WHEN ELECTIONS IN VENEZUELA ARE NO MATTER

Twenty years ago, an anti-party leader, anti-political leader, who claimed to represent the popular sectors and raised his voice for those who had become disenchanted with bipartisan democracy was elected president of Venezuela. Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, the man who jumped into public life due to the attempted coup d'état in 1992 and was dismissed by President Rafael Caldera, would become the first Latin American political phenomenon of the 21st century.

The legitimacy of Chávez's political project was based on a model of plebiscitary democracy, which in less than two years led five electoral processes: Presidential of 1998; the Referendum to convene a constituent; the election of the National Constituent Assembly; and the approving referendum of the new Constitution, three processes in a single year, 1999, and being victorious in all. For the year 2000, he called for the endorsement of all positions of popular election, within the framework of a new Constitution.

In those years it was affirmed that the Venezuelan political system left aside representative democracy, controlled by the old parties and became a participatory and protagonist democracy, which made voting the transforming instrument of society. Then the question arises: How that political project, legitimized in the polls and transformer, has plunged Venezuela into the worst crisis in its history?

Chavez narrative has been commissioned to idealize the first years and build a story where the result of the disaster is because of an international confabulation, that before the fear that woke up in old elites, and in orchestration with the international capital always so interested in the Venezuelan oil, they decided to isolate and destroy everything that Chávez created.

There are still places in Latin America and in Europe where sectors of the old left defend the Bolivarian Revolution and rebuke anyone who talks about the crisis in Venezuela. Others, a little more moderate, blame Nicolás Maduro and differentiate the negotiations arguing that the project lost its way and that the successor succumbed to corrupt interests.

Another version argues that while Chávez in the first years won electoral processes, democracy is much more than elections. Of the three electoral processes that gave life to the Constitution of 1999, the three had an abstention higher than 50%, and adjustments were made in the circumscriptions and rules of the game to impose the project, until the traditional media supported the new air that Chávez represented. A mixture of citizen apathy, attrition of partisan democracy and corrupt perception of the State and politics were the hallmark for Chávez to transform Venezuela.

Indeed, democracy is much more than elections or electoral engineering is much more than most of those who participate in the elections, elections legitimize the elected, but the democratic process occurs when those elected build the consensus that guide the action of the State, the government and the different national and local authorities. The lesson that the Venezuelan case leaves for the rest of Latin America is that democracy is not restricted to elections.

Of the 20 years of the Bolivarian Revolution, on December 6, 13 years were electoral. During 13 years some type of elections, consultation or referendum, 13 years of campaign and electoral contests were held, but this did not translate into greater democracy. On the contrary, the possibility of building consensus and reaching agreements disappeared in the framework of polarization and the imposition of a single vision.

Affirming that the rules of the game were changed, that freedom of expression was limited, that those who differed or thought differently or simply expressed some kind of doubt or reservation were persecuted is to rain in the wet. The deterioration of democracy was followed by the deterioration of an economic model designed to sustain itself in power on a clientelistic base, in turn following the deterioration of social relations, health, education, security, the deterioration of the country .

After 20 years, the results are regrettable, Venezuela is collapsing, the economic crisis is the worst in Latin American history; and, if things continue in the same direction, it will become the worst in the world, few countries regress, devolve at the speed that Venezuela has done.

In social matters, health or education, the country is in a condition of humanitarian assistance and has become the second global migration crisis above countries that are at war.

Twenty years later elections are held that nobody cares about, today the Venezuelans elect the municipal councilors, the most reliable expression of democracy, the elected officials closest to the citizen, those who solve the problems of everyday life, the responsible for handling the demands of the communities in their neighborhoods, on their streets, in the places where they live, those that represent the interests of citizens.

But elections no longer matter. In the last three years, the government of Nicolás Maduro emptied the electoral act of content; what is the use of choosing if the government ignores the result, creates parallel institutions that assume functions and budgets to ignore the popular will, constrain or supplant the elected by the people.

Until the election of the federation of university councils was unknown, as it happened in the University of Carabobo this year.
With the chavista Constituent National Assembly in the background, a suprapoder that decides everything, the Venezuelan people do not know what to do: go to the polls, make the "tail" or row, show the "Carnet de la Patria" to have access to the little that the government sells him, try to invalidate the vote, or even vote for a councilor who represents him, so tomorrow they do not know the result, disable the official, threaten him or simply close the municipal council, as they did with the Metropolitan Council of Caracas.

The paradox is that those who have been watching for 20 years how democracy is dismantled are the ones that in Latin America most support this system of government. According to the Latino barometer survey, Venezuelans support it with 75%, while Colombians only reach 54%, Chile 58% or Brazil 34%. In 1999, only 57% of Venezuelans supported democracy, and today when elections no longer matter, when their results are unknown, there are still citizens who go out to vote for their representatives.