ADSactly World - Venezuela and its misconception about democracy
ADSactly World: Venezuela and its misconception about democracy
Introduction
From the French Revolution until very recently there was only one way to overthrow a democratic government and to become a dictator, using bullets and violence. The French Revolution was bloody and the same can be said about any coups of almost all modern dictators. The method is the same with no regards whatsoever to the ideological tendency of the dictator.
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But like almost any type of relationship where there is power involved, in human societies the predator evolves just as the prey and readjusts to it. In the era of political correctness, coups have improved and are now much more sophisticated because they have acquired a new characteristic with which they camouflage themselves with democratic attire to be overlooked in the field of international politics.
This way a dictator can stay in power for years before being identified by the rest of the governments as such, which is what happened with Venezuela when the current disaster was starting more than a decade ago.
In the past article I mentioned that Chavez and his political party managed to use Venezuela’s democracy to dismantle Venezuela’s democracy itself. This was possible because in Venezuela most people don’t have a proper understanding about what democracy really is.
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Venezuela's vulnerability
The trick is very simple, the sophisticated dictator convinces the people that democracy consists simply in voting. He does it by repeating it over and over again. In each speech, in each writing of the sophisticated dictator the word democracy appears and it always linked to the concept of the votes. The votes become the synonym of democracy in the minds of the people that are easy to trick. Thus, under this circumstance, a president or an initiative is more or less democratic depending on whether the population voted for it or not. In the same way, the more times the population goes to vote, the more democratic society is. This way, there is nothing stopping the dictator to do whatever he can think of, just because there are votes supporting him, no matter the craziness of his actions.
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This, of course, is a misconception designed to deceive people, for example, last week after they won the presidential election on Sunday, May 20, I heard Maduro’s bragging that they have done 4 elections in the past 10 months, implying how much they “respect” people choices, the fact is of course, those elections has been rigged for a lot of years, but we will cover this later on. Democracy and votes are not the same. Voting is only a democratic tool, but its concept is not the same as voting.
The word democracy means several things
- Separation of powers: democratic governments are divided into several independent parts of each other. This is a guarantee so that no person can come and stay with all the power in the country. So if one part of the government try to abuse its power, the people can use another institution to stop it, to guarantee that the one who writes the laws is not the same as the one who executes them, and that none of them is related to the person who makes judgments and imposes verdict.
Without division of powers a president can write laws that suit him, put them into practice, and can even commit crimes against the population because he himself is practically the judge and the one deciding what is right and what is wrong. Even if a government wins elections by popular vote, if there is no separation of powers it is not a democratic government.
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- Freedom of expression and independent media: a government is not democratic if people do not have the chance to express themselves without having concern for possible consequences of any type. For that reason the media should be controlled by the citizens and not in the hands of the government. If the government is the only owner of the media, or imposes punitive measures on them for reporting things they don’t like, then the only news that people will receive are the ones that suit the government.
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This will cause the criticisms of the government to be silenced. Freedom of expression is extremely important because, since the government has a total control on guns and repression (police and military), it is easier for them to commit any type of massacre against the people if they are the ones controling the media. It does not matter if the government entered by popular will, if there is no freedom of expression and independent media, it is not a democracy.
And in Venezuela, the current government has always attacked media that criticized them, the most shocking case was when they didn’t allow a popular TV channel known as RCTV to remain active.
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- Rule of law: all citizens must be equal before the law. The democratic state is neutral. There are no two classes of citizens depending on how devoted they are to the government, or any other similar criteria. In a democracy, the law is the same for everyone. If the law is applied on a particular way according to the person, it is not a democracy, regardless of how many elections there might be.
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Separation between public life and private life: the people living in a country with a democratic government have a private life outside the State. The government does not get involved in the private details of people's lives, including the countries they travel to, the history of their internet searches, the details of their bank accounts, or what they write in their private lives. If there is no space for the privacy of citizens, the state is not democratic and it does not matter how many people go to the rallies in favor of the president.
Basic freedoms guaranteed by law: democracies respect basic rights such as the right to own property, or the right to move freely. These rights are not only in theory, in practice they must work and the democratic government must protect them. If a government forbids or limits the free movement of the people, or if it has policies that violates property rights and expropriates people’s assets, it is not a democratic government. No matter how much support they have on random polls.
Limited time as president and multiple candidates in each election: presidential terms in democracies are short and a winner is chosen from multiple options. This guarantees that everyone will have the opportunity to be represented and no one will take power indefinitely.
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In Venezuela, one of the things Chavez managed to accomplish was to allow any presidential candidate to be reelected any numbers of times without any limits whatsoever. This allowed him to participate in as many elections as he wanted.
If in order to be a democratic president it is not enough to be elected by the majority, then to be a dictator it is not enough to gain power without the support of the majority. If this were the case when an elected president becomes unable to continue and a temporal government is created until new elections are held, that temporal president would be a dictator. But it is not the case obviously. A dictator is a person who does not respect the separation of powers, who undermines freedom of expression, who replaces the law by its whims, who eliminates the separation between public life and private life and who ignores the fundamental rights of the people.
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It is interesting to realize that every person who comes to power usually tries to increase the power of his government and in the same way, tries to reduce these democratic principles. Every democracy is a state of constant tension between the rulers and the laws. The laws seek to protect democratic principles over time and therefore are stable and in theory the modifications should be very little, only corrections that are made over time. It is the same reason why presidential terms in democracies are so short. It is very difficult for a person who such a limited time to substantially change the bases of the government he is leading. For these reasons democracy can be considered as a very valuable tradition that is handed down from generation to generation that must be protected and its functioning must be understood.
If dictators manipulate everything to make everyone believe that democracy is nothing more than just votes, this allows them to enable measures that are dictatorial, by simply using popular votes and call them "democratic" measures. I will give an example that happened in Venezuela so that this is well understood.
In the past, as mentioned before, the dictators remained in power under military threat. Staying decades in power is a clearly dictatorial measure. Now imagine that instead of using military power, the government then asks the people if they want the president to have the possibility of being always a candidate for the presidency over and over and over again, the people decide to vote in favor and the president remains in his position for several decades. Can something like this be called democratic? Of course not. But there is even more.
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These masters of manipulations create initiatives to "make our democracy stronger" through "the popular will" such as referendums, popular elections and plebiscites, but simultaneously they destroy each and every one of the real democratic qualities there might be, they eliminate the separation of powers, they monopolize the media or at least the majority of it, they start to change laws for others more obscure ones they can modify at any time they wish. To give you a random example, while the population is busy voting for something insignificant like which should be the color in the parliament walls, these manipulators are sabotaging the division of powers, changing the laws of the game according to their pleasure, changing the judges for corrupt ones that can punish whomever the president chooses, and eliminate all civil liberties one by one. And they make some people believe this is called a "real democracy".
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Since it is impossible to carry this out without people’s support, it becomes an image game so they will disguise themselves as big democrats, and when they speak they say exactly what the people want to hear even if that goes against their true intentions. They promise things that in advance they know they can not fulfill, they tell lie after lie because the only things that matters to the is winning votes by any means, even faking them. Years later, when the modern dictator has already won and democracy has been destroyed, he starts to show his true face and intentions.
And example of this manipulation happened in the last presidential election from a few days ago on Sunday May 20, Maduro’s offered 10 million Bolivares as a “bonus” to anyone who voted for him (he was buying votes without any shame), as of now, 10 million Bolivares is about 10 American dollars but the amount of dollars will constantly decrease because of the high inflation, still it is more than the minimum monthly wage. The thing is he offered that so poor and easy to manipulate people went there and voted for him, and only after the election was finished, the entity responsible for hosting the election and announcing the winner called CNE (and controlled by the government) “forbade” the president to give away the bonus, so the 10 million Bolivares he promised to his supporters were never delivered.
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Construction worker Josue Valecillos, 54, in Chavez’s home state of Barinas said volunteers scanned his card on a phone and vowed a quick transfer. “They offered me 10 million bolivars,” said Maduro supporter Valecillos. | Source
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Conclusion
In order to manipulate someone, the manipulated individual needs to have a certain lack of knowledge or understanding about the subject in question, this makes him extremely vulnerable if a manipulator can identify it.
The most valuable thing anyone can have, is proper knowledge and understanding about how the world works, especially when it comes to politics and how people think.
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In Venezuela, thanks to several factors, like a population that probably wasn’t aware of the risks involved in giving support to someone like Chavez and the different measures he applied throughout his time as president, a complete plan to subvert democracy was successfully implemented, and with the help of high oil prices, these people had anything they needed to accomplish their “revolution”. So much so, they even “helped” political allies in other countries with the hopes of creating sort of a network of governments all with the same ways and goals.
In the next entry we will start to analyze in a more in depth way, what was the plan they had to subvert Venezuela’s democracy, for now, anyone reading this and previous articles can at least start to understand how did they manage to amass so much power and bring so much destruction afterwards.
As always, thanks for reading!
Images sources
1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14
Authored by: @dedicatedguy
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What has happened in Venezuela over the past 14 years has been a usurping of all democratic institutions and practices through majority rule (both real and illegally procured). It is a remarkable thing to have turned democracy on its head by using the institutions of democracy (legislatures, judiciary, media). It is also remarkable that so many people have so willingly embraced a veneered, rather than a substantive, democracy and an arbitrary rule “by” law rather than the rule “of” law in Venezuela. The reality has become apparent (unfortunately not readily enough) for many of those who obtained benefits at the expense of their fellow citizens. For those adherents not living in Venezuela, or being affected by the arbitrariness of the paramilitary regime, I wonder whether they will remain some of the regime’s most ardent defenders.
The electoral system as controlled by the current Government is neither free nor fair. Rather, it is intended to maintain an authoritarian status quo. It constitutes nothing more than a false sheen of democratic practice and an insulting masquerade for a decidedly authoritarian regime.
According to every word you've said in this article friend @dedicatedguy. I was born in 1998 (when Hugo Chavez took over the presidency), so I have experienced all the changes that have taken place in my country.
I'll give you my personal opinion. The truth is that this government took advantage of the ignorance and conformism of the Venezuelan people, to manage their minds at will, make them believe their lies and perpetuate themselves in power.
Hugo Chavez began his government doing very good things in the eyes of Venezuelans. So much so that he blinded them with his words in speeches. The truth is that he sold them socialism as something very good, as something egalitarian for all the people in general. And that's what fascinated Venezuelans at the time.
What was the problem?.... The lack of knowledge of Venezuelans. Knowledge about politics and especially about socialism was very scarce. That's why they believed every word of President Chavez, and were carried away by the good things he was doing at the time.
If we Venezuelans had had the experience and knowledge we have now, Chavez would not have even made it to the second term, probably.
The saddest thing is that Venezuelans voted for Chavez back then because they wanted a change. They wanted an improvement in the economy. But what they didn't know was that this decision would take us to where we are right now.... to the most horrific part of Venezuela's history.
Thank you for talking about the situation in my country @dedicatedguy, and thanks to @adsactly for publishing it. I really like your posts. I'm waiting for the next one ;)
The opinions of all are respected, and everyone has the right to speak about Venezuela according to their own criteria, for many it is easy, to draw their own congeturas and more when they do not belong to that beautiful country and full of wealth, I can say with a very firm voice and as a good Venezuelan that I feel and am, that my country is full of beautiful riches and that everything that is lived today is thanks to mismanagement, but I do not get involved in what I live, but in which God It has allowed us to live all this, and I give thanks because I trust in my God and that soon all this will happen and beautiful times will come and Venezuela will be different and each one of us will learn to appreciate what we had in hand and value every simplicity. Eye is my personal opinion dear @adsactly
Yes, Venezuela has always had potential, but if people keep voting for political leaders and giving more and more power to the government instead of reducing it, then Venezuela will never prosper.
About the "mismanagement" I don't quite agree with that explanation, I think what is happening is totally deliberate because these type of governments always do the same and always have the same results. It is not the first time a disaster like this happens under a socialist revolutionary government, there have been a lot of examples in history and it is always the same.
If it was simply mismanagement they would have already accepted their mistakes and eliminate policies like the absurd currency exchange control.
That’s right! You can have two final candidates. At least one of them can talk like the people and act like the people. Telling people what they want to hear. At the end, he is just another puppet chosen by the elite.
I think this one we handle in US very well unlike in Venezuela 🇻🇪 where unbelievably one one person decides what’s wrong and what’s right as you mentioned.
In this case it’s controversial, fortunately in US we have alternative media. MSM are mostly sponsored by government and big institutions which makes mainstream media at least dishonest and manipulative. However at the end it’s your choice to decide what’s true and what’s false. In Venezuela it’s totally different, most media are not allowed to report the truth, at least government won’t allow it as you pointed out. It’s the same when it comes to separation between public life and private life, basic freedoms guaranteed by law and limited time as president and multiple candidates in each election. Once the dictatorship is involved, there is not much of a chance for real democracy. Mostly only manipulation, corruption and power plays the biggest role. As you mentioned, as long as people let themselves being manipulated, they play into their cards.
Great article @dedicatedguy!
Hello @milano1113 thanks for sharing your thoughts and for your kind words.
This is friend, excellent post, Democracy should be is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. It would be foolish to pretend that the people can not make political mistakes. You can commit them, and serious. The people know and pay the consequences; but compared to the errors that have been committed by any kind of autocracy, these others are unimportant. Democracy is the process that guarantees that we are not governed better than we deserve. My country has something wonderful that people from other countries should know as we have the highest waterfall in the world, we have the ice cream with more flavors of the world, we have beach, plains, desert and we lack very little in this blessed land. We have oil, tourism but very bad governors who seek their own benefit and many people with a lack of culture.
MY FREE COUNTRY ALMOST ALL LATIN AMERICA TODAY LEAVE US ONLY
I agree Venezuela has a lot of potential. But the people's mentality needs to change.
That store in Merida closed last year because they didn't have enough resources to keep functioning. I am not sure if they have reopened, but I don't think they will until the current crisis is resolved.
Natural resources aren't everything. In order to prosper it is necessary to have a correct order that Venezuela has been lacking for a few decades.
The oil is useless if the government steals its revenue.
Tourism in Venezuela is pretty much destroyed. Having cities as insecure as Caracas drives tourism away. But when the crisis is finally resolved I am sure Venezuela could become a 5 star touristic destination.
Education is a prerequisite for democracy, otherwise the people are all the more easily seduced by promises of wealth and riches for everyone without carefully considering whether it's realistic or not. Sure, that'd be great if everyone had everything they wanted (not just needed) but that can't be guaranteed. As you say, those who are looking to manipulate the vote take advantage of ignorance and education is a strong shield against that.
Your post is especially valuable because it challenges what I imagine is a key misconception of democracy - it's more than just votes. Otherwise there's a tyranny of the majority (where majority can be as simple as half + 1), who might decide they don't like some minority and punish them for not being the same. Checks and balances must exist to challenge and overcome an individual leader's desire for more power, but the form they take may vary. The American system of dividing the makers of the law; the executor of the law; and the judge of the law is the model I'm most familiar with but it has its flaws, for example, it seems all too eager to give the president more powers without properly constraining them...
But if education is a prerequisite for democracy, and the general population's education isn't very high (however that is judged), is democracy even an appropriate form of government? Singapore for much of its modern history was led by Lee Kuan Yew, who was very effective in leading its change from third to first world country however he certainly was more authoritarian than democratic. Some might say he was a model "benevolent dictator", while his tactics were harsh at times, he still delivered results with his preferred form of governing. But that also means that the dictator must actually care about the national economy and more, and most dictators don't seem to care enough to work hard on that...
The current state of Venezuela is a sad example of government failing to take care of it's citizens. It's inspiring to see how Crypto can help these people during such dire times .
Thanks for sharing this article
I don't think government should take care of people, I mean, people should take care of themselves and shouldn't depend on the government.
If people depend on the government then the dynamic of buying votes for the election will the new normal, the government will offer "help" to the people voting for them and that's not how it should be in my opinion.
global back turned towards the optimistic in the future kemia, the rulers are always hiding from the opponent's direction, so that democracy to be firm against the supporters, so no use they are drowned under the line of government.
Democracy rullleezzzz!!!!