Can An Autocrat Ever Lose?  Venezuela Election Tests The Limits Of Democracy

-OpEd-

BUENOS AIRES — On July 28, Venezuela will experience an “electoral process” that will be a landmark in the nation’s history — for better or worse. The vote will either kickstart the transition toward real democracy or consolidate a corrupt and violent dictatorship.

I use the term “electoral process” instead of presidential election, as there can be no talk of free and fair elections in Venezuela today. What we are witnessing is the struggle of a people against their oppressors. This process, although flawed, is nevertheless crucial, as it could become a milestone for Venezuelans to recover their freedom, despite the repression exercised by those who hold power and weapons.

Fall from freedom

Venezuela, which was a regional beacon of freedom for 40 years, ceased to be a free country two decades ago. The socialist regime has, during this time, destroyed the fabric not only of country’s democracy but of its society, families the economy and even sovereignty.

As you read this column, dozens of opponents will have been beaten in various prisons in Venezuela including the notorious Helicoid, a shopping center that has been turned into Latin America’s largest interrogation den. These are innocent citizens detained for nothing more than opposing a dictatorial regime.

The treatment of many citizens there constitutes grave human rights violations under the Statute of Rome. And the International Criminal Court is investigating reports on a host of incidents including hundreds of shooting deaths during mass protests in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2019, suspected abductions, arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial killings. Between 2016 and 2019, the Interior Ministry’s Special Action Forces (FAES) may have killed as many as 18,000 people.

This is a problem not only for the Venezuela but also the world.

The regime led by President Nicolás Maduro also has clear and documented ties with terrorist groups, drug dealers and dictatorships. Its alliance with Iran (responsible for two terror attacks in Argentina in the 1990s), began in 2005 and remains vigorous. Venezuela has effectively become a criminal entry point into Latin America.

The same happened as it still does with Colombian guerrilla groups like the FARC and ELN, which operate freely on the country’s border. They handle everything to do with illegal mining in the Orinoco Mining Arc, a supposedly protected area where the land is being massively poisoned to extract gold.

As the columnist Moisés Naïm aptly observed, Venezuela has become a mafia state, and when the top capo is the state itself, this is a problem not only for the country but also the world.

Save democracy

The regime is on a similar level of cruelty as the junta regimes of the 1970s and ’80s in countries such as Chile, Argentina or Paraguay. It is also in league with criminals and despots, while laundering money and devising clever ways of hiding cash.The regime has also effectively expelled a third of all Venezuelans and sparked the biggest migratory wave of the region’s history.

Tomás Páez, head of the Observatorio de la diáspora venezolana (Venezuelan Diaspora Observatory), estimated the number of emigrants or refugees to be 8.8 million. That number could soon reach 9 million, as thousands continue to leave the country on a daily basis. Despite receiving little attention in the West, this refugee crisis bigger than those of Ukraine, Syria or Afghanistan.

There are enough desperate Venezuelans abroad to start a second Venezuela.

The number of Venezuelans abroad is greater than the population of Austria or Switzerland, two times the population of Croatia and three times that of Qatar. After a disgraceful 25 years in power, the self-styled Bolivarian regime has created more migrants than countries at war: Today, there are enough desperate Venezuelans abroad to start a second Venezuela. The solution is political change, and democracy.

For all those reasons and more, the presidential election set for July 28 is not just an election, or simply a day of voting to change an administration. On that day, Venezuelans must save democracy and the republic (which are, essentially, one and the same) and appease a region already grappling with multiple problems.

And none of those, I dare say, is as threatening and convoluted as the actions of a dictator like Maduro. Some believe that — in a world that has enough crises on its plate — this election is a Venezuelan affair. That is a blinkered perspective; Such problems arise and proliferate precisely because states look away — as they have with Maduro for decades.

Sunday, July 28, will be of vital importance not only to Venezuelans who deserve to live in freedom, but to everyone, everywhere, who believes in democracy.