venezuela into a socialist state.

The students have staged several big marches in the centre of the capital, Caracas, which Mr Chávez's supporters consider to be their own territory. The student leaders say they want to press the parliament, the supreme court and the electoral authority to delay the referendum on the grounds that only a tiny minority of voters are familiar with the sweeping constitutional changes proposed.

The students' arguments chime with complaints from a segment of Mr Chávez's own supporters who have broken with him over the constitutional reform. These include Podemos, a small democratic socialist group, and Raúl Baduel, who stepped down as defence minister earlier this year and who as commander of the armoured division during the 2002 coup was instrumental in returning Mr Chávez to power. General Baduel and Podemos have both called for a “no” vote in the referendum. They argue that the constitutional changes hand more power to the president at the expense of the citizen, and that they are illegal since they should have been discussed by a Constituent Assembly, rather than the parliament. If the reform goes ahead, this would amount in practice to “a coup”, General Baduel said.

Mr Chávez has dismissed the students as spoiled “rich kids”, angry at the prospect of losing their privileges. He alleges that they are part of a “fresh fascist onslaught, supported by the media”. The government has deployed against them counter-demonstrators, who hurl insults—and sometimes rocks and bottles—from behind lines of riot police. After a recent march, the campus of the Central University was transformed into a battlefield by chavistas armed with handguns and riding motorbikes, dozens of whom passed through police lines. When this was denounced by the university's rector, the interior minister, Pedro Carreño, dressed in the red shirt of a chavista militant, went on television to blame the university authorities and opposition students for the violent incidents. The students had tried to “lynch” their adversaries, he said.

Mr Chávez has often won political victories by luring the opposition into confrontation. A radical minority of the opposition favours abstaining in the referendum and has issued vague threats of direct action. It appears to have little support among the students. Opinion polls suggest a majority of Venezuelans may be against the reform. But a low turn-out may still hand victory to Mr Chávez on December 2nd.

In 1928, a student movement shook, but failed to dislodge, the lengthy dictatorship of General Juan Vicente Gómez. In 1958 students played a big role in a popular uprising against another Venezuelan dictator. Student leaders are well aware of these precedents. But they say they are not trying to overthrow the elected government, and argue that they are not a substitute for a credible political opposition. “We can't do it alone,” said Yon Goicoechea, one of the movement's leaders.