Democratic inconsistency in the accords with organized crime

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Factual reality and history have demonstrated that when democratic governments make accords with organized crime, it is the latter that breaches them and gains advantages that enables it to continue vulnerating the order that was originally sought to protect or reestablish. Organized crime pacts to gain time, to get an edge, to survive, not to fulfill the accords, and least of all not to lose power, as demonstrated by Venezuela’s dictatorship who, breaching the so-called “Barbados Accord,” commits more crime to conduct elections under a dictatorship and to continue wielding power indefinitely.

The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, AKA The Palermo Convention, defines in its 2nd Article; “ (a) Organized criminal group shall mean a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offenses established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit;” “(b) Serious crime shall mean conduct constituting an offense punishable by a maximum deprivation of liberty of at least four years or a more serious penalty.”

These definitions precisely describe that those who wield power in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua are under the direction of Castro/Diaz-Canel, Maduro/Cabello, Arce/Morales, and Ortega/Murillo, respectively, and are “organized criminal groups” of more than three persons who act in concert, committing serious crime such as; falsification, use of counterfeited instruments, supplantation, usurpation of power, misappropriation of the rights of the peoples, undue detentions, false accusations, torture, assassinations, massacres, persecutions, prevarications, forced migrations, human rights violations, narcotics and human trafficking, disappearances, contraband, corruption, and more. Their crimes are flagrant, have been publicly and internationally proven, and have been certified by international governments and organizations. These criminal groups are comprised by those who wield executive, legislative, judicial, and all power of the subjected State.

The situation gets further aggravated because the criminal groups from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua are the transnational group called “21st Century Socialism” that with a “simulation of politics and with an antiimperialist narrative” disseminates, sustains, and protects its criminal activities in order to have impunity by indefinitely wielding power to the point of getting lawful international recognition with the representation of the States it controls. Transnational organized crime has penetrated the States, their relationships, and the international organizations, attacking and destroying democracy that has taken on containment actions but not of defense.

In this context, Venezuela’s dictatorship, and the opposition’s unitary platform, subscribed on 17 October of 2023 the so-called “partial agreement over the promotion of political rights and electoral guarantees for all” AKA the “Barbados Accord,” that encompass two agreements; the first, of “electoral guarantees and political rights,” and the second, of “protection of the vital interests of the Nation.” Norway, Barbados, Russia, The Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, and the United States participated in recognizing “the right of every political actor to select his/her candidate for presidential elections, the concretization of electoral guarantees and the holding of presidential elections in the second semester of 2024.” One day thereafter, the United States “issued four general licenses lifting -for six months- sanctions imposed on oil, natural gas, and gold mining industries” and lifting “the prohibitions over the secondary markets” (of capitals) of the dictatorship.

The primary elections of the Opposition’s Unitary Platform in Venezuela were conducted on 22 October of 2023 to elect a “single candidate” and Maria Corina Machado won with 92.5% of the votes. The overwhelming result yielded a double defeat; to the dictatorship, who immediately thereafter denounced the result as “a violation of the Barbados Accord,” and to the functional opposition that was now unable to continue being an accomplice of the dictatorship.

Faced with polling results and popular mobilizations that show Maria Corina Machado would defeat Nicolas Maduro and any other candidate the dictatorship postulates, the organized crime system executed new crime perverting the course of justice this past 26th of January, with the prevarication and falsifications of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice that ratified the “disqualification” of the opposition’s sole candidate “to fill any governmental position.” Castrochavism’s judges repeating the commission of crime that; suppresses freedom, dictates false accusations, violates constitutional rights, and guarantees, and more, proving -one more time- the inconsistency of democracies when making accords with organized crime.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas