How Can Maduro Get Away With It? Look At What Lula And Pope Francis Refuse To Say

-OpEd-

BUENOS AIRES — Something monstrous is happening in Venezuela. Monstrous and cynical: for everyone can see the “emperor has no clothes” — yet some pretend he is dressed to the nines!

We all know — even the stones and the monkeys in the forest know it — that Nicolás Maduro stole his country’s elections, that they were a farce all along and he would, at best, have garnered a third of all the votes cast on July 28. And that was in spite of his blocking the popular opposition hopeful (Corina Machado), impeding Venezuelans abroad from voting, funding his campaign from the public purse and resorting to thug violence.

The latest twist, the BBC is reporting Sunday, is that the Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has left the country, seeking asylum in Spain. González had been in hiding ever since Maduro’s government had issued a warrant for his arrest after the opposition disputed July’s presidential election result.

The whole world can see this playing out every day. And yet, a month on, we’re still asking Maduro to show us the ballots, pretending he has them somewhere but can’t find them right this moment — and, most of all, we’re hopeful the country’s constitutional court, which the most gullible among us would call independent, will make the right decision.

Fate of democracy

Meanwhile, the socialist regime continues to threaten, arrest, hound, or even torture and kill its opponents. People who want freedom are having to fight a specter – a lie – hoisted on them by a minority with guns and money, and a political agenda.

Is democracy being snuffed out in Latin America?

It’s a piece of theater that is both confusing and clear, as its Byzantine plot bears a simple question: is democracy being snuffed out in Latin America?

Of course Venezuela’s socialist regime was never a participative democracy, and might rather be described as ‘priestly populism.’ Priestly I say for the pseudo-religious imagery to which it resorts: Maduro seeking Christ’s pardon for his government’s sins, ministers beating their breasts in vigorous, and frankly comical, expiation.

These gestures are symbolic, and the very antithesis of the social progress socialism would espouse. For that involves the cultivation of the individual conscience, of personal liberties and a humane, pluralistic outlook. The Bolivarian socialism concocted by the late Hugo Chávez took another route as it had another road map wherein “the people” lord it over the individual, and devotion and unanimity trump reason and plurality.

It is effectively left-wing fascism (or right-wing communism) and another manifestation of the confessional state that loathed the Enlightenment: Ein Volk, ein Reich… ein salsa-loving caudillo. And like the Third Reich with Germany, the Bolivarian regime is not content with ruining Venezuela but keen to export its ‘model.’ The Cubans, and Argentina’s Peronists, have had the same, messianic delusions. Their devotees insist on spreading their good news, regardless of its abysmal dysfunctionality if not, in Venezuela’s case, criminality.

Maduro’s accomplices 

Thus the monstrous lie is bigger than Venezuela. It’s no coincidence that Brazil, Colombia and Mexico — all with socialist presidents — are playing along. Surely as Maduro’s friends, they could persuade him to step aside? But do the friends really want him to step down, when common interests demand their complicity? Given the political and diplomatic impact of a socialist collapse in Venezuela, they are more likely hoping the Venezuelans will, yet again, tire of struggling and acquiesce.

I would like to think that this time, Maduro could not possibly get away with his shenanigans. It was just too blatant. Yet he can count on his friends for now, and the army. Indeed his friends are an unsavory army in themselves when you include China, the regime in Tehran, the Turkish president, threadbare Cuba, etc. Their stake is to prevent a domino effect.

An American president once said it more plainly of another dictator: he’s a SOB but he’s our SOB. And it’s not just dictators standing up for one of their own. Maduro has the socialists in Spain, notably the former prime minister and purported mediator, José Luis Rodríquez Zapatero, and Pope Francis, who seems unable to dispel his leftist reputation. Both give the impression of favoring dialogue, but, really, they have favored Maduro. Every time Maduro was in the doldrums, Francis would give him succor with an audience or a promise to mediate.

A soft spot for “national-socialist” 

Yet, like the Peronists in Argentina, for whom Francis has a soft spot, it has a “national-socialist” flavor for its popular, welfare-oriented vocation.

Lula and his compadres are playing with fire.

Perhaps Francis believes that in spite of its flaws, the Venezuelan regime is still better than a return of the “colonial” elite, so similar to the rich and their politicians in Argentina. The Church did break for a while with the Peronist establishment there, before backtracking. The pope may well be seeing in Venezuela, not a fight between liberal democracy and dictatorial rule, but between “humble folk” and the cosmopolitan élite.

For such ideological conundrums, he has kept quiet, and Lula and his compadres are being ambivalent. They may wish for a return to the original Bolivarian “dream,” without its rough-handed tactics, and will likely want Machado and the opposition to offer “guarantees” to this regime, or share power. But is that what Venezuelans voted for?

Lula and friends may not realize they are playing with fire. Because if Maduro gets away with this electoral murder, he will have set an example, which the radical Right may happily follow another day. The may think they’re blocking the “fascist” Right, but they’re really just kicking democracy when it’s down.