The coup d’état carried out by dictator Nicolás Maduro against the elected president of Venezuela Edmundo González on July 28, 2024 is an affront to the democracy of that country and a provocation on our continent.
According to the criteria of
This is the first time in the region that an Electoral Council has declared a president elected without results. The cunning of the opposition led by María Corina Machado in having the minutes with their respective QR in more than 73.2% makes any request from foreign governments unnecessary. The proof of fraud and, with it, of the coup against the legitimate government of Venezuela under González is a reality. The minutes can be consulted on the internet.
Sunday, July 28, was the culmination of multiple irregular events in the electoral process. Months in advance, María Corina Machado was prevented from registering as a candidate with a sanction from the Comptroller’s Office without any basis. The regime did not allow the registration of more than 7 million Venezuelans living in exile as a result of the Maduro dictatorship, accepting that only 68,000 could do so.
The name of Corina Yonis, María Corina’s replacement, was also excluded. She could not be registered either. This made way for Edmundo González, the current president-elect of Venezuela, to come forward.
On election day, there was no pre-count or disclosure, and the minutes were not published. The fraud with the evidence presented by the opposition should lead to the judicial prosecution of the members of the Electoral Council.
On election day, there was no pre-count or disclosure, and the minutes were not published. The fraud with the evidence presented by the opposition should lead to the judicial prosecution of the members of the Electoral Council.
But beyond this fact, which constitutes a coup d’état that begins to close this lamentable history of Chavismo in Venezuela, it is important to point out that the vast majority of countries in the region denounced the fraud. The Secretary General of the OAS asked the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant against the dictator Maduro, and the United States recognized the victory of Edmundo González. What happened in Colombia is lamentable. There was no courage to condemn the coup d’état or the Maduro dictatorship.
But beyond this horror story for Venezuela, which will surely have a military solution that, sooner or later, will overthrow the regime, it is important to remember why this situation reached this point and how the democracy of this country has been foundering since 1993, when the majority of Venezuelans began to undermine and destroy their rule of law.
The origin of democracy in Venezuela
Beyond any discussion, it must be pointed out that Venezuelan political history was marked by military governments. One only has to observe what the dictatorial governments of José Antonio Páez, José Tadeo Monagas, Antonio Guzmán Blanco and Joaquín Crespo meant in the 19th century or that of Cipriano Castro and Juan Vicente Gómez, among others, until the arrival of General Marco Pérez Jiménez.
The fall of General Pérez Jiménez in January 1958 was fundamental to the development of a democratic pact between three forces called Punto Fijo: AD (Democratic Action), COPEI (Independent Political Electoral Organization Committee) and URD (Democratic Republican Union).
This pact functioned as a mechanism for political alternation, with AD and COPEI sharing power between 1959 and 1999. URD withdrew from the pact in 1962. Over the 40 years, AD, which represented liberal values, was more prevalent, while COPEI represented conservative values. AD produced presidents Rómulo Betancourt, Carlos Andrés Pérez, Raúl Leoni and Jaime Lusinchi. COPEI produced Rafael Caldera and Luis Herrera Campins. All of them enjoyed great governability advantages due to the country’s oil wealth.
We still remember the prosperity amidst terror during the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in the 1950s or the oil boom during the first government of Carlos Andrés Pérez in the 1970s, which with the nationalization of oil made it possible to live in a country full of opportunities.
We still remember the prosperity amidst terror during the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in the 1950s or the oil boom during the first government of Carlos Andrés Pérez in the 1970s, which with the nationalization of oil made it possible to live in a country full of opportunities.
However, history is stubborn. In the 1980s, the price of a barrel of oil fell, foreign debt increased and the bolivar was devalued against the dollar. The size of the State multiplied and corruption began to be evident.
With the end of the Lusinchi government (1985-89), Pérez returned to power and began a process of state adjustment, privatization of inefficient public companies, reduction of inflation, recovery of employment, among other things. The best professionals in Venezuela entered his government. Many of them had studied with the Mariscal Ayacucho scholarship outside the country. Names like Miguel Rodríguez, Ricardo Hausmann, Moisés Naím and Pedro Rosas were on the list. The response of the political elite of both his party and the opposition was to attack him by all possible means.
The attack began twenty days after his inauguration in February 1989. A social uprising known as the Caracazo, against his economic adjustment plan and the increase in public service rates. Three years later, two coups were attempted by the military in 1992.
Contrary to what is expected, companies, industrialists and private television media have in some cases taken it upon themselves to justify the attacks on Pérez, political parties and Venezuelan democracy. Even the head of the opposition, former president Rafael Caldera, validated the cowardly acts against Pérez.
Months later, having been unable to depose the president, the Supreme Court of Justice declared viable the request for impeachment against the head of state for the crimes of embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds.
With the end of the Lusinchi government (1985-89), Pérez returned to power and began a process of state adjustment, privatization of inefficient public companies, reduction of inflation, recovery of employment, among other things.
When you review part of the file, what you see is a rigged process to remove a president. His sin: using reserved expenses for national security, a usual occurrence for all presidents of that country. Everyone agreed with the trial and with the decision of the National Congress to remove and then dismiss President Pérez 8 months before finishing his term.
That was the burial of democracy in Venezuela. The ruling AD party did not accept losing its bureaucracy in the economic adjustment and was reluctant to the popular election of governors promoted by President Pérez. The opposition Copei party claimed a political enemy.
The country’s industrialists and merchants did not forgive him for ending subsidies, the military for closing their businesses, a group of notables led by an intellectual Arturo Uslar Pietri who was a civil servant and minister in two dictatorships, López Contreras (1936-41) and Isaías Medina (1941-45), insisted on condemning democracy and the parties, and to top it off, the media fished in troubled waters.
The damage had already been done. Political parties were dying, democracy had claimed a president, the media enjoyed it, they even created a novel called Por estas calles, by the writer Ibsen Martínez, which was seen by millions of Venezuelans, in which politics and democracy were criticized and corruption was denounced.
The atmosphere of anarchy in Venezuela was such that one of the shipwrecked members of democracy in that country, his successor Rafael Caldera, justified the coup attempts suffered by Pérez in February and November 1992 and then shamelessly pardoned the February coup-monger colonel Hugo Chávez. The fall of Pérez, the massive attack by everyone and Caldera’s shamelessness allowed the arrival of Chávez and the end of democracy.
The arrival of Chavez and the succession of Maduro
Chavez was the result of the degradation of the Venezuelan political system and the people’s search for avengers. Former President Perez, in an interview with Marcel Granier in 1997, said that the election of Chavez was the return to dictatorship.
Chavez was the result of the degradation of the Venezuelan political system and the people’s search for avengers. Former President Perez, in an interview with Marcel Granier in 1997, said that Chavez’s election was a return to dictatorship. The journalist’s reaction was disbelief.
Then came the triumph of Chávez, the promise of a new constituent assembly, his swearing-in on the dying Constitution of 1961. Then, the story is well known. A permanent political crisis, as Allan Brewer Carias points out. Constituent assembly, a new constitution (1999), re-election (2000), attempted military coup (2002), recall referendum (2004), second re-election (2006) and a third re-election in 2012. This sinister inventory occurred in Venezuela with an oil boom that between 2004 and 2008 reached the price of a barrel of US$ 147. Production for 2011 was 2.3 million barrels per day. A fortune.
Chavez used this wealth to consolidate his position as leader of Unasur, to support Cuba and several Caribbean countries, and to become a Latin American leader. The newly rich “connected” became richer and the poor were subsidized in the country. Cuban doctors arrived and Venezuela became once again the land of wealth, as in the 1950s or 1970s of “Saudi Venezuela.”
What many Venezuelans did not know was that state spending increased, the deficit and debt increased, private enterprise began to leave the country and Venezuela was left with nothing but the shell of the state as a source of wealth. If the flow of money was cut off, as happened years later, the crisis would appear.
Politically, institutions were co-opted, the judiciary lost its autonomy, the electoral body began to be corrupted and the political force fractured by creating private security groups (collectives) that intimidated the population. Even in 2015, when the opposition had won the parliamentary elections, the government, through its pocket Supreme Court, took away the power to legislate from the National Assembly. A flagrant violation of the separation of powers.
The death of Chávez, Maduro’s fraudulent elections in 2013, when the results showed a 1.59% advantage over Enrique Capriles, and the electoral outrage in 2018, when he won without the opposition due to the absence of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) were examples of the dictatorship.
The coup d’état perpetrated by Maduro in these 2024 elections completes the farce of 25 years of dictatorship that began with Chávez and that we hope will end with Maduro and give way to a way out that envisions democracy.
Later, in 2019, and in the face of international denunciations, Juan Guaidó was sworn in as President of the National Assembly and then interim president of Venezuela. He was recognized by more than 50 countries, despite the disdain of Maduro, who continued to govern de facto in Venezuela.
The coup d’état perpetrated by Maduro in these 2024 elections completes the farce of 25 years of dictatorship that began with Chávez and that we hope will end with Maduro and give way to a way out that envisions democracy. For now, the history of Venezuela teaches us that democracy is not the rule and that in the end, the decision of the country will be made by the military.
Hopefully they will hear the cries of a brave people who have been shipwrecked for 31 years, listening to the echo of the words of President Pérez who, faced with his imminent dismissal in 1992 and foreseeing the end of democracy, declared: “May God grant that those who have created this absurd conflict have no reason to repent.”
Francisco Barbosa
For the time
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