Democracy's Day

This week, for the first time in 118 years of national independence, the people of Venezuela picked a president in a free democratic election. In jungle towns along the Orinoco, in grimy oil settlements on the Caribbean coast and in the flower-lush capital of Caracas, voters by the thousands trudged to the polling places. There they dropped small colored cards* in urns to indicate their choices, then had their fingers stained with indelible ink as a check against voting twice.

The choice of Venezuela's men & women for president of the republic was Novelist Romulo Gallegos, a founder in 1941 of Accion Democratica, which has controlled the government since the swift revolution of 1945. His victory over his nearest rival, 31-year-old Rafael Caldera, candidate of the conservative COPEI (Committee for Independent Political Organization), had been forecast from the start.

To many, the victory of 63-year-old Novelist Gallegos was not as significant as the orderly manner of his election. The government of Provisional President Romulo Betancourt, confident of Accion Democratica,'s strength, had taken pains to make the voting fair, and even the opposition was hard put to find grounds for charging fraud. Previous presidents had been chosen by Congress. Gallegos was elected by direct popular ballot, and every Venezuelan over 18 had the right to vote.

The campaign had been heated but clean-cut, with a minimum of mudslinging. Loser Caldera accused Accion Democratica of "exclusivism," and charged the government with Communist tendencies. (The Communist candidate ran a poor third.) Of Gallegos, he said: "Nobody doubts the sincerity of Gallegos and nobody believes in the sincerity of Accion Democratica."

Gallegos' speeches had a New Deal flavor; he advocated state-aided economic development, warned against Falangism. When charges of "atheism" and "ungodliness" were hurled against him and his party, he countered by denouncing Venezuela's Jesuits as "foreign representatives of France," accused Caldera's party of claiming to be "the instrument of a divine miracle." But Gallegos promised to respect all religion, and in the end the religious issue seemed to have affected the election outcome not at all. The important thing to Venezuelans was that democracy was finally having its day and that Gallegos seemed able to guarantee that it would be a long one.

* To make it easier for the illiterate, the ballot of each party was a different color: white for Accion Democratica,, green for COPEI, brown for the tiny URD, red for the Communists, black for the dissident Miquelena Communists.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.