Without parties and without democracy in Venezuela / Analysis by Francisco Barbosa

In recent days, Colombian President Gustavo Petro made an international fool of himself by saying in the middle of a delirious speech that President Duque’s government was a dictatorship worse than Venezuela’s. The lack of common sense in his reasoning is so great that he forgets that in Colombia democracy is so clear that he is president, thanks to our electoral system and the work of Colombian institutions. In fact, in my work as Attorney General there were no judicial abuses of any kind against the elections, nor against the political parties or the opposition to which Petro belonged. In our country, the judicial branch fulfilled its constitutional commitment, something that has not happened in Venezuela.

A couple of weeks ago, Petro and Lula had gone so far as to call for new elections, an event that would have been unimaginable if the same idea had been applied by international actors to the Colombian or Brazilian president. In short, they look at the speck in the other’s eye and not the beam in their own.

In the same way, His complicit silence with the Maduro dictatorship and with the fraud in the Venezuelan elections, demonstrate that he lacks republican conscience and democratic, which should be a cause for attention not only by the citizens, but also by the international community. Let us hope that the arrest warrant issued by a judge against President-elect Edmundo González, which constitutes a disgrace and a provocation against the Venezuelan people, will generate some reaction.

These authoritarian positions by Maduro, supported by Petro who acts as his subordinate, would be unacceptable if Venezuelan democracy had not disappeared 31 years ago, as I explained in my two previous articles. For this reason, I would like to show how in Venezuela the absence of political parties led to the establishment of a system of “avengers” in the neighboring country and how this absence explains the impossibility of getting out of the labyrinth in which Venezuela finds itself. The rejection of political parties as “vectors of corruption” or as elite bodies against democracy should put all countries in the region before an unparalleled challenge to democracy.

Political parties: Vectors of democracy

Political parties are central to democracy. In his book “Political Parties” (1951), French professor Maurice Duverger points out that parties are groups that create opinion and represent it in a flexible and effective way. The same professor reflects on whether it is possible for democracy to survive without these means of organization. The answer is clear: no. The reason is simple. The parties put a stop to the powers that be that controlled the population and prevented its grouping and representation. For Duverger, “a system without parties means the eternalization of the ruling elites.” These arguments emphasize considering them part of the democratic machinery.

In Venezuela, the parties that were established in the Pact of Punto Fijo (1958) were the central axis of the political reorganization in Venezuela that allowed the only democratic moment in the life of that country to exist (1959-1999): Democratic Action, Copei (Committee of Independent Political Electoral Organization) and URD (Democratic Republican Union). With them, the popular vote was channeled and new dictators were prevented from taking power. Ultimately, it was the agreement between the parties that brought down the dictator Marco Pérez Jiménez. The same thing happened in other countries in their history: the political forces came to an agreement and the satraps left power.

The fall of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1993 and the crisis of governability led Venezuelan society to want to re-establish everything. The historical parties were not renewed or were abandoned by the leaders, there was no internal democratization and the foundations established by the founders of the two main parties: Rómulo Betancourt and Rafael Caldera, were lost. This situation led Venezuelan society to believe that before recomposing the parties, they should pulverize them and look for an external leader.

The same story was repeated in Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Mexico, where at certain times in their history, the leaders created movements that ended up personalizing politics and eliminating the channels of representation. In the case of Venezuela, from 1993 onwards, the same parties were carried away by their own criticism and led the country to atypical elections in 1999 where its citizens had to choose between a beauty queen, a not very daring businessman and a coup-plotting colonel pardoned by a president who with his action wanted to harm the opposition party and former president Pérez. Democracy was buried in Venezuela along this crooked path. What is happening today is nothing other than a feast that a criminal elite has thrown. Without institutions, without the rule of law and without parties, there will be no democratic replacement, but a mere pantomime.

If we review what happened in Venezuela during the first two years of Hugo Chavez’s rule, we can conclude that this coup leader took advantage of the fact that society itself and the intermediary bodies wanted to bury the institutionality that remained in the country, including the parties that gave Venezuela 40 years of democracy. He now needed new authoritarian and hereditary institutions to erase democracy from the country.

It is known that if the parties disappear, the results can be of two types. Either the country heads towards an elective authoritarianism whose characteristic is to alter the institutions, extend its power and, with this, guarantee the end of democracy. The specific case is Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba. The second has to do with the fact that Whoever comes to power does not have the capacity to prolong his regime but leads the country to anarchy, chaos and an alteration of the democratic order. A case of this type is Peru or at one time Paraguay.

These examples should serve us well. Colombia is facing the same problem. For now, President Petro has not been able to corrode the country’s institutions with his erratic actions. His actions do not respond to any program but to individual whims. His shameful position regarding Venezuela shows this to our country and the world.

What must be avoided in 2026 in Colombia is that an avenger comes to power, under the idea of ​​left or right extremism and proceed to demolish the democratic system. Such an action would impede national and territorial governability and would run the risk of losing the country forever. The true way to defend democracy from the toxins of authoritarianism cannot be by riddling the parties, but by modernizing them and placing them at the heart of the democratic debate. Venezuela is the opposite.