TO RUN AS A CANDIDATE IN A DICTATORSHIP IS TO DRESS UP A TYRANT AS A DEMOCRAT

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
December 18, 2018

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The Castroist Chavist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia are electorally-fed dictatorships who have, as their main objective, the holding of manipulated elections through which they seek to simulate the existence of democracy.  These are façades with neither freedom nor justice, in which there is no chance for a member from the opposition to ascend into power, even if the elections are won.  Under these conditions, those who present themselves as candidates become functional accomplices to the regime’s needs that, with their participation, dress up the tyrants as democrats.

I conceptualize the “electoral-fed dictatorship” as “the political regime that by force or violence garners and concentrates all political power in one person or one group, represses human rights and fundamental individual rights, and uses elections as the means for the simulation and propaganda in order to indefinitely remain in power”.

The essence of an election is “to choose or prefer” someone for a determined objective.  Politically speaking, it is “a decision-making process in which the citizenry elects with its vote a person for a specified government position”.  Elections are part of the electoral process that is “the set of events conducted in phases, according to the Constitution and laws that govern electoral authorities, political parties, and the citizenry in order to periodically renew the Government’s elective members”.

In the Americas, elections solely by themselves are not democracy.  They are an essential component of democracy instituted by the Inter American Democratic Charter as “the celebration of elections that are periodic, free, fair, and based on universal and secret suffrage rules and as an expression of the peoples’ sovereignty.”   They must be comprised by, and have the integration of, “the respect for Human Rights and fundamental individual freedoms”, the existence of “the Rule of Law” and the existence of a “regime of several political parties and organizations” and have the “separation and independence of the branches of government”.

For elections to be free and fair, there must be “conditions of democracy” in existence, this is the minimum presence of the essential components of democracy that will enable all citizens to be either voters or be elected, will guarantee an equity of options to the candidates, transparency in the process, impartiality in the electoral authorities, offer guarantees of resources with impartial judges, with freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and guarantees against electoral fraud, timeliness, and more.

Without conditions of democracy, elections are turned into a mockery of the popular (peoples’) will, transformed into an illegal and criminal instrument for the perpetuation of someone in power, a system plagued with fraud, corruption, and of NOT being an election, a system such as the one imposed in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia that is an “electorally-fed dictatorship”, wherein dictators have transformed elections into a saddening chain of governmental crimes that are committed with impunity and recurrence.

Elections where human rights and basic individual freedoms are violated, with politically persecuted, imprisoned, or exiled, where there is no freedom of the press, where voters’ registration and information are manipulated, wherein there is no “Rule of Law” and the “separation and independence of the branches of government” is inexistent because all power is garnered by and concentrated in the head of a group who at the same time is also a candidate to be perpetuated in power.  These are not elections, it is fraud, it is organized crime in action.

In the 21st Century, the longest, most enriching -yet terrible- experience as to what to do from the opposition’s and democratic resistance perspective in an electorally-fed dictatorship is that of Venezuela, that during almost twenty years has tried practically everything and has included the “double abstention” that consists of not having candidates and not voting or voting in blank.  This extreme recourse of civil resistance to confront the dictatorship has proven to be very effective “to illegitimate” the regime, to once and for all remove its democratic façade, put an end to its simulation of democracy, and reveal the crimes committed by the holders of power.

Whoever presents himself/herself as a candidate from the opposition in an “electoral-fed” dictatorship has no justification because his/her presence serves but one sole purpose, that “to legitimize” the “candidate dictator”.  Moreover, when there are several and even many candidates -which facilitates the candidate dictator’s manipulation- as is now happening in Bolivia, to so-called candidates from the opposition are mere accomplices in the shameful role of dressing up the tyrant as a democrat.

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

Published inSpanish by infobae.com Sunday, December 16 th,  2018

 

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