Hybrid political regimes
By: Luis Beltrán Guerra G. - 18/08/2024
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In humanity, perhaps, even in its most remote corners, it is not fully understood what has happened in Venezuela. But, in Caracas, it also seems that very little is known about what is troubling the world.
Latin America, if we wanted to build a preamble, with the purpose of drawing conclusions, when we move on to the chapters of the book to be written and conclude with the “epilogue”, it reveals to us that, in principle, everything remains the same. The pattern? We are South Americans! It is this appreciation that is revealed in a few pages that illustrate that we have not finished overcoming our own inherited complexes. Turning to “phraseology”, it seems pertinent to ask ourselves if “we will continue to be the same, before and even after Spanish colonization.
Venezuela has been governed atypically during the last three decades, particularly as a result of the “defenestration” of the Constitutional President Carlos Andrés Pérez, elected First Magistrate for the second time, methodology, for a few, including the tribune Jovito Villalba, some of the architects with Romulo Betancourt and Rafael Caldera of a democratic republic, for the better in the face of “an immense lake of dictatorships in the Americas”, both those in the south and the central ones. For Vilalba, reelection had historically been the source of the dictatorships that came and went throughout the southern and central mountain ranges of the Americas. The question, in a pertinent analysis, would be to answer whether the second presidency of CAP was inappropriate. But much more disturbing, to what extent "the macroeconomic" program advanced (in the opinion of our brother Miguel Rodríguez) purely Keynesian, whose annoyances, logical, of course, at least the initial ones, it is deluded to deny, formed, "come gli italiani", a "devilishness", derived from those dissatisfied with a re-election that had not benefited them, mainly because the censors did not have popular options, like those of the winner. Defenestrated some time later, those who supported the defenestration ended, some due to the extinction of their existence, that is, death, the rule of life. And others, more senior, resigned or were displaced from their positions. Well, an alleged revolution fueled those who had taken up arms and had already taken a strange course, lacking democratic definitions. Logically, a tortuous path inserted in a mentally and physically hurt Venezuela. Conditions that have convinced him generated the conviction that democracy is the way to elect good rulers and fire the wrong ones. But how difficult it has been for Venezuelans to materialize that desire, who seem to look at each other when they see each other, in the revealing difficulties of the struggle and the death of Simón Bolívar. He freed his homeland and his neighbors from the Spanish yoke, he had to take advantage of the precedent of “Silla” in Rome, declaring himself “dictator.” Could it be, one may wonder, that the Liberator's dilemma is the one we currently suffer in Caracas, and that the only differences are the characters and the dates. Well, the land remains the same. Unfortunately, not in kilometers, as it seems to be a “notorious fact”, that is, one that jurists define as “one that does not merit evidence”, that the so-called “Esequivo”, inadvertently known as the “Zone in claim”, no longer informs us. belongs (R. Badell, Venezuela's claim on the Esequivo Territory, prologue by Héctor Faundez Ledezma).
Following the presidential elections of July 28, which we could describe as “the duality of triumphs,” the prominent economist Francisco Rodríguez (Ph.D. at Harvard University) has just published (in the New York Times, August 7) the essay “ “A Deal That Could Save Venezuela.” The current professor at the University of Denver (Josef Korbel School of International Studies) points to the uncertain situation that countries face when a certain government that does not have the popular support that led it to the leadership of a nation ends up losing the elections. to continue in it. Let's copy directly from Francisco's essay: “It was a surprising victory: 1. As the results began to appear, they showed that the opposition had won by a margin of more than two to one, 2. The once formidable political machine in power proved to be no match for millions of voters, who sent a clear message to their authoritarian leader: his time is up” and 3. But despite this landslide victory, the ruling party ignored the will of the people and leaders and allies “proclaimed president to the loser.” The anguish experienced in Caracas led some Venezuelans, regular readers of Francisco, to think that he was referring to Venezuela, following the presidential elections of July 28, when the narrative is revealing of the experience lived in Poland in 1989. following the electoral process in which the opposition party “Solidarity” participated, benefiting from the popular vote. It was a surprising victory, before which Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski (President from 1981 to 1989, Prime Minister (1981 -1985), Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and general secretary of the Polish United Workers Party. Sources reveal and from there The importance of the Harvard doctor's essay, that the aforementioned General left power after the “1989 Round Table” Agreements, through which Poland, fortunately, ended up embracing democracy. Is the anecdote brought up. by Rodríguez likely in Venezuela? God willing, and very particularly if the previous statements are taken seriously, with respect to who we are, and of course under the conviction that the goal is to achieve a respectable distribution of equality. And how we achieved it.
The UCAB and Harvard graduate even proposes what he describes as “guidelines for an agreement in Venezuela based on a probable division of responsibilities in the executive branch: 1. The opposition and non-partisan experts would occupy ministries in charge of economic policy and oil, 2. President Maduro and his party “could remain in charge of the security and interior ministries. The proposal of “an action plan to address the humanitarian and economic emergency and 3. Undertake efforts so that the international community cooperates financially with the new government's effort in the long-awaited and necessary “economic reconstruction” is very decisive.
Heir to an intelligence, in principle, superior to that of his father, Gumersindo Rodríguez (London School of Economics), who was Minister of Planning in the first government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez and author, among other interesting books, Was Great Venezuela Possible? , a question that the author answers affirmatively and with solid arguments. The pages mitigate the criticisms that were advanced regarding the aforementioned five-year period, perhaps, by the parents of the protesting children of the “Macroeconomic Program”, advanced in CAP II, in charge, both in conception and in implementation, by the economist of Yale, Miguel Rodríguez. Those of us who are ignorant on the subject, of which there are quite a few, let us limit ourselves to asking ourselves “why CAP was successful with an Economic Program in its first government and not so in the second. The writer heard on more than one occasion that the second Rodríguez (Gumersindo) had warned the President that a solid political force, almost similar to that of Margaret Thatcher (“The Iron Lady”) in England, was required to execute “the Program of the second five-year period", which CAP could not conclude, among other reasons, due to the military uprising led by Hugo Chávez, to the surprise of a few, who believed that "military uprisings and coups d'état had been erased from our history. We assumed that the last one had been that of 1948 against President Gallegos, which began with the installation of a Military Government Junta made up of Lieutenant Colonels Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Luis Felipe Llovera Paéz, the first as President of the Board. Dr. Miguel Moreno was appointed Secretary.” In the opinion of the editor José Agustin Catalá, it marked the darkest period suffered by the Venezuelan people, after the dictatorial period of General Juan Vicente Gómez. (“History of a barracks, November 1948 / El Centauro, editions, Caracas, 2008).
Francisco Rodríguez would be proposing a kind of “hybrid government”, a phrase used to title this essay, but it is still a question that would be answered affirmatively. If we went to the sources, the answer would be affirmative because One of the best-known classifications on the state of global democracy is the “Annual Democracy Index of The Economist”, which divides countries into 4 categories: perfect democracy, imperfect democracy, “hybrid regime” and authoritarian regime.
With a few doubts, we congratulate Francisco Rodríguez for his interesting approach. The time will come to formulate them.
Comments welcome.
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