End dictatorships because in democracies under siege, it is impossible to have good governance

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The Summit for Democracy organized by the president of the United States, the International Seminar with Mario Vargas Llosa, the Organization of American States, and the current situational awareness analyses, coincide those democracies are threatened by authoritarianism. The permanent destabilization of democracies in the Americas comes from Cuba’s dictatorship spread into Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, the 21st Century Socialism or Castrochavism. While the attacks continue, the siege against democracies makes it impossible to have good governance.

Joe Biden, President of the United States, opened the Summit for Democracy stating that “we must be united to reject authoritarianism”. Mario Vargas Llosa, closed the International Seminar on the relationship of the United States and Latin America highlighting that “the entire continent is threatened” referring to the spreading of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia’s dictatorships. The OAS’ Permanent Council approved, with 25 votes in favor, a Resolution on Nicaragua acknowledging its non-compliance with the Interamerican Democratic Charter and demanding the immediate release of political prisoners in that country.

The regional axis of confrontation is between those who defend freedom and human rights against those who subject and violate them, between those who ensure the existence of lawfulness through the rule of law against those who twist the law to oppress the peoples, between those who respect the system of separation and independence of the branches of government against those who garner and concentrate all power to have political prisoners and exiles, between those who understand the public functions of power as a temporary mandate subject to full accountability against those who want to indefinitely hold all power to ensure impunity for their crimes.

Today’s confrontation is between democracy and dictatorship, two antagonist ways to govern because dictatorships, through violence and a transnational organized crime structure they have created, use constant attacks (against democracy) (sic) to sustain and expand itself, and eliminate freedom.

The attackers are organized, have names, methodology and mechanisms for their criminal operations but disguise everything by simulating they are an ideology and democracies allow this to happen. These attackers are Castrochavism, using the methods of Castroism that will soon celebrate its 63rd year of applying State-sponsored terrorism. Their mechanisms are; the Forum of Sao Paolo, guerrillas and criminal groups such as the FARC, ELN, and they present themselves as 21st Century Socialism. It is 20th Century Castroism reborn in the 21st century with Cuba’s dictatorship at the head and comprised by the dictatorships of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. Their sustainment and expansion are enabled by democracies who have played along with the farcical simulation of it being “politics” when in reality it is organized crime.

Castrochavism, during this 21st century, has used and continues to use the components and freedoms of democracy to ascend into power through elections and when it gets to be the government systematically destroys democratic institutions and supplants them with its dictatorial system just as it has happened in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and how it pretends to make happen now in Peru. To win democratic elections it attacks political parties and organizations, their leaders, and undermines every possibility of good democratic governance through permanent conspiracy and destabilization.

The methodology to conspire and destabilize to not allow good governance can be seen in the cases of; the failed 2019 coup against President Moreno in Ecuador, the creation of a Constitutional Assembly in Chile, the constant pressure and long-range actions of a Coup d’état in Colombia, the failure of the pretended transitions of Bolivia and Venezuela, and others.

When presidents and democratic governments have to dedicate almost all of their time to defend themselves from conspiracies, massive protests, violent pressures, constant accusations, multiple, well-orchestrated, financed, permanent acts of sedition, they have no possibility of governing because they have no time or effort left. Invariably, the result is violence, discontentment, and bad governance with the foreseeable bad results in the next election that will then be the entry door for those wanting to install a dictatorship.

For their own interest’s sake, democratic leaders must now go beyond declarations and statements to a concrete and hopefully well-coordinated strategy to “end dictatorships” that constantly attack them and that could end-up destroying them just as it has happened in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. We only have to see existing proof that in a democracy under siege, good governance is not possible.

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

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