From Caracas to London

When Chavez won his second term presidential elections in Venezuela in December 2006, I had been working for a couple of months at a civil organisation called Súmate, monitoring the Electoral Council’s procedures in the run up to election day and motivating voters to exercise their right. On election day, I was sent to Súmate’s main call centre and was given the task of communicating with polling stations across the country to ensure procedures were being properly followed and to get a sense of the results after the ballot boxes had been closed and the votes counted. Every single volunteer at Súmate, including myself, were opposition supporters. The organisation’s Director was, and still is, a major opposition figure in the country. Our mission back then, nonetheless, was simply to ensure transparency throughout the electoral process, denounce and document irregularities and verify that the results published by the Electoral Council were consistent with our data.

I remember the feeling of enthusiasm and optimism, which my colleagues and my wider social circle, felt throughout the weeks leading up to election day. We had come to the conclusion that after seven years of Chavista populism and resentful discourse, a majority of the population would finally acknowledge that we were heading into disaster. Violence was rampant, inflation kept on soaring, intolerance and polarisation had not only fractured a nation but also communities and families, and the lack of maintenance and investment in our industry was increasing our ill dependence on oil. Chavez kept his trademark discourse, blaming all the problems the country was facing on the US, the private industry, the higher classes and the political right, “la derecha” (misleadingly referring to the entire political status quo, incluing our traditional social-democratic parties). The problem was that oil prices were still comfortably high and Chavez’s populist apparatus was using money from our bountiful national coffers to “buy” and secure widespread support to his “revolution.”

In any case, and despite Chavismo’s unscrupulous use of money, opposition supporters, including myself, were genuinely hopeful about our chances of winning. Anyone with a pinch of reason, we thought, would have realised by then that we were heading into disaster.

Later in the evening of that fateful December the 3rd in Caracas, the call centre started buzzing with calls from polling stations across the country. The reality fell upon us with the force of a giant iron ball thrown into a deep cold pit, crushing our spirits in an instant. Of course we had lost and Chavez had come out victorious, once again, big time. Even though I was overcome by frustration, I still had to acknowledge the results. After all, I had been working for Súmate for weeks, monitoring the electoral process; and, as much as I knew that the voters had been manipulated with money and by a deceitful discourse, the results had been legitimate. Sadly, many fellow opposition supporters did not provide much relief to our common despair. At the call centre where I was working some older ladies succumbed into a sort of collective hysteria. “We’ve been cheated!” some of them screamed, “this is a fraud” others claimed. Some people were crying, many of them in complete denial about the outcome of the elections.

I remember arriving home in the wee hours of the morning next day and sinking into the sofa in the darkness of my living room. There was a loud celebration in some governmental office nearby, live orchestra and fireworks included. I felt like an extraterrestrial in my own country. I was not only different from those celebrating Chavez’s triumph but I was also different from those who had voted against the government and insisted on turning their eyes away from reality. I was also different from the politicians who were supposed to represent me, all of them weak, all of them clueless on how to present themselves as a credible alternative.

Last Friday 24 June 2016, almost 10 years ahead of that election day in Caracas, I woke up to the news that Brexit had won the EU referendum. I’ve been living in London for nine years now, and despite the fact that my migration status does indeed place me under the “legal alien” category, I have never ever felt out of place in this country. I couldn’t vote, unfortunately, but I had closely followed the campaign, and all the signs I had managed to find throughout the weeks leading to the elections pointed towards the triumph of Remain. As I revisited that memory of myself, sitting in the darkeness of my living room and feeling completely out of place in my own country, I realised that, on this occasion, I had again missed all the important cues. Perhaps, I had been also turning my gaze away from reality, just like those old ladies at Súmate’s call centre who were crying and claiming that they had been cheated. I was surely naive and even foolish when I thought London represented England, and that my British friends and acquaintances represented Britain.

But I am just a mum, trying to build a freelance business as I raise my children. To a certain extent, I have a right to err in my perceptions of what Britain is all about. Politicians, on the other hand, should not be forgiven for misinterpreting their voters as they clearly demonstrated they did in this referendum. Those who wish to call themselves leaders, cannot allow themselves to stay within their comfort zones and lose the plot of how their voters think and feel. Westminster is today in chaos, not because of the Brexit vote, but because politicians did not prepare for the Brexit results. This should trigger some loud alarms across the political establishment.

As I watch dramatic political events unfold, once again, around me, I wish I could tell politicians what I have witnessed and suffered already as a Venezuelan. I would beg them to listen to this very simple plea: “Hang up your suits and get out there to talk to your potential voters. Don’t go to the places where everyone agrees with you and go instead to the places where people actually don’t like you. Toughen up and listen to your voters’ criticisms and invest all your energy in the very uncomfortable mission of finding consensus amongst your voters. If you’re not up for this, find something else to do and stop calling yourself a politician.”