Functional opposition sustains dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
December 18, 2024

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Twenty-First Century Socialism dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua wield power indefinitely and with impunity using State-terrorism, violating human rights, and falsifying the popular will. Their support is the “functional opposition,” comprised by individuals and groups who simulate to clash with the regime when, truthfully, they sustain it by splintering the popular repudiation, making any change virtually impossible and deceiving the international community.

Functional opposition is a faked opposition, a farse -tremendously lucrative- of appearing to contradict the regime when, truthfully, it cooperates with it to coverup the violations of human rights, the absence of the rule of law, the separation and independence of the branches of government, and the inexistence of democracy. Members of a functional opposition are an essential component of dictatorships, are part of the corruption, are co-authors of crime and the disgrace that peoples suffer.

Political opposition is the “expression of indispensable contradiction in the democratic process of molding the political will and is inherent to; freedom, human rights, plurality, accountability, alternance to be in power, and its fundamental characteristic is the decision to be the power of government.” When there is no democracy, the political opposition represents “resistance, an opposition -by diverse means- to invaders of a territory or a dictatorship.”

The incremented functional opposition in Bolivia, with a breakdown of democracy since October of 2003, has been able to sustain the country with the label of a democracy, silencing internal dissent and mystifying an international position that continues to see Bolivia as a democracy, in spite of the over 320 political prisoners and more than 10,000 exiles! without the rule of law, with the absolute concentration of the powers of the State, as a satellite of dictatorships from Cuba, and Venezuela, as a military base of Iran, and as a source of strategic resources for the dictatorships from China, and Russia.

Members of the functional opposition in Bolivia are those who, while hindering the application of the law and counterfeiting reforms to the Constitution, took Evo Morales to power and accompanied him and participated of his corruption and impunity, surrendering the Republic to be supplanted by a “Plurinational State” with bogus accords while, in 2008, Bolivian peoples were massacred. “Opposition” members such as; Carlos Mesa, Jorge Tuto Quiroga, Samuel Doria Medina, Oscar Ortiz, Ruben Costas, Manfred Reyes Villa, Branko Marinkovic, Ivan Arias, and others who now collaborate with the sitting President Luis Arce.

In Venezuela, those collaborators of dictator Maduro who stand out for being presidential candidates approved to compete with him in the foiled electoral fraud of 28 July of 2024 are; Luis Eduardo Martinez, Daniel Ceballos, Antonio Ecarri, Juan Carlos Alvarado, Benjamin Rausseo, Javier Bertucci, Jose Brito, Claudio Fermin, Luis Ratti, Enrique Marquez, Manuel Rosales, all presented along with their background in the report by Rocio da Costa from INFOBAE, on 31 March of 2024.

In the aftermath of the 28 July elections, Venezuelan functional opposition members, under the banner of a “Venezuelan Civic Forum,” unleashed an international campaign to discredit civic leader Maria Corina Machado and the peoples’ victory against the dictatorship, arguing that “not everyone backs her, the opposition is divided, there are other leaders; Manuel Rosales, Enrique Capriles, Antonio Ecarri, Bernabe Gutierrez, and Henry Ramos Allup».

The newspaper Las Americas, reported that “the group comprised by Colette Capriles, Enrique Lopez Loyo, and Mariela Ramirez promotes a campaign that questions the backing of the election of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia” adding that “these speakers back the continuity of Maduro’s regime and seek to legitimize an agenda that insists on dialogue and negotiation as the only way, while they underestimate the repression.”

In Nicaragua, to be able to obtain impunity, Arnoldo Aleman appeared as the actor in Daniel Ortega’s clinching of power in the elections of 2021. During these elections, the parties of the functional opposition were labeled “mosquito parties,” a time when the most important candidates were imprisoned by the dictatorship and those who were not, remained with the acquiescence of the regime and were the collaborators and sympathizers of Daniel Ortega, these were; Walter Espinoza, Guillermo Osorno, Gerson Gutierrez, Mauricio Orue, Marcelo Montiel, and others.

In Cuba, there is internal civil resistance and in exile there is the growing, courageous, repressed, imprisoned, tortured, and assassinated dissidence. The functional opposition, operated by the Cuban dictatorship, appears to be comprised by actors who trade with the regime and sustain it with huge earnings stemming from money laundering by the Castro family and its inner circles in democratic countries

It is a deadly mistake to continue admitting as partners those who sustain 21st Century Socialism dictatorships, those who are members of a “functional opposition,” those who under different leftist, progressive, or dialogue banners, are part of, protect, and sustain transnational organized crime and the narco-States that attack the Americas.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

Published in Spanish by infobae.com Sunday December 15, 2024