No international recognition to Venezuela’s organized crime

May 22, 2018

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) What dictator Nicolas Maduro and his regime insist in presenting as “elections” is a chain of serious crimes to misrepresent the popular sovereignty, sustain the narco-state, and guarantee himself impunity.  The “organized crime group” that holds power has committed, and is willing to commit, whatever crime may be necessary to continue receiving the criminal benefits that have taken Venezuela to the on-going humanitarian crisis. What has happened in Venezuela are not elections but the supplanting of the electoral process by acts of the transnational organized crime group and the response that it merits is NOT to have the international recognition.

This is but a forced process that has been rigged to the convenience of the regime. A process that seeks to legitimize the illicit indefinite retention of political power that the Castroist Chavist system has by force in Venezuela.  This is a process that seeks to hide the 80% of the Venezuelan population’s rejection of Nicolas Maduro and his regime of shamefulness, intervention and dishonor, misrepresenting and falsifying a non-existent support.

It is an “iter-criminis” of an unending series of crimes of material and ideological falsehood, use of counterfeited instruments, illegal detentions, torture, assassinations, massacres, manipulation of the judicial due process with despicable rulings, supplanting of institutions of the government such as the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, subjugation by force, bribery, narcotics’ trafficking, armed robbery of the State’s resources, thefts, extortions, falsification of the news, attempts against people’s life and honor and against freedom of the press, forced migration of millions of citizens, threats for voting, electoral fraud, and many more crimes that reoccur using the power of the Government against the defenseless Venezuelan people.

Politics as “the activities ordained toward the common good” is an activity of service and public interest whose essence is for it to be legal, carried out within the framework of what is allowed according to justice, reason, and the common interest. On the other hand, delinquency refers “to the action of committing crime” and is something absolutely negative because it attempts against the common good, it causes harm and implies violence.  Politics and delinquency are, therefore, antagonist concepts, they are the opposite of each other since one of the functions of politics is to avoid and prevent delinquency.

Nicolas Maduro ascended into power due to Hugo Chavez’s death and did so by the imposition of Cuba’s dictatorship that with Castro -the dictator- as its head controlled henceforth a project they labeled as the Bolivarian Movement, ALBA (America’s People Bolivarian Alliance), 21^stCentury Socialism, the Castroist Chavist system that has now evolved into the Transnational Organized Crime Group that still owns the regimes from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.

The 21^stCentury in Latin America has been branded -up to now- by those who presented themselves as populist politicians, socialists, progressives, from the new left, Bolivarian, anti-imperialist, promoters of the ALBA, followers of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, who have retained power in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.  These same people who took power with Correa in Ecuador, with Lula and Rousseff in Brazil, with the Kirchner’s in Argentina, with Insulza at the OAS, and with all the governments of the Petro-Caribe countries.   All these political leaders and their inner circle are now characterized by crime and corruption.  The Castroist expansion project funded with moneys from Venezuelan oil and embezzled by Chavez -in another series of crimes- was always an anti-democracy and criminal undertaking.

Results and the objective reality have shown today that even if the Castroist Chavist system would have started with very altruistic political objectives for the common good of the nations, what has accomplished instead is; corruption, violence, organized crime activities never ever seen before, such as the “Lava Jato” and its “Odebrecht” scandal that has impacted the whole region, the “Nisman case” in Argentina, and what has began to be uncovered in Ecuador, or worse yet what is still covered up in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua whose Governments use power in order to remain unpunished.

Venezuela represents today -with what the regime calls “elections”- the most serious case of Organized Crime’s activities.  The response from democracies throughout the world subject to the Rule of Law is NOT TO RECOGNIZE IT, in other words remove its condition of a subject of International Law.  The opposite would be to accept the premise that crime creates rights.

Published in Spanish by Diario las Américas on Sunday May 20th, 2018