Years of going to the ballot box have made the Venezuelan people essentially democratic, and not inclined to any other solution than the rational and peaceful choice of our rulers through the vote. This is a legacy and one of the most important intangible assets achieved in 40 continuous years of democratic window that Venezuela had from 1958 to 1998. However, this was used in an artful way by those who, as of 2004, poisoned the well from which the water that irrigated a healthy democracy came from. They rotted it to the point of using it again and again against the will of the people and denaturalize the natural sense of the vote, using the consent of a gullible population.
Hence, when the first violation occurred, nobody in Venezuela took seriously the technical warning that the criminals who ran -and still run- the casino called National Electoral Council, had changed the vote counting system, putting it in favor of the candidates of the regime. But God exists and these allegations were later proven by the confession of the representatives of the company Smartmatic, the regime's electoral contractor, that there was a "difference between the number announced (by the CNE) and the one shown by the system of at least one million voters" (see in Spanish Smartmatic's statement on the recent election of the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela, in https://youtu.be/Bhqnn0lM2IM).
And yet, unfortunately, many Venezuelans still believe that the automated systems cannot be violated and put at the service of those who control the Electoral Power, and think that it is possible to win at a fixed roulette wheel just by continuing to play with more intensity, in a behavior instigated by those who from the partisan opposition manage interests with the regime so that things remain as they are.
The incessant communication campaigns, both by the regime and its opposition, to make the population believe that the electoral results are not susceptible to manipulation if people go en masse to vote, have yielded results, in spite of what was indicated by the authors of the system and who were partners of the regime, until, as criminals at last, they had differences in the spoils. The best proof that they can manipulate results and have done so with impunity, was precisely that public statement by Smartmatic.
A healthy logic would indicate to stop insisting on changing the de facto government of the country by electoral means, paying attention to Einstein's definition of madness, and looking for another alternative. But the political leadership of the opposition, with all its resources, and especially its communication machinery, has demonized any other way out, especially those that could make them disappear from the political leadership, which is why we are still in the same hole we have been in for more than 20 years, insisting on convincing Venezuelans to go down a road that is lost before it has even begun.
However, all Venezuelans continue to be affected by a decision in which we have no influence, and even less in the choice of the opposition "representatives" who have decided to go to elections and are negotiating with the regime an electoral route where Maduro controls the machines to count votes. If we allow it, it will be us, who with our attendance to that event, will validate in 2024 or whenever the regime feels like it, the person that the illegitimate CNE will point out as the "winner" in the presidential election. Do you think it will be from the "opposition"? If the majority of Venezuelans want that, knowing the above, I will have to be convinced of the madness announced by Einstein, accepting that the regime has once again violated us, by behaving collectively and individually as they and their opposition expect.
But I believe Venezuelans are better than that. I am convinced that each one of us wants to end the nightmare of this regime and not actively collaborate with what will surely happen if the electoral course that political factors are forcing in Venezuela continues.
Ten years ago, at the end of 2012, I tried to convince anyone who wanted to read me from this tiny tribune that abstentionism in democracy was one thing and that abstentionism in dictatorship (or tyranny, as I now call the phenomenon) was quite another (see in Spanish Abstentionism in dictatorship, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2012/12/abstencionismo-en-tiempos-de-dictadura.html). And it is particularly on this last method of struggle, on which I still believe we need to focus our emphasis, as it represents a form of non-violent civil resistance of the population against those who have passed over two popular mandates, in 2017 and 2020.
Gene Sharp, in his well-known work "From Dictatorship to Democracy, A Conceptual System for Liberation" lists "Election Boycott" as method No. 124 in his list of 198 methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion, under "Methods of Political Noncooperation, Citizen Noncooperation with Government" (see Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy, in https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/DelaDict.pdf).
And why No Cooperation? Because the problem can no longer remain in the hands of those who have betrayed us, and we ourselves must take up the matter directly and collectively, without the intermediation of anyone, not cooperating with their intentions. According to the most updated definition of CAPEL (Inter-American Center for Electoral Assistance and Promotion), a specialized program of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, electoral abstentionism has, in its definition, different ways of being interpreted according to the regime where it occurs:
"Electoral abstentionism is approached from different perspectives in authoritarian and democratic regimes. In the former, the decision not to vote is generally the public expression of political opposition and is usually configured as an infraction and even as a crime"... "... it is worth mentioning political or rational abstention, a conscious attitude of silence or individual passivity in the electoral act that is the expression of a certain political will, either of rejection of the political system, of the electoral call in particular, of not identifying with any of the leaders or political programs in electoral competition, or by the consideration that all options are the same ("all politicians are the same"). Rationalized reflexive abstention could be defined as active and, in itself, can constitute a sort of political conscientious objection or an act of civic disobedience or derived from political dissatisfaction. It is the so-called "exit" rather than "voice" option. When it transcends the limits of individual decision to become a movement that promotes participatory inhibition with the aim of making public opposition to the political regime or the party system, it takes the form of fighting or belligerent abstentionism..." (see CAPEL, Diccionario Electoral, Third edition: IIDH/CAPEL and TEPJF, Costa Rica/Mexico, 2017, in https://www.iidh.ed.cr/capel/diccionario/index.html).
We call on the population to apply Method No. 124 of Political Non-Cooperation or Electoral Boycott, as defined by Sharp, against the deliberate and criminal intention of both the regime and its opposition to continue harming the Venezuelan people, prolonging their tragedy. Consequently, what is left for the common citizen is to protest massively and consciously against what they are doing to share power in Venezuela.
A call for an Electoral Boycott, or as we call it in Venezuela in 2018, an Indefinite Electoral Strike, constitutes "a sort of political conscientious objection or an act of civic disobedience or derived from political dissatisfaction". Read well, POLITICAL DISSATISFACTION. That perfectly defines our dissatisfaction with what we are being sold. IT IS NOT A PURE AND SIMPLE ELECTORAL ABSTENTION, as they are trying to make it look, constituting an act of pure objection to all the electoral garbage that is being shoved through our eyes, INCLUDING THE OPPOSITION PRIMARIES, a prelude to later measure ourselves against the CNE of Maduro and his regime.
To the Manichean arguments of the parties that usually come after a statement like this, that if we do not vote we lose "spaces", or that we "present candidates", I will clearly answer the following: there can be no free elections BECAUSE WE ARE IN A TYRANNY, understand this once and for all! Wake up and React! as John Paul II, liquidator of the communism of his time, said in Venezuela. There are no spaces in a tyranny and even less in a militarized narco tyranny!
What will be achieved with that boycott while we find the right way to successfully confront tyranny, is NOT TO LEGITIMIZE IT WITH OUR VOTES, and to continue the struggle so that the world once and for all understands that they cannot cook up solutions for Venezuela without us, WITHOUT THE PARTICIPATION OF THE VENEZOLAN PEOPLE. And the participation established in the Constitution, after all that has happened and continues to happen in Venezuela, is a National Constituent Assembly of Original Character to Refound the Nation. We must find among all of us the way to convene it....
Caracas, December 4, 2022
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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