Prospects Dim for Incoming Venezuelan Leadership : Politics: President-elect Caldera is seen as uncompromising in a situation where his support was only 20%.

To Rafael Caldera, winning Venezuela’s presidency for the second time is an honor and an opportunity to restore the economy and the soul of his country, a dubious prospect in the minds of many diplomats and analysts.

“Caldera has never seen this election as one of specific issues or even of normal politics,” a diplomat said in the wake of the 77-year-old Caldera’s presidential victory in Sunday’s election--his second such win in more than two decades.

“It was a crusade on his own behalf, a very personal effort, to convince the country and the world that he was the only one to save Venezuela from the clutches of degrading moral and economic policies,” said the envoy, who has served here for several years.

Pointing out that Caldera won the election without a real party or a permanent organization, the diplomat credited him with “a tremendous personal display of vitality, of energy and political judgment. Certainly it was a testament to a singular focus, even to what you might call stubbornness.”

The diplomat was touching on one of the great unknowns in trying to assess Caldera’s chances of having any degree of success in overcoming Venezuela’s problems.

On the one hand is this assessment from a different diplomat: “Caldera is a politician. He has been successful and unsuccessful, and he knows the rules. He won because he knew what the people wanted. He is a pragmatist and he will know what is possible.”

On the other hand, a Venezuelan attorney who served in Caldera’s first presidency 20 years ago, said this: “He always was an autocrat and he remains one. In 1968 (when he was previously elected) he needed a party, but it was one he founded, so it did what he wanted.

“Look at this year. When his party (the Christian Democratic COPEI) rejected him, he rejected them and ran on his own without compromise.”

In that same spirit of independence, Caldera’s approach to his election has been one of overwhelming hubris: a claim that the people have fully endorsed him.

That is difficult to understand, given that projections of the incomplete ballot count indicate he will have won with only 15-20% of the eligible vote. Such confidence even in the face of contrary fact, the lawyer said, “may be personally admirable, but it’s not the attitude of compromise normally needed to be successful as a leader.”

On the face of it, compromise seems a key ingredient for winning the congressional, business and diplomatic cooperation that experts say is essential to recovery.

Economically, the country is a mess. After a 1992 economic growth rate of more than 7%, the nation’s economy is expected to fall more than 2% this year.

More than 40% of the country is officially designated as so poor as to be malnourished; inflation is 40% a year; the national debt exceeds $28 billion; oil prices, the country’s main revenue source, have collapsed, and water and electrical systems barely work.

Caldera’s answers to these problems, at least as can be divined from his campaign, are not answers at all but criticisms aimed at his predecessor, Carlos Andres Perez.

Perez instituted a free market economic program that included ending government subsidies, selling off government-owned businesses, inviting foreign investment, reducing protective tariffs and creating a value-added tax.

Even though the Perez program was beginning to show positive results, the initial negative impact, combined with a public perception of massive government corruption, gave Caldera plenty of discontent to mine.

He has pledged to reverse the value-added tax, end most privatization, renegotiate at least some of the international debt and restore subsidies.

But to do this he must have approval of Congress, which will be fragmented among at least four parties or voting blocs, nearly all of which opposed Caldera’s election.

And while Caldera said this week that he wanted reconciliation and cooperation with the legislatures, he also renewed a campaign pledge to seek power to dissolve Congress if he senses it is out of line with the public good.

To obtain serious capital investment from both private Venezuelan sources and international financial organizations, Caldera must create a sense that investors can count on being repaid.

Yet he insisted to diplomats and business leaders right up to the weekend before the elections that he wants to renegotiate repayment terms for the nation’s $28-billion foreign debt.

When told that a money-draining, government-owned airline either had to be sold or closed, Caldera asked, “Why can’t it be turned over to the military?” one business source said. “He just didn’t get it.”

And according to an international banker, “when we asked him how he was going to finance all the subsidies, low gasoline prices and money-losing (government) businesses, he said, ‘We’re still rich with oil.’ ”

Still, most experts say, these problems, difficult as they are, can be solved if dealt with realistically and in a cooperative spirit.

Can Caldera see the realities and accept the need for conciliation? “We won’t know for months,” said one of the diplomats. “But he once told me that it was the world that was out of step in turning toward free market policies, not him.”