Man of El Cambio

On his fourth try for the presidency of Venezuela last December, Rafael Caldera summed up his platform in a ringing slogan, el cambio--change. A sufficient number of Venezuelans found the proposition appealing enough to make Caldera the first opposition leader to win power democratically in his country's 148-year history, though his plurality was a thin .8% of the vote. Despite the narrowness of his victory, and after only seven weeks on the job, Caldera has already made a notable start toward fulfilling his promise of el cambio.

Open Roads. As an avowed believer in "dialogue, with a little good will," Caldera immediately set out to make peace with Venezuela's guerrillas, who have waged an intermittent, often deadly terror campaign against the Caracas government since 1962. Offering the guerrillas a political alternative to violence, he legalized the Communist Party, which under a different label had run a slate in the election anyway, polling a minuscule 103,000 votes. He also freed a score of political prisoners, including top Communist leaders, curbed the strong-arm political police, and promised amnesty to all guerrillas who would lay down their arms.

The guerrillas' response so far has been promising, if still wary. They number only 200 to 300 in three main bands, and have no cause to hate Caldera as they hated the previous regime, which cracked down hard on leftist dissidents. Guerrilla leaders are weighing an offer of mediation by Jose Humberto Cardinal Quintero, and a dialogue of sorts is under way. When a Cabinet member, in a gesture to the leader of the oldest and largest band, promised that "the government's doors are open to Douglas Bravo, and if necessary, to Fidel Castro," Bravo's chief lieutenant cordially replied: "The mountain roads are open to President Caldera, and even Nixon."

Venezuelans are not surprised by Caldera's confident beginning, since he entered the presidency better prepared than any other predecessor--a preparation that included a spell in a previous coalition Cabinet. Caldera, 53, is an immensely capable lawyer with a puritan dedication to work and a manifest sincerity that compensates for an apparent lack of warmth and humor in public. Acutely conscious of public relations, he holds weekly televised press conferences, and, taking a cue from Richard Nixon, introduced his Cabinet to the voters by TV.

Immediately after his election, rumors filled Caracas of an impending army coup to restore the defeated Accion Democratica party to power. Instead, Caldera has asserted control over the army. He appointed new and loyal commanders to key units, and boldly passed over senior pro-Accion officers to pick his Defense Minister. When the army's top general, Pablo Antonio Flores, openly grumbled, Caldera abruptly removed him from active service and now plans to send him into what Latin Americans call "golden exile" as ambassador to a Central American country.

Policy for 1983. Extending his mandate for change to foreign affairs, Caldera has reversed Venezuela's policy of severing relations with any country taken over by a coup. That procedure had the net effect, of course, of increasing isolation for Venezuela as the military seized power in more and more Latin American countries. Caldera's government has now recognized Peru, Panama and, last week, Argentina, all three ruled by military regimes. He has also speeded talks, initiated by the previous government, on opening diplomatic relations with Russia, which he sees as a possible new market for oil.

Venezuela now sells 42% of its oil to the U.S., and is deeply worried about any change in Washington's policy that might slice into that vital export. Last week Caldera formed a National Committee for the Defense of Oil, backed by all parties, to press for a larger share of the U.S. market. All parties are similarly agreed on pursuing oil exploration in the future by means of service contracts with foreign companies instead of exclusive drilling concessions. What happens when the present concessions begin to run out in 1983 is a different matter, but the opposition cannot fault Caldera for failing to look ahead. He has called for a "national dialogue" on oil policy so that the companies too can plan ahead.

What Caldera cannot change until the next election is his position in Congress, where his Christian Democratic COPEI party won only a minority of the seats in both houses. To govern at all, he has put together an incongruous coalition composed of a left-leaning splinter party, a centrist group and, embarrassingly, right-wing forces elected under the banner of ex-Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez. But Venezuelans have so enthusiastically applauded Caldera's program of change that he now has a far broader mandate than the electoral returns reflected.

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