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No one can say they didn’t see it coming. Since former bus driver Nicolás Maduro inherited power after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, the course has been stable. One by one, Venezuela’s democratic institutions have been overthrown by the Maduro regime. The Supreme Court, the prosecution, the electoral authority and the military are no longer independent but are part of the power apparatus. The last ruin of democracy was the congress where the opposition has been the majority since 2016. After Sunday’s elections, it is just a memory.
– The day has come when we will save parliament, said the vice president of the regime, Delcy Rodríguez, when the polling stations opened on Sunday.
She has had her assets strangled in EU countries because it has undermined democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela and has been unable to set foot in either the EU or the US since 2018. To escape sanctions, it is now trying to get companies to of the country do business with Russia, Turkey and Iran. The opposition boycotted the elections after the electoral authority prohibited the participation of several of the leaders of the opposition parties.
Opposition leader Juan Guaidó urged the population to stay home as a protest against the regime’s failure to comply with democratic principles.
– The dictatorship has no intention of holding elections. He wants to erase the hope of a nation, Juan Guaidó wrote on Twitter, showing images of empty polling stations in Venezuela.
According to independent media only 15 percent of voters participated in the parliamentary elections. The fact that Maduro’s party still took power over parliament shows that Venezuela has become the third one-party state in the United States, in addition to Cuba and Nicaragua. The dictatorship in Venezuela is now learning to bite even harder and force more families to flee. Five of the country’s 30 million people have already fled the country, making the wave of refugees the second-largest in the world after Syria. The country’s currency is in free fall and the US dollar is once again accepted as currency.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and it really shouldn’t be in this situation. The country should be one of the richest in the world. Instead, it has become one of the poorest in the world.
What makes the situation more difficult? is that there is no clear opposition. Juan Guaidó, who two years ago proclaimed himself president of Venezuela and quickly won the support of the United States and the European Union, no longer has much confidence. It is believed that he failed to rally the population to rebel against the Maduro regime. This makes many people think that there is hope for Venezuela, which was once a democratic example in Latin America.
