By Luis Manuel Aguana
I would like to ask a question that sounds obvious:
who would not like a change of President in a peaceful way through free, fair
and transparent elections? That's like my grandmother used to say, dead, you
want mass? Everybody wants that since the first time we tried to remove Hugo
Chavez with a recall in 2004 when it was due in 2003.
After hundreds of deaths on the streets and
in hospitals as a result of the violence that has been imposed on us in all its
forms, it turns out that this is now the offer of the official opposition. That
is, Maduro would simply say, I'm leaving, I can't take any more of the gringo
sanctions! And that's it. Usurpation is over! And the problems are gone.
Unfortunately the world doesn't work that way and even less so with
narcoterrorists.
The official opposition is preparing to
appoint the new rectors of a CNE negotiated with the regime in a Preliminary
Nomination Committee appointed with deputies from both sides, both seeking
different objectives. The first, to be prepared for an immediate election after
Maduro leaves (which would put us all in the first frame waiting for an event
that may never come), and the second looking for the parliamentary elections
that both - or at least a significant part of the official opposition (AD-UNT)
- are looking for by the end of 2020. In any case, everyone is preparing for an
electoral event.
And I wonder what we missed? Because as far
as I know, absolutely nothing has changed except the promise after Guaidó's
trip abroad that sanctions against the regime and its criminals will continue.
And they have. The first applied to Rosneft Trading, the Russian company that
commercializes Venezuelan oil since PDVSA ceased to exist for the world
internationally. That leaves us with an infinite field of possibilities, but a
very probable one: that things will continue to get worse for Venezuelans
without the regime moving an inch from Miraflores. Ask the man at Mazo Dando if
he cares that Venezuelans will go hungry and suffer more hyperinflation because
Trump is imposing a blockade on the Venezuelan coast. They'll still be laughing
their asses off, living off the smuggling of our riches - better than Cuba,
which is now over 60 years old!
And you'll say, "This guy's negative!
What does he know? Guaidó negotiated with Trump that Maduro would leave, now
it's his turn to mobilize people!" I find it very difficult to see people
mobilizing as they did before, not only because they left the country, but
because there is no leadership capable of inspiring that. Guaidó stopped being
one... My apologies for the mistrust. My point here is that the problem is
still OUR problem, not the Americans' or Trump's. We cannot continue in an
attitude of indefinite waiting, no matter how many promises Trump has made to
Guaidó. We have a responsibility to do something big that will change the
current state of things, beyond simply asking people to go out and march in the
streets. That has to have a purpose!
The economic crisis has hit the population
very hard and the official opposition has made sure that people lose confidence
in them. I don't doubt that there is still some level of mobilization and
support in the streets, but not to the point of achieving the necessary and
sufficient critical mass for political change, no matter how many sanctions
appear along the way. If it continues to try the same thing, the regime will
continue to do what it does best, which is to attack anyone who shows their
heads, killing young people in the streets, with the consequent return to the
vicious circle that we all know. Einstein was not wrong in his judgement, and
the same results will therefore be obtained.
What to do then? Something different. The
opposition has the obligation to do something different to mobilize a massive
rejection of the regime by the population and to generate that internal pressure
that they asked Guaidó for at the White House, beyond the few demonstrators in
the streets that they can raise. And here I am not saying that we should forget
about the street mobilizations in protest of everything that is happening in
the country. I'm saying that we need to add something completely new and
different to achieve that critical point needed for the change we need.
In March 2014 I published a note -in fact it is the most read on my blog
so far- (see in Spanish “Caída inevitable”, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2014/03/caida-inevitable.html) where I reviewed
the research of Dr. Erica Chenoweth of the University of Colorado at Boulder (see
Dr. Chenoweth's lecture at http://youtu.be/y4xcimkAFNc), which showed
that during the period 1900-2006 Nonviolent insurgencies around the world were
twice as likely to completely triumph over those where violence occurred. The
research revealed that NO insurrection had failed during that period
(1900-2006) after the active and
constant participation of only 3.5% of the population, with successful
insurrections having historically been counted with much less than that
percentage.
Now, if we look at the approximate figures of the population of
Venezuela after the mass exodus calculated at around 5 million people, we are
left with about 25 million people in Venezuela. Do you think that the current
political leadership of the opposition will inspire around 1 million people to
take to the streets in an active and constant participation, as the researcher
indicates that it should be done? Let's be serious. The best numbers were
obtained in the years of maximum active protest in the streets, beginning in
2002, when that number was counted in each march, without any exodus.
The highest peaks of protest counted by the Venezuelan Observatory of
Social Conflict took place in 2014 (9,286) in a consistent increase since 2017
(9,787), 2018 (12,715) and 2019 (16,739) (see in Spanish the Annual Report
Social Conflict in Venezuela 2019, at https://www.observatoriodeconflictos.org.ve/tendencias-de-la-conflictividad/conflictividad-social-en-venezuela-en-2019). These numbers
indicate that people have not remained calm and may be the spark for a major
conflict but that has not been enough, even though the conflict has almost
doubled in 2014.
I have made this previous statement of reasons to make the official
opposition politicians understand that a citizen-administered plebiscitary
popular consultation, which we have proposed from ANCO, would put no less than
4 million people on the streets of Venezuela in a civic act, assuming that 3
million of the 7 million voters counted within Venezuela in the consultation
held on 16J-2017 have left. However, this consultation would not leave out the
Venezuelan diaspora, and would make present in the civic protest the thousands
of people who for obvious reasons would not go out to march due to age or
physical conditions, and for those same reasons have not left the country.
In this way, the cry of civic protest that we would give to the world
demanding the departure of the satrap would be on the order of 10 million
people. That is much more than calling for marches in deplorable conditions of
credibility even if these are not exclusive. We can -and must- do both things:
a great Plebiscitary Popular Consultation, and then go out to the streets -and
not leave them consistently- demanding the world to help us make effective the
fulfillment of the result of the popular mandate with all the protests and
marches we wish. The marches would be the necessary complement of that
Plebiscitary Consultation! That would put us all on the same page and with a
common purpose: to massively demand
the fulfillment of our mandate as a people.
If the political leadership cannot put 1 million people on the streets
now every day as in the past, if it can help civil society to convene it for a
civic event of this magnitude in the world. The political effect created by a
plebiscitary popular consultation that expresses the feeling of 10 million
Venezuelans living in Venezuela and outside the country, would go around the
planet, and would be of such magnitude that it would be in the position of
being the trigger we all expect for the political change of the country, giving
the international community a support impossible to ignore to act in Venezuela.
The Consultation and the marches in protest of the fulfillment of its
result would be among the actions that if we can do without waiting for Trump
or anyone else, it could give him the political and popular support necessary
to act and back up the President in charge in his exercise of power, beyond
Article 233 of the Constitution, and would give us the weighty arguments to
request with firmness and in one voice, the help of the necessary force to
evict the tyrant and recover freedom. I still don't know what they' re waiting for...
Caracas,
February 25, 2020
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario