Venezuela in a Coma State

Venezuela in a Coma State

By: Eudoro Galindo Anze

Among the three golden rules of the democratic system, the one that has caused the most controversy, confrontations, violence and civil wars, is the one related to the electoral system applied to the renewal of new rulers and of free periodic elections.

It is well known that the first golden rule of democracy establishes that "the majority rules", but this triumph does not give to winners the right to play soccer with their opponents’ heads; on the contrary, elected Governments on behalf of the majority are required by the Constitution, and morally, to ensure the liberties and rights of minorities.

The concentration of power is the violation of the third golden rule, as this requires separation and the division of the public organs of power. If the Presidency of a country dominates all the Nation’s institutions and organs, it is only a matter of time until they try to perpetuate themselves in it, at which moment, with absolute power, and favored by time, they will prevail without the possibility of balance, limit or constraints.

The second golden rule demands that the electoral procedure be clear of fraud; this is the only source of power in a Democracy. On this subject, almost a century ago, José Ortega y Gasset, a Spanish Philosopher wrote: "The health of the democracies, regardless of their type and degree, depends on a mere technicality: the electoral procedure." "Everything else is secondary... without the support of suffrage authentic democratic institutions are in the air".

As the people that designed and implemented the democratic system managed to create the best system of government in humankind history; the political class discovered that they could fill their mouth with praise for democracy, as they did the most fearsome dictators, from Hitler, Stalin or Mao, to the most obscure third world “Banana Republic dictadors”.

Even though the term "democracy" is accepted as a symbol of universal legitimacy and inspires a feeling of almost universal reverence, as noted by Ortega y Gasset is the “…electoral procedure: a miserable detail, the one that shows the health of the State in a democracy.

After April 14, Venezuela where Chavez’s succession exhibited gigantic (and miserable) technical mistakes known by all, it has proven to the world that democracy in the Republic of Venezuela is in a State of Coma.