POLITICIANS MUST DIFFERENTIATE THEMSELVES FROM ORGANIZED CRIME

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
September 10, 2018

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Seventeen years after the signing of the Interamerican Democratic Charter (IDC), the region suffers four 21^st Century Socialism or Castroist Chavist dictatorships, albeit in a fall and in crises but still with enough power to cause much harm with the crimes they commit daily in order to remain in power.   These are regimes of Organized Crime that, by their nature, are not in the realm of political activities but that of Organized Crime.  This is why it becomes necessary for Americas’ leaders and politicians to clearly differentiate themselves from the criminals who hold power in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.  Not doing so, implies assuming the risk of being accomplices and concealers.

Countries in which the Castroist Chavist, or their allies, have lost power in, such as; Kirchner’s Argentina, Lula da Silva and Rousseff’s Brazil, Correa’s Ecuador, Colombia, and others now suffer corruption’s hang-over that has left behind economic crises, political problems, and social confrontation.  Moreover, the current democratic governments of those countries are under the pressure of sustained and well financed destabilization efforts, pursued by the authors of serious crimes who still use politics as a means for impunity.

Politics is a public service activity which all citizens have the right to participate in either as electors or elected.   For those who choose to aspire and occupy public service functions, concepts of democracy point out that these are positions subject to; the popular mandate born through free and clean elections, the abeyance of the law within a framework of the Rule of Law, are basically temporary and with an obligation to be held accountable.

This is why, among the essential components of democracy, enunciated in Article 3 of the IDC are; the “respect for Human Rights and fundamental freedoms”, “access to power and its conduct subject to the Rule of Law”, holding “periodic free, fair and just elections based upon the universal and secret suffrage as an expression of the peoples’ sovereignty”, “the separation and independence of the branches of government”.

Because politics is an activity inherent to democracy, the IDC establishes in its Article 4 that “transparency in all governmental activities, probity, the government’s responsibility of all public administration, respect for all social rights and freedom of the press, are fundamental components in the exercise of democracy”.

By the absence or violation of those fundamental components of democracy, and the components in the exercising of democracy in order to indefinitely perpetuate themselves in power, the regimes from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia are dictatorships.  Their argument to have gotten to power for the first time democratically is useless, because they have counterfeited and supplanted the legal order with a chain of crimes in order to establish a new system of “despicable laws” to allow them to illegitimately and illegally continue to hold power.

The Castro’s in Cuba, Maduro in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, and Ortega/Murillo in Nicaragua are dictators in the literal sense of the word, because “either by force or violence, they concentrate all power in one person, group, or organization and suppress Human Rights and individual freedoms”.   Dictatorships, with the aggravating factor that these do not stem from an ideological or political position, but stem from the pure and hard exercise of crime -from corruption, assassinations, torture, counterfeiting, narcotics’ trafficking, and terrorism- which configures them as “Organized Crime” organizations, common criminals and not political activities.

Politics is substantially different from what the Castro’s/Diaz Canel do, battering and arresting Ladies in White each week, managing their system of slaved-physicians, or distorting a constitutional reform without any freedom in Cuba.

Politics is totally the opposite to crimes of material and ideological falsehood, the use of counterfeited instruments, tortures, persecutions, narcotics’ trafficking, and crimes against humanity that are committed by Maduro and his regime in Venezuela, creating a humanitarian crisis that impacts the region and the whole world.

Politics has nothing to do with assassinations, torture, and terror that is conducted without punishment by Ortega/Murillo in Nicaragua.

It’s not politics the eleventh massacre committed by Evo Morales this week against the legal coca-leaf harvesters from the Yungas in Bolivia, or his meeting with the President from Spain’s Government in a new act of submissiveness in exchange for the simulation of democracy.

This, and more, is what the peoples from the Americas see and question.  This is why politicians and leaders are urged to take concrete actions to differentiate themselves from the criminals of Organized Crime’s dictatorships.

*Attorney & Political Scientist.  Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Published by Infobae.com on Sunday September 2, 2018

Translated from Spanish by: Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators’ Association, ATA# 234680.