This Monday, August 19, marks 24 years since Hugo Chávez Frías was sworn in as president of Venezuela, a fact that is closely linked to the current events in the sister country.
On February 4, 1992, Hugo Chávez and a group of officers of the Venezuelan national army attempted a coup d’état against President Carlos Andrés Pérez. At that time, Venezuela had been suffering a crisis since the early 1980s due to the collapse of oil prices and the progressive increase in its public debt, events that caused a gradual increase in popular discontent that erupted in 1989 in the rebellion known as “the Caracazo”.
That was the justification that Chávez and those who accompanied him raised to carry out the coup d’état in 1992. In prison, Chávez made his ideas known in the book “How to Get Out of the Labyrinth.” If anyone might find this coincidence with Fidel Castro’s story curious, I remember that like the Cuban, Chávez was in prison for a short time and was released from it thanks to a political amnesty decreed by President Rafael Caldera at the end of 1994. From then on, he dedicated himself to structuring and strengthening his Fifth Republic Movement.
One of his first activities was to visit Cuba, where he was received with honors destined for heads of state by Fidel Castro, it being obvious that the Cuban dictator, in the face of the debacle that Cuba suffered after the disappearance of the USSR – and from which he has never recovered – saw the former Venezuelan colonel as a plausible way to alleviate the effects of the proven ineffectiveness of his regime.
The arrival of Chávez to the presidency of Venezuela in 1998 and his subsequent triumphs in elections and referendums were presented to Cubans as overwhelming successes demonstrating Venezuelans’ desire for change, a manipulation of reality.
In the legislative elections of November 1998, the Fifth Republic Movement, led by Chávez, obtained 22% of the votes and 35 deputies, which allowed the former colonel to launch the fight for the presidency of Venezuela.
When Chávez took power on February 2, 1999, he promised to change the Constitution. Two months later he called for a referendum in which he asked Venezuelans if they wanted to convene a National Constituent Assembly. The referendum was approved because 80% of the votes cast supported the call, but what the Castro regime did not say was that 63% of voters abstained from participating in the referendum, something that would have been enough to invalidate it. However, Chávez went ahead and a month later, in December 1999, he held the constitutional referendum in which 71% of the votes cast were in favor of a new Magna Carta. But in that referendum the number of voters who did not express their opinion was 56%. That is, only 44% of voters went to the polls and of those, 71% voted in favor of a new constitution, which demonstrates the political wear and tear suffered by Hugo Chávez in less than two years of presidential administration.
In 2000 Chávez called for new presidential elections and if in 1998 he had reached the presidency with 56.2% of the votes, in 2000 he obtained 59.7%, but as had happened in the referendums, popular participation was marked by abstentionism because in those elections only 56% of all voters participated. a figure five percentage points away from the 63% who participated in the 1998 elections and 4 percentage points from the 60% who elected Rafael Caldera in 1993.
It was from then on that Chavismo understood the cost that executive management could have at the ballot box. That is why they took on the task of restructuring the Supreme Court of Justice and the National Electoral Council, placing in those institutions people totally subordinate to Chavismo. It can be said without fear of mistake that August 19, 2000 marked the end of institutional credibility in Venezuela.
More than twenty years have had to pass for the Venezuelan people to regain their hope and strengthen their desire for changes in the political structure of the country, for them to assume that it is they who are the sovereign and that even within the narrow frameworks in which Chavismo has cornered democracy, its will can be asserted.
The cynical, scandalous and extremely crude electoral fraud committed by Nicolás Maduro on July 28 has received a forceful and very intelligent response from the Venezuelan opposition. The political discredit of the Chavista dictatorship is only growing in the eyes of national and international public opinion, as was demonstrated in the massive demonstration held in Caracas last Saturday, August 17 and in those that were held that same day in several cities in Latin America and Europe in solidarity with the Venezuelan people. in demand of respect for the result of the elections, facts to which have been added the statements of the Carter Center, the UN, the OAS and the European community.
When it seemed that a new electoral farce was going to triumph, the Venezuelan opposition showed irrefutable evidence of the triumph of Edmundo González, the true new president of Venezuela. They foresaw everything and prepared to demand before the world respect for the will of the people.
María Corina Machado has emerged as a symbol of this new Venezuela, a woman who represents the courage and patriotism of all her people. She has been in charge of reminding us, as the lyrics of a beautiful song say, that all is not lost. María Corina, like all Venezuelans who have died and the thousands who are detained in unknown places for demanding freedom, has emerged among so much pain and despair as a new Manuela Sáenz, the Liberator of the Liberator, although now it is not about saving a man but an entire country and I say more, it is about saving an entire continent from the dark tentacles of Castro-communism.
Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces
(This article has been translated by Google)