Following the publication of ANCO's most recent communiqué entitled "The Constituent Assembly, the space for the Refoundation and Self-Determination of the Venezuelan People" (see in Spanish ANCO’s communiqué, in https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/2021/12/comunicado-anco-la-asamblea.html), Many of our friends, who are already convinced of the Constituent Assembly route, have expressed their concern that in ANCO we are not taking a more active path, beyond our communiqués, as well as refusing to participate in an electoral farce, which has certainly polarized us with groups that legitimately believe that this path leads us to maintain civil resistance against this delinquent regime. And they are right.
During the Forum to which I was kindly invited by the friends of Caracas Ciudad Plural (see The Constituent Route for Change, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/the-constituent-route-for-change.html) and the subsequent discussion that ensued (which you can follow in Spanish in the respective video of Caracas Ciudad Plural, in https://t.co/qlNTAdd1Yx), it can be seen that many Venezuelans, not necessarily part of the cohabitation with the regime, continue to agree with the electoral route with this regime, seriously convinced that this is what is left for us to do with this criminal group that plagues the country and illegitimately usurps power in Venezuela.
I have written in the past on the subject of voting in dictatorial contexts (see in Spanish "Abstentionism in times of dictatorship", in http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2012/12/abstencionismo-en-tiempos-de-dictadura.html, Abstention in times of collaborationism, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_13.html, Abstentionism in times of negotiation, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/abstentionism-in-times-of-negotiation.html), Therefore, I will not go back to the reasons why I believe it is a waste of energy that could be used in a more effective way against the regime, besides the fact that the very act of participating electorally with those whom we have disowned as democrats, gives them in itself a democratic garb that confuses those who wish to help us remove them from power.
If that energy were focused, not on seeking to compete with a regime that "wins" and "does not win" where it is convenient because it has in its power the mechanism to elect who it wishes, but on organizing ourselves into a single force of civil resistance, all of us who wish the same would have greater success in advancing, even if only by centimeters, on this long road we have been facing for 22 years, in the common objective of getting out of the regime.
That is why I consider it a Byzantine discussion among peers to polarize us between voting or not voting. It is a discussion where the regime always wins. The argument that I always hear -and I heard it again during the Forum- according to which "if we had not voted in 2015 we would not have had a National Assembly of the "opposition" and therefore international recognition would not have been achieved", is a myth that has become a mantra of those who still believe that the regime can be defeated in a terrain where we will never have full access: the CNE.
First of all, in 2015, the opposition did not win, the regime lost. That was outlined in my note the day after those parliamentary elections (see in Spanish Did the MUD win or did the government lose?, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2015/12/gano-la-mud-o-perdio-el-gobierno.html) What do I mean by this? No matter what the technical results of that election were, the regime was perfectly willing to present manipulated figures to the country and defend them by spilling blood. If you remember those days, Venezuela was a pressure cooker and whoever ran in that election would win hands down.
But those who were going to fire serious shots to defend the figures presented by the CNE were not going to be the bikers of the collectives, they were going to be the soldiers of the Armed Forces. This is how Emili J. Blasco summarized it in the ABC of Madrid the day after the election (see in Spanish The High Command forces to accept the great victory of the opposition in Venezuela, in https://www.abc.es/internacional/abci-alto-mando-militar-fuerza-aceptar-gran-victoria-oposicion-venezuela-201512070619_noticia.html). If the CNE had dared to lie as it normally does, there would have been a massacre that the military refused to carry out.
What did the CNE do then upon learning that the numbers would not be defended by the Armed Forces? To do damage control and place the victory at such a point that it could be easily blown up, as it was later done through the TSJ and the Express Magistrates. There were calculations that estimated the real opposition victory at 20% higher than the figures presented by the CNE.
Did we really win in an electoral way? Of course we did, in the same way Henrique Capriles won in 2012 and 2013. Could those victories be "cashed in"? Of course not. Among other reasons, because the unfortunate political leadership we have never considered that, as it happened in 2007 when Julio Borges and Teodoro Petkoff were the first ones to accept the fraud that the CNE had set up for the Constitutional Reform. And it was prevented by the Armed Forces as a result of the undisputed leadership in the FAN of the disappeared Army General Raul Isaias Baduel, with the backing of the student leadership of that time. That cost Baduel his life...
On the other hand the vaunted international "recognition" really came AFTER the 2017 Popular Consultation, not after the 2015 parliamentary election. The real support and recognition of the countries to the struggle against this tyranny did not come because Venezuelans voted in the 2015 parliamentary election, but after they saw the crimes against Humanity that the regime was capable of committing after -and before- 2015 and that forced the people to pronounce themselves in a Popular Consultation in 2017, as it effectively did without the participation of the CNE, to reject the illegitimate Constituent Assembly without the authorization of the people and to order the change of the Public Powers, something that the regime ignored, again with the little help of the political leadership of the National Assembly by ignoring the binding nature of that Popular Consultation. What the International Community recognized was the legitimacy of that parliament, which was of little use as Venezuelans could feel in their own flesh.
So, have we been able to change this state of affairs in the country with the votes of Venezuelans? Obviously not. Some might say, but if we had not voted massively, we would never have reached those extreme positions that forced the regime to give in? And I would say that the answer lies in the results. What did we really achieve? That the International Community ruled that we continue along that path. And do you really believe that, instead of all that energy invested in mobilizing Venezuelans to attend electoral events that send a distorted and wrong message outside the country, we could meet and establish a common route of civil resistance as OTPOR did in Yugoslavia during Slobodan Milosevic's repression?
Organizing that common route does not imply that it includes at some point participating in electoral events that have the organized component of civil resistance and subsequent actions such as those that occurred after the fraud in Bolivia in 2019 or those that could have happened right here in Venezuela after Maduro's fraud in 2013 where our pusillanimous candidate summoned us to play pots and pans and dance salsa.
Action as we are being demanded in ANCO will never be excluded as long as we know exactly what to do in a coordinated and organized manner, and with the corresponding critical mass. And that does not yet exist, it MUST BE BUILT BEFORE, it takes time and a lot of coordinated effort. The route of civil resistance must lead us to an objective and if we are going to follow this path we have the obligation to win. We have now proposed a Constituent Route that would greatly shorten this path with the help of the International Community, but we are aware that if all the variables do not accompany us we will have to make changes to get to the same place which is none other than the Refoundation of the country. In the meantime, we will continue to follow a route that does not give the regime any external oxygen, such as the current electoral route of the parties. And in that there is no possible concession...
Caracas, December 20, 2021
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
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