Vote-catching dictatorships wherein people vote but do not elect

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy)Vote-catching dictatorship is a regime that concentrates absolute power in a chief, group, or organization, represses human rights and basic individual freedoms, imposes, and manipulates electoral events in which people vote but do not elect. In the Americas, it is part of the permanent counterfeiting that 21st Century Socialism, or Castrochavism, does to supplant politics and simulate to have the backing of the peoples whom it subjects and oppresses in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.

Factual reality demonstrates that dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua only produce humanitarian, social, economic, and political crises, these regimes are producers of misery, insecurity, and corruption. All of these nations are now in worse social, economic, and quality of life conditions than before taking power, reasons why their true nature as organized criminal groups of Transnational Organized Crime have become evident. With an around 80% of popular rejection, nothing but force and violence and the fear instilled in the population by “State-terrorism” is what keeps dictators in the government

To dress up political organized crime, the systematic violation of the human right to rebel, the theft and usurpation of “nationalized” income generating enterprises, corruption and the impunity of the government in its fight against poverty, narcotics’ trafficking and their narco-States of anti-imperialism, to disguise political persecution, torture and the destruction of the human capital’s equality before the law, to counterfeit the popular will of the people, and the misery they produce, are some of the permanent falsifications of the 21st century dictatorships in the Americas.

The most recent supplantation of factual reality by a dictatorial narrative just happened in Cuba wherein, and under the banner of “2023 parliamentarian elections,” the Cuban regime committed the premeditated, flagrant crime with afore-thought malice, of violating freedom, supplanting the people’s will, using material and ideological falsehood, using counterfeited electoral materials, broadcasting fake news, extortions of all types, serious deprivations of physical freedom, persecution of the population and other types of inhuman crime. To call a criminal undertaking “elections” and to present its outcome as “successful” in yet one more proof of State-terrorism.

To be able to elect, the main ingredient is freedom. From a political and social perspective, freedom is expressed as the respect for human rights that enable an individual to act based upon his own convictions and interests, to make decisions and assume consequent responsibilities. Freedom is the “the people’s right and power to elect in a responsible manner their own way to act within a society.”

To elect means to “choose or prefer someone or something for a purpose.” To be able to elect, there must be two or more legitimate options. Elections are “an institutional process in which voters choose with their vote from amongst the plurality of candidates.” There are NO elections with only one existing political party, as in Cuba, nor with sequestered functional oppositions who accept elections without freedom, with political prisoners and exiles, with manipulated voters’ registries and with electoral officials subjected by the regime.

The Interamerican Democratic Charter establishes as “an essential component of democracy” the holding of periodic, free, and fair elections based on universal suffrage concepts of secrecy and as an expression of the people’s sovereignty.” This is recognition that “sovereignty rests in the people” and that sovereignty is the “substantive term that designates the supreme authority that has the last and unquestionable power over the political system.” Any event that pretends to supplant the popular will or block its unhindered execution, is not an election.

The concepts of dictatorship and elections contradict each other because dictatorship is a crime and elections are freedom. Free elections are only possible in a democracy and under strict conditions to ensure the fairness of outcomes, to ensure voters have the unencumbered right to exercise their right to elect or be elected, to ensure their decision is protected by secrecy, and that all voters discharge this right under the same conditions of equality that is validated by universal suffrage concepts.

The labeling of “elections” to all forcible voting processes without the freedom of voters, with political prisoners, tortured, exiled, or persecuted under conditions of State-terrorism in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua is no more than another counterfeited narrative, another proof of organized crime. To identify this way of counterfeiting, it is important to remember the concept of “vote-catching dictatorships” that is best summarized as a process “to vote, but not to elect” and is yet one more type of the criminal assault against the people.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas