“Democracy in crisis” seems to be the refrain of the past few months. The US is facing the prospect of a president who refuses to commit to the peaceful transition of power, while in Britain the friction between parliamentary sovereignty and the binary EU referendum question has led to both sides accusing the new (unelected) Prime Minister of ignoring the will of the people. But hyperbole aside, if you really want an example of a country in democratic meltdown, just look to Venezuela.
If you haven’t been following Venezuela’s catastrophic demise, here’s a quick recap. After 17 straight years under the socialist regimes of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, the country is imploding under the weight of mis-management, corruption, and a president who will stop at nothing to cling to power. Despite Venezuela’s huge oil wealth (it has greater oil reserves than Saudi Arabia), the government’s brutal currency controls and authoritarian proclivity for state takeovers have led to shortages of everything from basic goods like bread and toilet paper to fuel and crucial medical supplies. Inflation has sky-rocketed to 475 percent, and is forecast to hit 1,600 percent by 2017. The government can barely afford the paper to print the bank notes it needs to keep up (which arrive by the plane-load), but it refuses to ask for a bailout from the IMF – to do so would be to admit there might be a problem, which President Maduro refuses to do. While he stubbornly focuses on blaming a “Western conspiracy”, ordinarily Venezuelans are starving and dying of easily treatable illnesses in hospitals that lack basic medicines.
It is against this backdrop that President Maduro has staged his escalating assault on democracy. In May, opposition politicians submitted a petition signed by 1.85 million people demanding a referendum to recall Maduro and trigger fresh presidential elections. In response, Maduro announced a state of emergency that gave the government the right to seize private businesses and put food supplies in the hands of the army. After a summer of violet protests, further economic collapse and more presidential power-grabs (which include Maduro circumventing the opposition-led legislature completely), polls show that an overwhelming 76 percent of Venezuelans want Maduro gone, and 90 percent think the country is heading in the wrong direction. But despite nationwide outrage, last week electoral officials close to the president blocked the recall efforts, shutting down the one legal avenue for Venezuelans to express their disgust with the current regime.
Maduro’s determination to maintain control at all costs has turned Venezuela from a fledgling democracy into an effective dictatorship. All semblance of the division of powers has been cast aside – Maduro has increasingly gutted the legislative National Assembly of its power, while Venezuelan courts are stacked with judges who unquestionably rule in his favour. Every legal attempt to hold the despotic president accountable has been met with military force and accusations of an international conspiracy. Maduro has even rebranded the democratic efforts to remove him as an illegal “coup”.
The opposition is not giving up. With the referendum effort in tatters, the National Assembly voted on Tuesday to launch a political trial against Maduro for violating the constitution. Of course, Maduro will almost certainly ignore orders for him to appear at a session next week – his regime views the entire legislature as “illegitimate” after a bizarre Supreme Court ruling, while the vice president responded that “legally, the National Assembly does not exist”. In the meantime, more anti-government protests are planned for today, while the army has announced its support for the president.
With every passing day, the chance of Venezuela maintaining even the pretence of democracy fades away. Popular discontent at the country’s economic and political crisis is not going anywhere, and neither is President Maduro, who is looking more and more like a military dictator. Only two scenarios seem plausible: either the army will turn on the president, or the country will descent into full-blown civil war.
Either way, Maduro and his authoritarian socialism have succeeded in demonstrating beyond any doubt what the collapse of democracy really looks like.
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.