The uncertain transition to democracy in Venezuela

The ashes of the destruction left in Venezuela by the US military attack had barely cooled when we began to hear talk of a possible transition to democracy. We have heard these words so many times they have become a litany, especially since 2013, the year Nicolás Maduro replaced Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela. This shouldn't surprise us. The country's elites have been unable to resolve the political crisis that deepened after 2004, the year in which the constitutional reform, championed by Chávez as the cornerstone of his political project, failed at the polls. Very few realized that by leaving Chavismo in charge of the government and territorial control, President Donald Trump was nullifying or minimizing the role the opposition could play in a hypothetical transition. A process that seems uncertain, because the pieces for its realization are far from complete. Maryhen Jiménez, a PhD in political science from Oxford University, recalls that opposition groups in Venezuela tried unsuccessfully to remove Hugo Chávez from power through various means, both legal and illegal. Chavismo demonstrated a remarkable ability to maintain its grip on power. It is likely that the Trump administration concluded that political change does not depend solely on military intervention or regime change. fast track not from the executive branch (the person in charge of the presidency), but from a more complex reconfiguration of internal balances that includes actors within the system.

Let's keep in mind that transitions are, to a large extent, monitored and sometimes even controlled processes. The most emblematic case is that of Chile, where the dictator Augusto Pinochet took on this task by reserving for himself the general command of the army. A political transition, agreed upon by the United States and Chavismo, could not work, among other things, because pieces are missing to solve the puzzle. These pieces are sectors of the political opposition and representative actors of civil society. There is still a long way to go.

David Smilde, professor and director of the School of Sociology at Tulane University (USA), goes further, stating that the military intervention ordered by Trump will not necessarily lead to a democratic transition. It is still not clear what the United States wants in Venezuela. Trump has basically talked about oil and the oil industry. In her 2024 campaign, she never spoke of democracy or human rights, but rather of immigration and criminal gangs. What's relevant is geopolitics and national security strategy. Perhaps María Corina Machado's visit to Washington this week will help clarify this matter. "I think they could talk about how the transition in Venezuela could be carried out," says Margarita López Maya, a historian and PhD in social sciences.

Dismantling authoritarianism and rebuilding institutions

More questions than answers loom on the horizon. Jiménez is right when he asks: "Is Venezuela facing the possibility of an opening of the system led by the government itself, or, on the contrary, is a new phase of power consolidation approaching under a Chavismo 3.0?"

The US military attack left Venezuelans disillusioned. Maduro's "extraction" swept away the figure of the dictator, but the Chavista order and domination remained intact. Trump didn't restore democracy, nor did he open the door to transition. Perhaps because this process doesn't imply that a foreign actor can design or direct the country's transformation. "To be viable and sustainable, this design continues to depend on internal political decisions and agreements among Venezuelan actors," Jiménez warns.

The political transition process also demands something we haven't seen in Venezuela for years: trust among political actors. Smilde points out that the release of a small group of political prisoners is a step in that direction, but much remains to be done. The goal is to dismantle authoritarianism, and a crucial step could be to lift all restrictions on freedom of expression.

The electoral process is extremely difficult. If a transition to democracy begins, the objective of enforcing the results of the July 28 elections may not be part of the solution but rather part of the problem. Furthermore, it wouldn't be a consequence of a transition process. What looms on the horizon are new elections, but these cannot be organized in the short term. "The minimum conditions for holding reasonably democratic elections do not exist," states López Maya. Venezuela needs institutional reconstruction. This is fundamental. "To move towards democracy, it is important to focus discussions on the rules of the game and institutions, thus building inclusive agreements on the functioning of a new system," Jiménez points out.

All of this runs counter to Venezuela's long tradition of personalistic leadership. One fact: "This type of leadership is seductive, and in contexts of prolonged crisis, it can even have a calming effect, by shifting the burden of uncertainty from the individual to someone who promises to solve everything," Jiménez concludes. And we haven't recovered from this.