"The oppressor would not be so strong if he did
not have accomplices among the oppressed themselves"
Simone de Beauvoir
The resignation of the vice-president of the National Primary Commission (CNP) says much more than what it does not say, even more so coming from a person trained as an Information Engineer from a technological university (Universidad Tecnológica del Centro, UNITEC) (see in Spanish, El Político, Resignation of the vice-president of the National Primary Commission, María Carolina Uzcátegui, in https://tinyurl.com/2w3d9hh9).
We technicians certainly have a professional deformation: we want things to be in place before committing ourselves to anything. And if the commitment is of the size generated by the expectations of the population to elect the person who effectively has the votes of the Venezuelan opposition to confront the regime, we cannot be mistaken in demanding from our principals whatever is necessary to effectively comply with what is technically required to have the expected success.
There are two important faces to consider in Eng. Uzcátegui's resignation letter, the technical and the political.
On the technical face, it is worth mentioning the confession according to which, "Today, the technical and logistical conditions are not in place for the primary process to be a broad consultation within the reach of the majority of Venezuelans regardless of their social stratum. The goal established regarding the number of voting centers has not been reached and looks uphill given the time schedule. The treatment given to voters abroad has not been sincere, since the necessary capacities are not available to attend to a diaspora that, for the most part, will not be able to participate in the electoral process of 2024 thanks to the systematic policy of exclusion sustained in the last years by the National Government. The necessary guarantees do not exist, with the manual voting process, for the results of this consultation to be a true reflection of the will of Venezuelans who wish to participate" (emphasis added).
At some point in this blog we highlighted the importance of the technical and logistical aspects necessary to bring the vote to the greatest number of opponents, and even more so when it comes to the fact that none of these aspects can be carried out without money. Today, Venezuelans should know, at least in a general way, how this process will be carried out in the face of the opposition country, including the procedures for the participation of the civil society, such as the polling stations, how many centers will be set up and where -both inside and outside the country-, and especially when it was announced the implementation of a manual vote that requires the massive participation of the people. All this without taking into account which Electoral Register will be used for these primary elections.
If we want the opposition country to participate in this process, the most logical thing to do is to start a campaign long beforehand to call for the articulation of all those who wish to participate from the civil society, because, as it has been sold, the primaries do not only summon the political parties but the whole opposition country inside and outside Venezuela. And that has been the unfortunate history of citizen participation with the parties, each one of them wanting to take a piece of a cake that does not exist and that rather has to be worked for all of us to be able to eat. We have already experienced this in the Popular Consultation of 2020.
The seriousness of the statement of the insincerity with which the process has been conducted for Venezuelans in the Diaspora says a lot about how such participation was conceived in the first place. The Regulation for the participation of Venezuelan voters abroad in the 2023 primary election, approved on May 6, 2023 by the CNP, states in its Article 4 the following: "Venezuelans already registered in the Electoral Registry of the CNE to vote abroad and those who, being or not in said Registry, update their data to vote in said cities or localities, may vote in the Primary election abroad in any of the cities or localities provided for such purpose by the National Primary Commission, in accordance with this Regulation". This already sets a limit to the number of Venezuelan voters because it does not include the millions who migrated from the country and could never register abroad because the regime eliminated this possibility years ago. So, what was the CNP playing at the beginning, working with the regime? Did Eng. Uzcátegui realize that now?
On the other hand, the parties are not moving, as they see themselves as losers before an option that clearly looks like a winner. Hence, Manuel Rosales' candidacy was definitely withdrawn and others see the process as a hen that sees salt. They are not playing for the country to win. And this brings us to the next face of Eng. Uzcátegui's resignation, the political one:
"It pains me to assume that this primary process is being used by interests that, far from believing in the strength of the democratic electoral process, are today playing at routing us for personal and not collective projects".... "My call is to the candidates participating in the process, to put aside the individual and partisan interests that far from strengthening the primary, have fractured it. It is time to think about the country and the people, about the mechanisms that will allow us to strengthen the vote as an instrument to achieve the social, political and economic changes demanded by the majority of the Venezuelan people" (emphasis added).
I find it strange that a person of that position has not thought about that before assuming such a responsibility. The official opposition parties are not interested in what Venezuela wins, but in what they win. Unfortunately that is the way it is. But in a fight where the legitimacy of a tyranny will be decided before the International Community, anyone would think that they would put that aside and work together for the country. A crass mistake, and it is regrettable that Venezuelans see it written in black and white from the hands of a protagonist of history who hopefully has been used like so many others in good faith, for the perpetuation of the regime.
But there is something more serious underlying Eng. Uzcátegui's resignation: that it is the same opponents who are imploding the CNP from within before the regime takes charge and assumes the political cost, nationally but even more internationally, that this entails. Could this be what is happening? The sentence of Maduro's TSJ must be ready to give an axe to the head of the CNP but they prefer that it be the CNP itself the one to do the honors, like "chacumbele" who killed himself. How right Simone de Beauvoir was...!
Caracas, July 27, 2023
Blog:
TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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