Chavez's worst nightmare

Mary Anastasia O'Grady:

At the tender age of 23 years, Yon Goicoechea is arguably President Hugo Chávez's worst nightmare.

Mr. Goicoechea is the retiring secretary general of the university students' movement in Venezuela. Under his leadership, hundreds of thousands of young people have come together to confront the strongman's unchecked power. It is the first time in a decade of Chávez rule that a countervailing force, legitimate in the eyes of society, has successfully managed to challenge the president's authority.

The students' first master stroke came in the spring of last year, when they launched protests against the government's decision to strip a television station of its license. The license was not restored but the group was energized. In June it began six months of demonstrations -- one with as many as 200,000 people -- to build opposition to a referendum on a constitutional rewrite that would have given Mr. Chávez dictatorial powers. When Mr. Chávez was defeated in the referendum, many observers attributed it to those marches and to student oversight at the polls, which reduced voter fraud.

Yet in an interview with me in Washington last week, the baby-faced Mr. Goicoechea, slumped on a sofa in blue jeans and a rumpled shirt, insisted that the shifting political winds have little to do with him. "We have generated a consciousness in the youth that doesn't depend on me. I could be dead or living in another county and it would go on. We have already won the future."

The revelation two weeks ago, that Mr. Chávez is working with the Colombian terrorists known as the FARC, sent chills up the spines of democrats throughout the hemisphere. Yet Mr. Chávez is likely to remain in power until Venezuelans themselves decide he should go. That is probably not going to happen until the electorate is offered something other than going back to the corrupt rule that existed before Mr. Chávez came to power. This is why Mr. Goicoechea, despite the self-effacing manner, attracts so much attention from his compatriots.

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Ensuring access to legal institutions, so that all Venezuelans are guaranteed the protections of the state, is for Mr. Goicoechea the path to "social justice." As an example he cites Petare, a notoriously poor Caracas barrio. "Private property rights protection does not exist there," he says. "No one owns their own land, even though the laws say that you earn that right if you live there for a certain number of years. We will have a true revolution in Venezuela when we have strong, liberal institutions that defend the rights of the people."

It is perhaps a sign of Mr. Goicoechea's effectiveness that he has received "all kinds of threats" against himself and his family. Last year he and a group of students were the targets of a small explosion set off at a public forum. At the same event, an attendee who disagreed with his ideas snuck up behind him and, when he turned around, punched him in the nose. "It's not important that they broke my nose," he says, but that the incident highlights the problem of intolerance. He says that his high profile mostly protects him, but ordinary people don't enjoy such protection. For them, violence and intimidation mean they cannot express themselves.

This is why the student movement is so important. It doesn't pretend to provide a political alternative, but its critical mass and organization now give voice to many who had come to fear expressing dissent under chavismo. This is a crucial step toward what many young Venezuelans hope will some day be a free society.

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Their next fight is opposing Chavez's attempt to set up his own Iranian style election fraud which excludes opposition groups from running. This phony form of democracy as practiced in Iran is a reminder of the way the communist use to run elections. Chavez's mismanagement of the economy and the resources of Venezuela will be increasingly hard to defend in a fair election.