There are political prisoners tortured without the right to defense in the dungeons of the regime who were children 30 years ago the day Hugo Chávez was released. The celebration of that March 26 when the soldier left the Yare prison was organized by Nicolás Maduro who in these times of campaign has confirmed the contempt that the Venezuelan people feel for him, which is why he has to appeal – and he does so with despair – to the image of the dead soldier. His effort to refer to Chávez as a long-suffering prisoner is, like everything about the regime, a falsehood. But he has no alternative because telling the truth would imply admitting not only that all of Chávez’s rights were respected in prison, but also how he enjoyed them outside of it, including the possibility of aspiring to the presidency of the Republic and win it
Maduro only has to use force and illegal abuse of his power. It has several, among them Tarek William Saab, the prosecutor who has made it his entertainment and vile exercise of law, to hunt down victims converted by his despicable narrative into murderers, terrorists, conspirators submissive to the leader of the opposition unit María Corina Machado.
Contrast this reality with the transparent legal process and the respectful – one would say deferential – treatment enjoyed by those who had taken up arms against a democratically elected president, leaving more than a hundred dead and countless injured.
There were many anecdotes heard directly from those detained during the attempted coup of February 4, 1992 regarding the freedoms they enjoyed in prison. For example, Francisco Arias Cárdenas – who felt like the real boss, seeing that unlike Chávez he had successfully completed the military objective – used to comment how much it bothered him how little Hugo dedicated to political debate, preferring to give his time to his admirers. anxious people who demanded privacy, a right also respected by their jailers. In addition, Chávez frequently posed for photographers, spoke to journalists and even recorded a video for television. His departure was a spectacle that the power respected, as well as his decision to tour the country and do politics to his liking. Nothing and no one limited the steps of the soldier who went from abstention to the presidential candidacy. The word disqualification and its perverse application to eliminate candidates was unimaginable. His political rights were respected and his militancy could spread his sympathies without being persecuted, attacked, or imprisoned. He enjoyed spreading his message at will through the media and toured the country without limitations. No one investigated him, not even to investigate the origin of the money used in his campaign, a matter worthy of suspicion in the case of a soldier who had not worked for a long time and who repeated that he had nowhere to drop dead.
While in power, Chávez committed outrages, illegal abuses with the minimum care – which he did not always manage – not to cross the line that made him a dictator. He used to say that the red carpet of democracy was tastier. His effort then was to try to take care of the forms, which I insist, he did not always achieve.
Maduro, on the other hand, doesn’t care about any of that. Being called bloodthirsty, torturer, green belly, dictator, everything works for him. The only thing that matters to him is staying in power and thereby living as tyrants do: like a king. He knows that Venezuelans despise him and that the only way to stay in Miraflores is like he is doing: avoiding a clean and free election.
That’s what we face. We suffered every obstacle imaginable and more. He is already a cynical tyrant so brazen that he is becoming uncomfortable with his traditional allies. Why disqualify a political rival like María Corina Machado? Why make the alternative of the honorable Corina Yoris registering unviable? Is the certainty of her defeat so overwhelming that she only allows those who pass through the sieve of her blackmail to register? Who can believe her if she does not respect international agreements? What way is that to insult governments that object to the absence of democracy in Venezuela?
Today Maduro is smelly, it is an uncomfortable visit for those who dress as democrats.
We are facing the monster with our hands tied, and, even so, we have to continue with the strategy executed until now and that has led it to make mistakes: stay on the democratic route, on the electoral option.
The game is still open. Efforts must be made to continue this fight with common sense, tenacity and temperance. Respecting the leadership of María Corina Machado, without deviating from the objective of recovering that Venezuela that we enjoy in democracy.
