Venezuela: True Democracy at Work

Venezuela's National Assembly is currently in the process of selecting a new national electoral Council (CNE, Spanish acronym). This process is being carried out following established rules set by the Venezuelan Constitution and existing electoral laws. It is a complex process, yet much more democratic and participatory than other developed nations, or any other in Venezuela’s history. This is a far cry from what the Venezuelan opposition- and the media they control- claim to be an excessive control of the executive branch on the rest of the branches of government.


First of all, Venezuela’s National Assembly must create a preliminary commission, which will be in charge of receiving, postulating and remitting the selected members hauling from all sectors of society to form the electoral committee. For the ongoing process, 680 candidates were registered, who, along with 11 members of the electoral committee will lead the committee. Later, this committee carefully will examine and evaluate all candidates to the CNE, who will finally be chosen by two thirds of the representatives from the National Assembly. According to the Venezuelan Constitution, the CNE should be composed of five people with no links to political parties; three of them should come from civil society, one from the universities and the other from the bases.

This process is completely open, public and transparent. The people of Venezuela have been informed throughout the process. All CNE nominations have been broadcasted and analyzed. The private media have scrutinized on the private lives of all nominees, hoping to find some sort of shady past they can exploit for their own agenda. That is why every nominee should have an extremely clean background.

No other country in the world, even “democratic and developed” ones, allows the direct participation from civil society and the universities in the choosing of the highest electoral authorities. In no other time in Venezuela’s history has there been so much openness and transparency in the choosing of an electoral body. That same opposition that today claims for a “trustworthy” CNE, euphemism for total abstention, never did anything in the past to reform the archaic and corrupt manner the electoral body was chosen in the past. A clear example of this is the way old traditional parties-AD and Copei- chose the electoral body. There were multiple electoral fraud claims in 1993, when Rafael Caldera was chosen president. Today’s opposition never did anything to have a plural and democratic CNE. However, they are the same ones demanding a number of conditions to the CNE so that they can participate in the December elections. They invoke the Constitution, the same one they have rejected in the past and have threatened to change completely once in power. Ironically, every time the Venezuelan opposition invokes the Constitution, they are consolidating the Bolivarian revolution as an example of democracy and popular participation: A true democratic example for the rest of the world.


Antonio Guillermo García Danglades / Translated by Néstor Sánchez Cordero