Following the Footsteps of Venezuelan Democracy

Fernando Buen Abad, Orinoco Tribune, Jun 19, 2024 —

Does anyone want to talk about democracy in Venezuela around July 28? Let’s start by denouncing the interference of the more than 930 unilateral and illegal coercive measures imposed by the United States and its vassals in the European Union. These should be elections without imperialist sanctions. On the other hand, few electoral processes have been the subject of so many and such diverse international observations and certifications. Even Jimmy Carter, former US president, issued certificates of Venezuelan electoral system’s quality and quantity. And these are no small words, for better or worse, if one reviews the history of US democracy (bourgeois democracy) and Carter’s particular conception of it.

Why, then, are there so many recriminations of Venezuela’s democracy? Why is Venezuela’s electoral system described as a “dictatorship” and as “anti-democratic”?

There are many unjustified causes, mostly the result of ignorance, “ill will,” or mixtures of both. Today, 13 candidates are formally competing for the presidency of Venezuela. They met the legal and ethical requirements to solicit votes from a highly politicized electorate, an electorate that has been forged, in recent decades, between political categories such as socialism, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, and Bolivarianism, an electorate that understands the power of street mobilization, that resists with dignity the North American and European coercive measures, and an electorate which has been reviled internationally by all types on the right, extreme right, and pseudo-left. Even so, the majority of the Venezuelan people continue to choose the route of voting, even to express their displeasure over the many plans that have not been fulfilled or that have been delayed. And they do not beat around the bush.

There have been many electoral celebrations since Hugo Chávez was called to make crystal clear the heroic history of his people. One after another, the most diverse and skeptical observers have been received who, very meticulously dug, interrogated, and reviewed, step by step, a bulletproof voting system. It has cross-referenced audits, inviolable voting minutes, and a robust voter identity system that uses citizens’ fingerprints. However, for the scoundrels manufactured in Miami, there are no limits. Perverse fiction has unfathomable designs. For example, Venezuela has issued a law against fascism, neofascism, and similar expressions, making the most of its independence and legal-political creativity in a democratic society that decided to protect itself against fascism with norms, laws, and rules of coexistence. Likewise, the country is capable of producing 97% of its food needs without depending on imports.

One additional note. Venezuela has defined seven objectives as the work of its democratic vigor:

1- Development of a new anti-blockade economy to modernize production methods and techniques that diversify key sectors of the new export model.

2- Full independence to deepen its historical Bolivarian Doctrine in its political, scientific, cultural, educational, and technological dimensions.

3- Ensure peace, security, and territorial integrity and perfect the model of citizen coexistence which guarantees justice, human rights, the defense of tranquility, and social and territorial coexistence. Thus, the protection and development of Guayana Esequiba.

4- Accelerate the recovery of well-being, the Missions and Great Missions, a strategy that is part of the new Venezuelan political identity that, at the same time, carries forward the values ​​of socialism.

5- Strengthening direct democracy with ethics and through a deep process of repoliticization.

6- Defending life and nature with a set of actions to combat the climate crisis, promoting awareness, protecting people from environmental impacts, contributing to the care of the Amazon and natural reserves, and protecting them from the voracity of capitalism.

7- Reaffirmation and renewal of Venezuela’s leadership in the new global configuration to rebuild Latin American and Caribbean integration and strengthen the “BRICS” and strategic alliances with emerging countries to contribute to the birth of a multipolar and multicentric world.

Many of the peculiarities of Venezuela’s democratic process are marked by a “prehistory” of corruption in which not everyone had identity documents, and votes were counted in the shadows and by the least-reliable hands. Chávez denounced them a thousand times and set out to promote a new democratic era. Even Jimmy Carter, a critic of Nicolás Maduro and Hugo Chávez, who founded the Carter Center in 1982 as an organization for the “promotion of democracy and human rights,” participated as an observer, along with many other organizations, and said that taking into account “the 92 elections that we have monitored, I would say that the electoral process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” He praised the Latin American country for having a voting system in which one can vote electronically and through ballots, which makes it easier to verify the results.

Even to continue disputing their right to be free, thousands of neighborhood assemblies have opted for their democracy. Not the democracy that the Miami “operators” like, not the one that the State Department wants, but the one that the Venezuelan people want in the fight against the severe intellectual poverty of the right or their bad faith, which are, in themselves, crimes against humanity. Venezuelan democracy must be doing something very good for its people, something that angers the bourgeoisie so much. We know that the hate campaigns that have sought to disfigure the revolutionary impulse of Venezuelan democracy will intensify in the coming months. They will try to create the conditions for a macabre lesson that extinguishes the audacity of wanting to be sovereign, egalitarian, and communal. The media circus will deploy its troupes with the mercenary hope of disseminating the sinister influence of the oligarchic media corporations.

But let us be sure that a mass movement is activated that builds its fighting agenda inspired by its own struggles, that is united with the historical victories of other peoples, and that understands the role of the generations that come together to guarantee sovereignty to their natural riches and their moral riches. This is the mandate of the workers, the peasants, and the students… Because this electoral process is no longer just a matter of Venezuela, it is a continental and global popular expression from which a new geopolitics will emerge. And it must be listened to carefully, because it is the voice of a people who intend to deepen, also with votes, the path of their Revolution.