Is Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro about to pull off the biggest heist in the country’s democratic history? He appears to be a month away from stealing all remnants of what was once one of Latin America’s most stable democracies.
On July 30, Maduro will hold a constituent assembly he convened by decree instead of by popular referendum, which is the method implied by the constitution. A constituent assembly is held when citizens agree that the constitution is in need of profound changes that cannot be addressed by amendments or reforms. It is used to “reestablish” the republic. In this case, the constituent assembly has the power to not only rewrite the constitution, but to disband all constituted powers — i.e., those of the chief executive, the legislature, the courts, the electoral council, the attorney general and the ombudsman.
The only other time Venezuela has had a constituent assembly was in 1999, just months after President Hugo Chávez took office. At that time, a referendum was held, which approved convening the constituent assembly; as a result, the 1999 Constitution replaced the previous version from 1961. This marked the beginning of the Bolivarian Republic.
In contrast, this time Maduro is using a presidential decree to convene the assembly. Not only was there no popular referendum, but the composition of the assembly noticeably overrepresents special interest groups and rural areas that are sympathetic to the president.
The Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ, as it is abbreviated in Spanish), which is made up of justices sympathetic to Maduro, endorsed the president’s call to rewrite the constitution and agreed that a prior consultative referendum was unnecessary. This sparked strong criticism from the Venezuelan people, including an important figure in the Maduro administration: Venezuela’s attorney general, Luisa Ortega Díaz, who until recently was a government supporter.
According to Ortega, who filed documents before the Constitutional Chamber of the TSJ against the president’s constituent assembly, Maduro’s plans have reduced popular participation in the assembly to a minimum. A couple of months ago, she also strongly condemned the TSJ when it decided to assume the powers of the National Assembly. Although it did not take long for the TSJ to partially undo its actions, street protests have been taking place daily since then. So far, they have cost more than 70 lives and left more than one thousand people injured.
When Hugo Chávez came to power with a landslide electoral victory in 1998, he promised an end to the old corrupt regime that favored the economic elites. His charisma and social programs intended to benefit the poor made him a “god-like” figure to his followers, known as chavistas. Despite his authoritarian methods, many shortfalls, and misguided policies, Chávez used electoral democracy in his favor, holding continuous elections that — for the most part — helped legitimize his rule. Two elections worth remembering are the 1999 consultative referendum mentioned above and the August 2004 recall referendum — which was promoted by the opposition — where Chávez was ratified as president with 59 percent of the nearly 10 million votes cast. In both cases, he knew his popularity would yield favorable results.
Unlike his predecessor, Maduro avoids elections. In fact, the last Venezuelan elections took place in December 2015, when the opposition won a decisive victory in the National Assembly, obtaining two-thirds of the seats. Last year, Maduro not only blocked the opposition’s attempts to hold a recall referendum, but also postponed the scheduled gubernatorial elections indefinitely. A couple of weeks ago, the National Electoral Council finally announced that local elections would be held in December. However, since the constituent assembly — which has absolute powers — will take place before then, those elections may never occur.
Last week, at the general assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Cancún, Mexico, the foreign ministers of the 34 member states failed to pass a resolution calling for an end to Venezuela’s political crisis. Before the meeting, the 23 votes needed to pass the watered-down resolution seemed highly likely. As expected, Venezuela’s oil diplomacy paid off, keeping many Caribbean nations, and Nicaragua, on its side. However, a few countries that were expected to vote in favor of the resolution, such as El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, abstained. It is important to note that the countries that voted in favor of the resolution represent the overwhelming majority of the hemisphere’s population and economy.
Regardless of Venezuela’s supposed withdrawal from the OAS and its claim that the resolution was just another scheme motivated by U.S. imperialists to interfere with Venezuela’s sovereignty, the success of this diplomatic effort would have helped the morale of the Venezuelan people. It would have been a much-needed sign of disapproval by the international community of the Maduro administration’s handling of the ongoing socioeconomic crisis.
Venezuela’s current fragile state is far from Chávez’s promise of the “Socialism of the 21st Century.” Today, there is a new class of corrupt political elites that includes government officials and army generals. Acts by Maduro and his administration have repeatedly exposed the country’s break from democracy. Several critics and opinion leaders are hoping for factions of the Venezuelan army to defect and turn the tide. However, a significant number of army officials are involved with Maduro’s economic schemes and have a lot to lose.
The chaos in Venezuela is taking a turn for the worse. So far, local and international efforts to mediate between the government and the opposition have failed. In the meantime, Maduro continues to tighten his grip and is trying protesters in military courts. He has gone as far as to say that if the violence continues and the Bolivarian Revolution were to be destroyed, “what we couldn’t do with votes we will do with weapons.” Strongmen like him — and in a very different context, like Bashar al-Assad — are more likely to cling to power (no matter the suffering they cause) than to face the consequences of stepping down. Maduro knows that a constitutional solution — free and fair elections — would mean that prosecution by an opposition-dominated government would be unavoidable. He needs a way out. He could be allowed to live in exile in Nicaragua, for example. Justice is almost never served in this kind of transition, and some level of amnesty seems inevitable to avoid more deaths. The big unknown is how many other Venezuelan government and army officials will need a similar deal.
Erika de la Garza is the program director of the Latin America Initiative at the Baker Institute. Her chief areas of interest include U.S.-Latin America relations; emerging leadership; coalition building between public, private and civil society actors; and trade and business development in Latin America.